Giants try to shake rep as 'not ready for prime-time players'
Giants quarterback Daniel Jones calls a play at the line of scrimmage during the fourth quarter against the Eagles at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., on Dec. 11. Credit: Brad Penner
LANDOVER, Md. — Every team in the NFL has a day in the preseason when the networks come in to record video for introductions and other graphics that appear during broadcasts. The Giants had one this summer and ESPN, Fox, CBS and the NFL Network were all there.
NBC? It canceled on the Giants the day before the shoot.
The Giants were not on the slate for prime-time Sunday Night games for the fourth straight year and, frankly, few thought they would do anything that could cause the league to flex them into the coveted time slot. Why would the network waste its time gathering footage it would never use?
Welp, here we are in mid-December, the Giants are 7-5-1, and their game against the Commanders with significant playoff implications has been pushed to the most coveted time slot in the league.
It meant this week, more than 40 of the Giants players, including some of the most recognizable names and faces in the game — Saquon Barkley, Daniel Jones — had to take time from their preparation for Washington to record the little personal introduction NBC uses for each of the starters in its broadcasts.
The only other time the Giants have played on Sunday Night Football since early in 2018 was when they were flexed there in December 2020 against the Browns. Only 11 of the 48 active players from that game are still on the active roster. Neither Jones nor Barkley played that night because of injuries.
This, then, was Jones’ first step on the Sunday night stage and his first time looking at us through the corner of our televisions saying, “Daniel Jones, Duke University.” NBC did have an archived Barkley introduction, but it had to be reshot since it was from his rookie season of 2018.
The Giants came into Sunday night having been famously futile in their few prime-time games of late, losing 11 in a row, including a Monday Night home game to the Cowboys in late September. Barkley had never won a prime-time game in his career with the Giants. Jones was 0-9 as a starting quarterback under the lights. That doesn’t even include the Thanksgiving Day loss to the Cowboys, which, technically an afternoon game, was the most-viewed contest in regular-season history.
“I think I don’t make a ton of it,” Jones said of his scheduling schneid. “I think each game is different, and we haven’t won enough games period around here. I’m excited for this opportunity.”
Barkley was not aware of the losing streak.
“That’s a crazy stat,” he said. “We lost 11 straight? Dang. I really don’t know what to say to that.”
Barkley tried to argue that the team’s win over the Packers in London in October should count as a “prime-time” win since it was the only game being broadcast at the time, but quickly conceded that a 9:30 a.m. kickoff in New York is about 12 hours shy of qualifying.
He did make a salient point, though. While the Giants have struggled in prime time recently, it’s not as if they had been winning their 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. kickoffs at a stellar rate during the that same time, either.
“Those 11 games we lost, we weren’t as successful,” he said. “We’re a successful team this year. We’re a different team this year than we were in the past. We’re getting that opportunity in another prime-time game to go show that, and I feel like if we continue to trust each other, lean on each other, get that power and belief back, go out there, play for each other, anything can happen, right?”
No one — certainly no one at NBC, it seems —- thought the Giants would be good enough to get flexed into this position when the season started. Now that they arrived here, they figured they might as well try to pull off another surprise and win a night game.
“Whether it’s prime time or not, whether the world’s watching or not, it doesn’t really matter,” Barkley said. “It doesn’t hurt, don’t get me wrong. It’s prime time. I’m all about the NFL and the ratings and stuff like that. But at the end of the day, what really matters is let’s go out there and try to get a win.”
It was a chance to show the rest of the league watching from home that they are legit contenders ... or confirm the preseason thinking that they are undeserving of such a pedestal.
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.
