Giants players say they're playing to win, draft position be darned
Brian Burns of the Giants looks on against the Indianapolis Colts at MetLife Stadium on Sunday. Credit: Jim McIsaac
After every one of his previous eight home games with the Giants, linebacker Brian Burns sat on the chair in front of his locker, stared out at the rest of the team around him and attempted to process what he’d just experienced. Sometimes it was heartbreak from a close game, other times it was frustration at being overwhelmed. But in all eight of those contemplations, it was a loss on which he was silently chewing. Or maybe it was the losses gnawing at him.
On Sunday, he again sat in that familiar seat, but this time he scanned a room filled with smiles and chatter, the flesh-slappy sounds of high-fives and back pats ringing around him.
Malik Nabers and Isaiah Simmons stood near him scrolling through highlights on their phones, sharing the ones they liked with each other. Burns leaned back on the rear two legs of that folding chair, which, like him, had been holding up the burdens of a disappointing season.
Then he did something he’d never done as a Giant at MetLife Stadium. He smiled the smile of a victor.
The Giants had just beaten the Colts, 45-33, ending a number of ignominious streaks. It saved them from an NFL record for home futility, impacted where and whom they will draft in April and could play a role in determining who stays and who goes after the season.
But for Burns, the only thing he was thinking about was soaking up the sensation that had eluded him since he arrived here in a huge trade.
“It’s just joy,” he said. “We needed that a lot. It’s good to feel that. It’s been a while . . . It’s something we have to feel a lot more of next year.”
All around him, players and coaches were experiencing the same buzz. There were some, like Burns, who had never celebrated in that space.
“To finally get a [home] win and have all the hard work somewhat pay off, it’s really nice,” offensive lineman and fellow first-year Giant Jermaine Eluemunor said.
Receiver Darius Slayton said: “I’ve won a lot in my life, so I wouldn’t say I forget the feeling of winning, but obviously it was nice to get that feeling back today.”
Outside that room, however, a very different vibe was percolating among Giants fans. For many, this result was just as disappointing, if not more so, than any of the ones that preceded it.
The hope of landing the first overall pick in April’s draft — at least without trading up to get it — was erased with this win. Any vision of getting the first quarterback off the board was blurred.
The Giants will select very early in the process — they still are only 3-13 — but for those who were rooting for them to lose out, the sentiment was clear:
Tanks for nothing!
“I know,” Eluemunor said of that chatter. “You don’t have to tell me.”
Like everyone else in the room, he understands that kind of thinking. He just doesn’t subscribe to it.
“Look, I get that when you have a losing season, the best thing to do in fans’ eyes is to keep losing so you can get a better draft position,” he said. “But then you start to create a culture of losing. That’s not what you want to do.”
He said it’s up to the current players to focus on winning and let the front office deal with the draft and free agency and “getting people in here who can help us go from 3-13 now to friggin’ 13-3.”
So the Giants celebrated . . . even if their fans did not.
The players mocked what the reaction would have been if they had become the first team in NFL history to go 0-9 at home. “We ain’t there now, so we good,” Burns said.
They recounted their standout plays, from Slayton’s stumbling touchdown to Ihmir Smith-Marsette’s 100-yard touchdown on the second-half kickoff to Elijah Chatman stuffing Jonathan Taylor on a critical fourth-and-1 in the third quarter.
They marveled at Drew Lock’s performance and Dru Phillips’ interception and Kayvon Thibodeaux’s strip sack that sealed it.
They reveled in the history of a rivalry that reaches all the way back to the 1958 NFL Championship Game at Yankee Stadium. Thibodeaux was told that was called “The Greatest Game Ever Played.” He admitted this one was not but christened it “A Pretty Good Game” nonetheless. Unlike the 1958 version, the Giants won this one.
They wondered what impact this game will have on the organization, from a possible carry-over for those who will be back in 2025 to the potential of it saving the job of Brian Daboll.
“That wasn’t just for us,” Burns said of his head coach, “it was for him, too.”
Mostly, they just enjoyed the win itself no matter how it happened, what it took to get here or what the consequences will be.
“The win feels great,” Thibodeaux said. “It’s worth it, I’ll tell you that.”
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.
