Giants taking a page from Finding Nemo as they try to save their season: 'Just keep swimming'
Giants defensive end Leonard Williams, left, and Giants wide receiver Jalin Hyatt. Inset are Hyatt's "Finding Nemo"-themed cleats. Credit: AP; Newsday / Tom Rock
Jalin Hyatt was excited to sport a new pair of custom cleats at practice. Painted to look like Nemo and Dory from the “Finding Nemo” movies, the orange clownfish one with white stripes even had one regular-sized fin and one smaller damaged fin dangling off it.
Fun. Especially for a 22-year-old rookie receiver who was two when the movie came out.
But there was also a message to the rest of the locker room in the shoe choice.
“Just keep swimming,” Hyatt told Newsday on Wednesday. “Just. Keep. Swimming.”
That’s where the Giants are this week: A 1-5 team whose playoff chances have all but evaporated, a dilapidated offense that hasn’t scored a touchdown in nearly three and a half weeks, a starting quarterback whose status requires daily updating due to a neck injury . . . and still, they believe, an entire ocean of possibilities in front of them.
If they can just keep swimming.
Veteran defensive lineman Leonard Williams said after Sunday night’s loss in Buffalo that he wanted to take some time this week to remind his fellow players, especially the younger ones who are either new to the league or knew nothing but playoff success last year, that the season is far from over. He noted that the Giants have played only one of their division games so far and the most challenging section of their schedule is now behind them.
As of Wednesday afternoon, he told Newsday he hadn’t yet made that argument to the group.
Based on conversations with some of the players he’d probably be targeting — and the cleats one of them was wearing — he might not have to. Perhaps they are taking advice from the mystic quarterback across town, but many Giants have even taken to an attempt at manifesting success into existence.
“We can still turn this thing around and finish this season the right way,” second-year linebacker and emerging playmaker Micah McFadden said. “It’s about believing that we can do everything we want to do in this last stretch of games here.”
Said rookie cornerback Deonte Banks: “We know what we can do. We know what we are capable of. We just have to put it together.”
An NFC East home game against Washington, Banks added, is “the right time to put it together.”
It may be the last time, too. It’s a hard sell to the outside world right now to say that the Giants’ season still has a pulse; it will be exponentially harder if they lose to the Commanders. There have been three teams that have come back from 1-5 to make the postseason since the NFL merger in 1970, including two this century. None have ever done it from 1-6.
That’s the abyss the Giants are facing Sunday.
Tyrod Taylor, who may or may not be the starting quarterback in Sunday’s game, has seen seasons go every which way during his 13 years in the league. He was on a Super Bowl team his second year in Baltimore and the following year the Ravens didn’t even make the playoffs. He’s been on squads that turned their seasons around after slow starts, and ones that folded late.
Because of that he said he is a believer that a team can change its course in a single day.
“A lot of teams face a turning point,” he said. “That can be one game, one half, even one quarter. It just ignites them. And you never know when that’s going to come.”
These Giants need it to come Sunday.
Despite the loss in Buffalo and the obvious failures to score from the 1-yard line at the end of each of the two halves, the Giants felt there were positives to take from the effort. Several also pointed to a Saturday night speech by special teams coordinator Thomas McGaughey who told the players they need to start “trusting and believing” in themselves. The result was the best performance of the season.
“It definitely brought us together,” wide receiver Wan’Dale Robinson said. “I think Sunday we showed a little bit of a glimpse of that.”
Added McFadden on the speech and the ensuing game: “I think we figured something out about ourselves.”
Maybe they did. Then again, for all the fluidity of narrative that Taylor spoke about experiencing throughout his career, and for all the epic swings in fate in either direction that we often cite, the far more common story arc in an NFL season is a simple one. The good teams generally remain good all year, and the bad teams typically stay bad.
The 2023 Giants understand they are getting very close to being permanently lumped into the latter group. They just don’t think they are there yet.
“We know the season’s not over,” Robinson said defiantly.
There’s still some swimming left to do.
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.
