Giants fall out of first place with 20-14 loss to Redskins

LANDOVER, Md. -- When last we saw the Giants in action, they were in a toe-to-toe staring contest with the best team in the NFL and came up just a few plays short of an upset. There was every reason to believe that playing at that level would win a game against almost every other opponent in the league, and no reason to think the Giants could not accomplish that.

But when they took the field against Washington on Sunday, that team that nearly beat the Patriots was nowhere to be found. Where'd it go?

"I don't know," Odell Beckham Jr. said. "We need to come out with more, period. I don't have an answer for that one."

The Giants, it turns out, were much more successful when they weren't actually playing. After enjoying a bye week in which the rest of the teams in the division lost -- one of them twice -- and emerging from the time off with a one-game lead in the NFC East, they suffered a crushing 20-14 loss to Washington at FedEx Field.

The Giants had a chance to solidify their standing with a win and start a six-game cruise to the playoffs. Instead they fell to second place behind Washington, based on tiebreakers, in a division in which no team can boast even a .500 record. In that regard, it was a fittingly sloppy battle for "supremacy" in an increasingly sloppy NFC East.

"Obviously, we had a great opportunity that we let slip through our fingers," linebacker Devon Kennard said. "We had an opportunity to really grab hold of the division and we didn't do that."

The loss left the Giants searching for reasons why they would play their worst with so much at stake. Tom Coughlin said the team "slepwalked" through the first three quarters. Cornerback Prince Amukamara said the team may have had a "bye-week hangover.''

"It's just been the story of our season," defensive tackle Cullen Jenkins said. "We have not cashed in on opportunities. We get opportunities. We get a chance to start to distance ourselves and we just don't take advantage . . . This has to be the game where we come out and play the best game of the year, and we didn't do that."

Trailing 20-0 after throwing three interceptions, Eli Manning connected with Rueben Randle on a fourth-and-16 play for a 40-yard touchdown with 10:10 left to avoid the first Giants shutout at the hands of Washington since 1979. The Giants managed to make it even more interesting, closing to within 20-14 with 4:57 left on a one-handed 21-yard touchdown catch by Beckham.

But Washington converted a key third down on a 20-yard pass to Jordan Reed on third-and-8 with 3:29 left and held on to the ball until they punted it back to the Giants with 19 seconds left. "That was the play," Coughlin said. "We didn't make that play when we needed to make that play, and sometimes it comes down to that."

The Giants and Washington both are 5-6, with Washington holding a tiebreaker at this point based on division record. Washington also gets to play the Tony Romo-less Cowboys twice. The Giants have a daunting remaining schedule that includes the Jets next week and Minnesota and Carolina in the next month.

The last time the Giants lost to Washington was late in the 2012 season. They came into that game with a division lead, too, and crumbled after that result.

"We can't go in down 17-0 [at halftime], we can't come out flat, we can't make the errors that we made and really, really expect the outcome to be any different from what it was," Beckham said. "We need to do better as a Giants organization."

Conversely, the last two Giants Super Bowl runs have included late-season, soul-questioning losses to Washington. While the Giants looked incapable of doing anything positive for the majority of this game, they remain very much in the thick of the division's quicksand.

For some, that's good enough to offer hope. "I definitely see us winning the division still and going to the playoffs," Amukamara said. "The goal is still achievable and we just have to win the games we're supposed to from here on out."

For others, though, that's the rub. The Giants have shown no inclination to do that.

"It's not encouraging," Jenkins said. "I mean, the reality of it is we're tied for first place, which you can say it's a positive. But also the reality is we're a much better team than we're showing and we aren't taking advantage of opportunities. We're not finishing games, and we're not good enough."

In such a dilapidated division, however, that might wind up being good enough.

By Tom Rock

tom.rock@newsday.com@TomRock_Newsday

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.