Giants need to find a way to finish these close games
Head coach Tom Coughlin of the New York Giants walks off the field after a loss against the New England Patriots at MetLife Stadium on Sunday, Nov. 15, 2015. Credit: Jim McIsaac
The Giants' season of woulda-shoulda-coulda continued with yet another gut-wrenching reminder of just how good they can be, yet how mind-numbingly hollow these moral victories turn out in the end.
This time it was a down-to-the-wire game against the unbeaten Patriots, one in which the Giants matched wits against Tom Brady and Bill Belichick and nearly pulled off a dramatic upset. For more than 59 minutes, the Giants played one of their best games since they last won the Super Bowl after the 2011 season, and they did it against one of the Patriots' best teams.
Eli Manning, the only quarterback to beat Tom Brady in a Super Bowl -- two, actually -- threw for 361 yards and two touchdowns. The defense, which has gotten a lift from the return of Jason Pierre-Paul, often befuddled Brady and forced two fumbles and an interception.
In the end, though, it was Brady moving the Patriots just far enough to give Stephen Gostkowski a chance at a 54-yard field-goal attempt. And with one second left on the clock, Gostkowski's kick sailed through the uprights for a 27-26 win, sticking another dagger into the heart of a Giants team that has experienced more than its share of last-second misery.
Consider: Four of their five losses have been by a total of nine points. Nine!
At some point, you have to wonder if the dejection from all these near-victories will cause them to veer off course so far that they run out of season before figuring out how to close out these games.
Tom Coughlin likes to use the word "finish," a six-letter reminder he came up with the season after one of the Giants' biggest late-season collapses in recent memory.
Remember that December debacle in 2010, when the Giants blew it against the Eagles and were knocked out of playoff contention? Coughlin sat alone in a darkened room for hours after that game, wondering where it had all gone wrong. But out of that gloom grew a resolve that transformed the 2011 Giants into Super Bowl champions for a second time on Coughlin's watch.
Not one of the losses this year has been that painful, but Coughlin knows his team has to find a way to win the fourth quarter before it's too late. "It hurts when you put as much effort into it as these young men do, the coaching staff did, the work that's put into it," he said. "To not come away with the win, it's frustrating. Just win the game."
They would have if Landon Collins had come down with that interception on the Pats' final drive. They should have if Odell Beckham Jr. had secured the ball after scoring an apparent TD with 2:01 to play. They could have if they hadn't allowed a 12-yard catch by Danny Amendola on fourth-and-10 from the Pats' 20.
"We've just got to be able to hold on to a lead, and so you can always look back and see where there were opportunities lost and where you could have been the difference in making the play," Manning said. "Close, but not as good as it could be."
Even with the loss, the Giants enter their bye week in first place after the Eagles lost. "Our season's going to depend on these last six games, and that's the way we look at it," Manning said. "If we handle our business, play the way we need to play and win some games and make the playoffs, we'll be happy."
Inside the walls of their locker room, doubts do not reside.
"We went against one of the best and we lost, so we're not there yet," cornerback Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie said. "We've still got to find a way to get it. We made a statement and came out there and showed that we can go with the best."
And what happens now?
"These next six weeks," Rodgers-Cromartie said, "we're coming. We have to find a way to win in the fourth quarter. We're going to find a way to put it away."
Bob Glauber retired in 2022 after covering the NFL for nearly 40 years. He was selected in 2021 for the Bill Nunn Career Achievement Award by the Pro Football Writers of America, and is a three-time winner of the New York State Sportswriter of the Year by the National Sports Media Association. President of the PFWA for the 2018-20 seasons, he is the author of “The Forgotten First” and “Guts and Genius.”
