Giants lose to surprising Commanders for second time this season, fall to 0-5 at home

The game was long over, and two of the Giants’ veteran defensive leaders sat opposite one another in quiet conversation.

Dexter Lawrence was on a chair by his locker and Brian Burns was on the floor next to him, his back against the wall, neither having showered yet.

They looked like a pair of tired college students trying to solve the problems of the world in their dorm room at 3 a.m., but in this case, their mission was more specific: Solving the problem that is the 2024 Giants.

The frustration of Monday night’s loss to the Steelers had given way to the frustration of Sunday’s 27-22 loss to the Commanders at MetLife Stadium, and to the reality of a team that is 0-5 at home and has lost four in a row overall.

Oddsmakers listed both teams before the season with projected victory totals of 6.5. The Commanders (7-2) already are there. The Giants look unlikely to get there, now 2-7 for the second season in a row.

Neither Lawrence nor Burns cared to share what they discussed.

“Don’t worry. If I’m talking to my teammates, it’s nothing for you to be concerned about,” Lawrence told reporters. “We’re just talking about the game and what we’re going to do to be better.”

But both men admitted frustration over an inadequate performance by the defense. Washington punted once in its last seven possessions.

Asked how frustrated he was to be answering questions after yet another loss, Burns said simply, “Very.”

The offense was the less bad unit this week, but there were signs of trouble there, too.

Rookie receiver Malik Nabers had eye-opening things to say after a day in which he had one target and no catches in the first half, then 10 targets and nine catches in the second.

“I don’t call the plays,” he said. “When you run the clock out in the first half, you’re scratching in the second half to try to score points, as many as possible. As an offense, you’ve got to be versatile. You’ve got to be able to run. You’ve got to be able to pass. You can’t pick between half and half what you want to do. But like I said, I’m not the play-caller.”

Washington’s Jayden Daniels became the first rookie quarterback since at least 1950, when quarterback stats first were recorded, to beat the Giants twice in a season.

“Nothing different,” Nabers said of his college teammate at LSU. “Leads his team to win. He’s going to do it every time he steps on the field.”

Daniels finished 15-for-22 for 209 yards and two touchdowns and rushed eight times for 35 yards.

The Giants’ Daniel Jones was 20-for-26 for 174 yards and his first two touchdown passes at home in 672 days. He also rushed seven times for 54 yards and a TD.

But Jones’ final passing stats obscured his bizarre first half: He finished it 4-for-6 for a total of zero yards.

Next up for the Giants is a trip to Munich, Germany, to face the 2-7 Panthers, followed by their bye week.

So after being booed off the field at halftime on Sunday, at least they do not have to encounter their home fans again until Nov. 24.

The game began with more 100th season hoopla, with Lawrence Taylor being introduced before the game and the team wearing the uniforms it featured from 1980-99.

Unfortunately for the Giants, Taylor was not on the active roster.

The Commanders scored first on a 1-yard pass from Daniels to Terry McLaurin that was set up by Jones’ fumble. On a play that began at the Washington 29, Jones was sacked from the blind side by Dante Fowler Jr. for a 10-yard loss and lost the ball. Washington wound up with it at the Giants’ 31.

The Giants answered with an impressive grind-it-out, run-oriented drive capped when Jones found tight end Chris Manhertz for the tying 2-yard touchdown.Austin Ekeler ran it in from the 1-yard line as Washington took a 14-7 lead 6:21 before halftime.

The game’s turning point was the Giants allowing another late first-half score.

With six seconds left, McLaurin ran past Deonte Banks into the end zone, where Daniels found him for a nifty 18-yard touchdown pass that made it 21-7 at halftime.

“Just have to be better,” Banks said, one of about a dozen times he used that phrase about himself or the defense generally.

The Giants appeared to score a touchdown on a fourth-and-1 pass from Jones to Wan’Dale Robinson from the 3-yard line in the third quarter. But Darius Slayton was called for offensive pass interference, resulting in a penalty that forced the Giants to settle for a 31-yard field goal by Jude McAtamney, the first NFL three-pointer for the former Rutgers kicker.

After Jones scored from 2 yards out, bouncing off two would-be tacklers, the Giants tried a two-point conversion to get within six points, but Jones’ run fell short, and it was 24-16.

The Commanders drove for a field goal to make it 27-16 with 3:46 remaining, but the Giants kept at it and got within 27-22 on a 35-yard scoring pass from Jones to Theo Johnson with 2:48 remaining. (Jones was sacked on the two-point try.)

One last time, the Giants’ defense was unable to stop the Commanders, who drove to the Giants’ 1 and ran out the clock.

“I feel like we’re really close,” guard Jon Runyan Jr. said later.

They are close in one sense. After nine games, they now are closer to the end of another failed season than to the start.

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.