Ain't that a kick in the head: Brian Daboll's decisions backfire in Giants' loss to Commanders
Giants head coach Brian Daboll reacts to a call during the first half of an NFL football game against the Washington Commanders in Landover, Md., Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024. Credit: AP/Matt Slocum
LANDOVER, Md.
On a different day against a different opponent for a different coach, this could have been chalked up to a simple stroke of bad luck.
Stuff happens, in life and in the NFL. But not on this day against this opponent for this coach.
Not when it was a must-win for Brian Daboll, coming off a dud in 2023, as he tried to avoid an 0-2 start in a game between teams projected to be among the league’s worst.
Daboll, presumably in consultation with his staff and that of general manager Joe Schoen, took a risk on Sunday. It blew up spectacularly.
The result was a 21-18 loss to the Commanders at Northwest Stadium that was decided in large part by the absence of an NFL-level placekicker.
“It’s too bad,” Daboll said during a tense postgame session with reporters that focused on the arcane matter of managing his kicking roster and the connection between one’s groin and hamstring muscles.
This was an awful look for a franchise and coach trying to regain the faith of fans.
On paper, there was a lot to like. Daniel Jones bounced back from his terrible performance in the opener to throw two touchdown passes with no interceptions and fashion an even 100.0 passer rating.
Devin Singletary did a convincing Saquon Barkley imitation, rushing for 95 yards and a touchdown (with a key fumble). Rookie Malik Nabers was spectacular, catching 10 passes on 18 targets for 127 yards and a touchdown (with a key drop).
The Giants scored three touchdowns, allowed none and somehow lost, thanks in large part to a defense that allowed Washington to score a field goal on each of its seven full possessions.
But it likely would have come out differently if not for the absence of kicker Graham Gano after the opening kickoff.
Gano, 37, had turned up on the injury report on Saturday with a groin problem. But the Giants said then and again on Sunday that he was OK to play.
They did not elevate practice kicker Jude McAtemey, a rookie out of Rutgers, just in case Gano wasn’t.
Gano said after Sunday’s game that he was making his usual array of field goals in warmups, but he acknowledged feeling the groin problem. At one point, he left the field to get it wrapped.
Then came the opening kickoff, which Austin Ekeler returned 98 yards to the end zone for Washington, a play erased by a penalty. Gano tried to catch him and hurt his right hamstring, giving him a matching pair of injuries with his right groin.
Daboll and Gano insisted these matters were unrelated. “He didn’t hurt his groin; he hurt his hamstring,” Daboll said.
But might he have been favoring the leg, increasing his risk? “I’m not a doctor,” the coach said.
Said Gano, “There’s no correlation between the two of them as far as I’m concerned.”
Punter Jamie Gillan kicked a 40-yard field goal in New Orleans last December, but when he attempted an extra point in the first quarter Sunday, it sailed wide right. Daboll never went back to him again, which led to bad consequences.
After the Giants scored to go ahead 18-15 in the fourth quarter, a situation that calls for an extra-point attempt to go up by four, the Giants went for two. Jones’ pass intended for Darius Slayton fell incomplete.
On the ensuing kickoff, Gillan was short of the landing zone, giving Washington the ball at the Giants’ 40-yard line. That set them up for a tying field goal. Then the Giants drove to the Washington 22-yard line as the clock wound down. It was fourth-and-4, a situation that normally would call for a 40-yard field-goal attempt to make it 21-18. But the Giants went for the first down and Nabers dropped Jones’ pass on the sideline.
The Commanders took back the ball and marched to the winning field goal.
Regarding the fourth-down play, Daboll said the coaches liked the team’s chances with Jones throwing to Nabers rather than Gillan kicking.
He did say there was a yardage point at which he would have let Gillan kick, but he would not say what that point was.
Daboll was peppered with questions about all of this, with reporters asking what fans were wondering. Specifically: What were you thinking?
“Anybody can get injured,” Daboll said. “He was chasing a kickoff return, pulled his hamstring. Not making excuses.”
Why not trust Gillan to get the job done?
“He missed the first [extra point],” Daboll said. “We thought our chances were better going for it [on fourth down] or going for two.”
Gano said he wished he had known about the penalty so he could back off. But his competitive juices kicked in.
“It wasn’t something that was bothering me at all,” he said, “until I guess I was running too fast for my body.”
Gano missed the last nine games of last season with a leg injury — an injury that contributed to a poor game against the Jets.
“This is the National Football League,” he said. “There’s only one kicker, so I feel a responsibility to be able to play. I’m always going to be smart about it. If I didn’t think I could play, I wouldn’t play.”
This was a kick in the pants that made no one with the Giants look smart.
Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.
