Graham Gano's 56-yard field goal lifts Giants to win over Panthers and 2-0 start
The worst thing that could have happened to the Giants on Sunday would have been the same thing that has happened in similar games so often over the last number of years. They could have lost to the Panthers.
They didn’t, but what if they had?
It would have been disappointing and discouraging and brought the team’s emotional elevator down a couple of floors. The fans at MetLife Stadium would have left in a sour mood. The players would not have been able to listen to “Juicy” by The Notorious B.I.G. in the locker room, a song that has become their unofficial anthem for good times under new coach and connoisseur of 1990s rap music Brian Daboll.
Instead of all of that negativity so deeply ingrained in the organization at this point that it’s hard to shift gears when it doesn’t body slam the joy out of an otherwise sublime Sunday afternoon, the Giants won, 19-16.
Graham Gano kicked three field goals, including a 56-yarder with 3:34 left to break a tie. The defense came through with a number of stops, including a key one with just over two minutes left. And the offense ran out the clock with a key first down before Daniel Jones took a knee and Richie James backflipped on the field.
This was the kind of game they so often have found a way to lose in recent times, the scars of which seem to be serving as a sort of Teflon for them as they have gutted, gritted and gumptioned their way to a 2-0 start for the first time since 2016.
“The guys we have on our team aren’t afraid of failure,” safety Xavier McKinney said. “I mean, we’ve been at the bottom. We’ve experienced all of that. We’re not worried about messing up. Sometimes you hear the boos, but we’re not worried about that too much, either. We know that we’re going to have a breakthrough at some point.”
Maybe they already have.
“I don’t know,” McKinney said when asked if Sunday’s victory qualified for that “breakthrough” he envisioned. “I guess. We’re 2-0.”
Yes, that is a B.I.G. deal.
“It’s fun, and it all starts with winning,” Saquon Barkley said. “That’s what really breeds fun. You have to come out here and win games. We have to continue to do that, but we can’t get caught up in the hype. We’ve got to continue to keep the mindset within this locker room, continue to trust in the guys and the men and women in our facility, and keep getting better.”
That’s McKinney’s goal, too.
“I’ve learned in this league that things can go south really fast,” he said. “You have to keep looking forward, keep being in the moment, take each day as it is, be present, and keep working.”
Sunday gave no indication that the Giants are anything close to a finished product or a title contender.
Most of the game was played with the grind of a seized-up car engine overdue its oil change by 20,000 miles. The Giants went ahead 6-0 thanks to a pair of Panthers turnovers (they fumbled the opening kickoff and fumbled at the end of their first possession), but Carolina tied the score with two field goals in the second quarter. There was a flurry of action in the third quarter as the teams traded touchdown drives, with the Panthers scoring on a 16-yard pass from Baker Mayfield to D.J. Moore as rookie cornerback Cor’Dale Flott slipped in coverage, then a 16-yard pass from Jones to Daniel Bellinger to re-tie the score at 13.
The Giants went ahead early in the fourth quarter on a 51-yard field goal by Gano. The Panthers answered that with a 38-yard field goal with 10:46 left in the fourth.
Even what turned out to be the winning field goal by Gano came with flubs. The Giants drove to the Panthers’ 29 before they were pushed back on a 4-yard loss by running back Matt Breida and a holding penalty against center Jon Feliciano that set up third-and-23 from the 43. Jones hit Sterling Shepard for 5 yards, but that still put the Giants a little outside the comfortable range they had established for field goals before kickoff.
Daboll said he looked down the sideline at Gano and special teams coordinator Thomas McGaughey, they both nodded, and so he sent the kicking unit onto the field.
“You’d like to be closer for him,” Daboll said. “But that’s his job as a kicker, to execute those plays when we need it the most.”
After that, it was up to the defense and offense to make the lead stick for another 3:34. They did that with a sack by safety Julian Love on third-and-6 from the 46 that forced a punt with 2:06 left and a key third-down run by Jones for 11 yards on third-and-6 with about 1:40 remaining to ice the game.
It was the second one-possession victory for the Giants, who have won their two games by a total of four points.
“These are the games in the National Football League,” Daboll said of such high drama and tight results.
The Giants already knew that all too well.
Being on the other side of such games is what they are learning about.
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.
