Eli Manning blames himself for the last of his three interceptions

LANDOVER, Md. -- Eli Manning entered yesterday's game having thrown six interceptions in 384 pass attempts, on pace for the lowest interception percentage of his 12-year NFL career.

Then he threw three in his first 28 attempts in the Giants' 20-14 loss to the Washington Redskins at FedEx Field.

It was the last of the three -- and the only one for which Manning could fairly be blamed -- that bothered him the most.

With the Giants trailing 17-0 midway through the third quarter, he tried to find Rueben Randle in the end zone on a third-and-goal from the 4. But rookie Quinton Dunbar stepped in front of Randle and intercepted the ball.

"That one's on me," Manning said. "Just a bad throw. I thought I made a good read and got into it and had an open receiver. I have to put that in front and we get a touchdown right there. Just a poor throw on my part."

Might he have been shielded on the play? "No, saw it pretty clean," he said. "Was looking out to the right to Shane [Vereen] on my first read and stepped up and saw him running clean and just have to put it on him."

Earlier, the Redskins got interceptions on one pass that bounced off Vereen's hands and another that was jarred out of the hands of Dwayne Harris.

Manning finished 26-for-51 for 321 yards, the three picks and touchdown passes of 40 and 21 yards to Randle and Odell Beckham Jr., the latter a vintage gem on which OBJ dived and hauled in the ball with his left hand in the end zone.

"I thought he really hung in there when people were in his face a lot today," coach Tom Coughlin said of Manning. "But he kept battling, and that was important."

Manning said the game plan was to test the Redskins with deep passes, which the Giants did. But until it was too late, not enough of them paid off.

"I thought in the first half we didn't win our one-on-one matchups," Manning said. "We just weren't completing the ball. They were playing a good bit of man-to-man coverage. We took a number of shots down the field and figured we'd hit some of those, and we didn't hit any.

"It kept us in some third-and-longs because of it. Just not enough completions, never got into a good rhythm and didn't convert on third downs."

Manning will have to finish the season behind a makeshift line, one that had some blocking breakdowns at key moments and that led Manning to take risks throwing the ball downfield under pressure.

Although only one interception was his fault, there were others the Redskins could have and should have made.

"I thought we'd be able to win when they were playing man, win those matchups," Manning said. "We just didn't take advantage of it."

By Neil Best

neil.best@newsday.com@sportswatch

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.