Possibility of losing streak hitting franchise-record 10 has Giants' attention
Giants head coach Brian Daboll looks on from the sidelines during a game against the Baltimore Ravens at MetLife Stadium on Sunday. Credit: Mike Stobe
This isn’t the game when the Giants can officially become the worst team in franchise history based on total losses or winning percentage. Nor can they set an NFL record for most home losses in a season . . . if for no other reason than they are blessed to be playing on the road.
Those dubious distinctions await, though, and certainly will be flirted with as their 2024 schedule convulses its final throes during the coming weeks.
But this team is on the verge of doing something Sunday that no other Giants squad has ever done in the 100 seasons it has been playing the sport.
If they lose in Atlanta, they will post the franchise’s first double-digit losing streak.
There have been only two teams that reached nine — it happened in 1976 and 2019 — and there was a nine-game losing streak that spanned the final eight contests of 2003 and the 2004 opener.
Ten? That’s never happened.
So we could be witnesses to history on Sunday. Awesome. Certainly not the kind of lasting legacy the Giants thought they’d be making in this centennial celebration.
Not even the crosstown circus can save them from this ignominy. The Jets may be red-faced and reeling from a tell-all expose about their dysfunction, with tales of Madden ratings and ownership awkwardness clogging the area’s sports bandwidth. And the immediate inclination for the Giants and their fans at times like these is to snicker and pridefully paint themselves as in a much better place than their stadium mates. This time, though, that would be a lie.
The Giants are worse.
The numbers bear that out. And the numbers keep getting more hideous by the week.
“We’re just doing everything we can to try to get a win,” Brian Daboll said on Thursday. It’s about all he can say at this point.
For those who may not remember, the last time the Giants did in fact beat another NFL team was on Oct. 6 in Seattle. That put their record at 2-3. Now they are 2-12.
That win was so long ago, there are 12 current players on the 53-man roster who were not here or active at that point. Seven of the 22 starters in that Seattle game are either on injured reserve or have been released, and a few others are dealing with injuries that could keep them out on Sunday.
Daniel Jones was one of those starters. He has been on the sideline for three wins in three weeks with the Vikings since going to their practice squad. That’s the same number of victories he experienced in his last 16 games played for the Giants.
“A couple of us were talking about it,” safety Dane Belton said on Thursday of the span since Seattle. “It has been a long time, yeah. But thinking back on it, the feeling that we had after, that’s what we want to get back to.”
A streak this long can blur after a while. Kicker Graham Gano was surprised to learn that he hasn’t been active for any wins this season, having been on injured reserve at the time of the two victories.
“Dang, really?” he said when it was brought to his attention.
Defensive tackle Rakeem Nunez-Roches said he hasn’t been keeping count of the streak either.
“To be honest, I didn’t even know how many games collectively it’s been,” he said. “I just know we haven’t been winning.”
He said the Giants don’t think about the streak during the week.
“If you were to judge our practice, judge our approach, judge our focus, no, it’s not a nine-game-losing-streak team,” he said.
But when the games come around and inevitably end in the losses, Nunez-Roches said he sometimes reflects back on those Seattle vibes.
“You reminisce because it was a good feeling,” he said. “We want to feel that feeling.”
There certainly are reasons why they should not, at least as an organization and as a fan. A victory in any of these last three games would all but push the Giants out of their current opportunity to seize one of the top two picks in April’s draft.
For the players, though, their desire is to win on Sunday and avoid being branded with the stigma of being the team that orchestrated the longest losing streak in Giants history.
“I think it would do a lot just for the vibe within the building and within the locker room especially,” linebacker Micah McFadden said.
He said that 2 1⁄2 weeks ago, actually, when he compared the situation to the eight-game losing streak he endured in his final season in college at Indiana.
“I kind of know exactly what this feels like,” he said at the time.
Now he knows what worse feels like too. And, perhaps for the Giants, worst.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.