Brian Daboll's decision to try field goal will linger with Giants' coach
Graham Gano of the Giants reacts after missing a field goal late during the fourth quarter against the Jets at MetLife Stadium on Sunday. Credit: Jim McIsaac
The Giants found a way to lose.
With 28 seconds to play, Graham Gano lined up to attempt a 35-yard field goal.
Basically, a chip shot that would have given the Giants a six-point lead with 24 seconds to play.
A win, never easy for these Giants, was in reach.
It was not to be.
Gano missed. Wide left.
The Jets, trailing by only three points and given new life, quickly moved down the field and sent the game into overtime tied at 10 on a 35-yard field goal by Greg Zuerlein with no time left on the clock.
If Giants coach Brian Daboll had been willing to go for it on fourth-and-1 instead of attempting the field goal — and if the Giants had converted — they would have been able to run out the clock.
The Giants, who lost Tyrod Taylor in the second quarter with an injury to his rib cage, had third-stringer Tommy DeVito at quarterback. They had managed the game with him. But now it was the Jets’ turn to try to win the game.
After a three-and-out by the Giants in overtime, the Jets did exactly that, putting together a six-play, 46-yard drive that ended with Zuerlein’s 33-yard field goal.
The drive included a critical pass interference call on Giants cornerback Adoree’ Jackson, a 30-yard penalty that moved the ball to the Giants’ 15-yard line.
That decision by Daboll to attempt the field goal instead of going for it on fourth down almost certainly will linger with the coach.
When he stepped to the podium after the game, he said: “A disappointing loss.”
Asked why he didn’t try to win it with a fourth-down conversion, Daboll said it was “a completely legit question.”
“Yeah, I mean, in hindsight, I understand the question,” he said. “But it’s a decision that we made to try to kick a field goal with Graham.
“Our defense was — they were like, 0-for-12 on third down. They were playing well. That’s the decision we made. It didn’t work out.”
Asked if Gano is healthy, Daboll said he is “all right.”
Gano has said he will need knee surgery after the season.
With the Giants relying heavily on Saquon Barkley, DeVito threw only seven passes and completed two — both to Barkley in the Giants’ possession that began overtime — for minus-1 yard.
Barkley finished with a career-high 36 rushing attempts for 128 yards, but it wasn’t enough.
“In that moment when everything’s going your way, you feel like we can finish the game,” he said. “We’ve just got to do a better job of finding a way to win that game.
“There are so many plays out there that we want to have back, especially myself, and we’ll start by going and watching film and seeing what I can do better and what we could do better.”
Asked if he was surprised at the decision to kick the field goal, Barkley said: “It’s fourth-and-1, I could sit here and be like, oh, I want the ball in that situation, but we’ve got nothing but trust in [Gano]. To be honest, I could have gotten the first down the play before. I’ve got to drive my feet a little more, or some other back could find a way to get a first down.
“You could sit here and pick and choose, oh, the fourth-and-1, that decision or what should we have done there or not, and you could make that the play, but there are so many plays that go throughout a game that helps with the decision of how the game turns out. Just got to be better, all of us.”
The Giants have days to think of the ways they can be better.
But on a day when their dominating defense gave up only 13 points, there was a win to be had.
The Giants will regret not securing it.
Kimberly Jones covers the Giants for Newsday, a beat she first worked in the early 2000s before joining the YES Network to cover the Yankees. She worked for the NFL Network for more than a decade and has been heard semi-regularly on WFAN.
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