Giants Q&A: Did Julius Peppers save the season by calling 'heads'?

Did Jabrill Peppers save the Giants’ season?

Maybe. If he did, it was while sidelined with a hamstring injury that forced him out of the game but did not prevent him from going onto the field to call the overtime coin toss.

"I was walking out there already," the captain said of not waiting for Joe Judge to send him out. "I had all this pent-up energy. I wanted to feel like I was doing something."

So he called heads.

"Tails didn’t work for us earlier," he said of the opening toss, which the Saints won. "It hasn’t been working for me at all this year. So I wanted to go heads, Coach wanted to go heads, Saquon [Barkley] wanted to go heads. It was heads. I just had this feeling."

What was his reaction when the coin came up heads?

Peppers celebrated as if he’d just picked off a pass or sacked a quarterback.

"Boom!" he yelled, giving a double fist pump as he skipped off the field to the sideline. "We want that ball!"

He said a few other words that were picked up on the TV broadcast, too.

"I had a feeling [we’d win]," he said, "especially the way the flow of the game was going."

The Giants did, scoring the winning touchdown without the Saints ever touching the ball in overtime.

And Peppers’ hamstring?

He said he hurt it a few snaps before he gave up a TD pass late in the second quarter and probably should have come out sooner but remained on and off the field until he was sidelined midway through the fourth. He will have an MRI on it Monday but said it will be "hard as hell" to keep him out of next week’s game against the Cowboys.

Did we finally see why the Giants drafted Kadarius Toney?

Yes. And with Sterling Shepard and Darius Slayton out with hamstring injuries, the Giants certainly needed every bit of what he gave them (six catches for 78 yards). He was able to show his funky moves and twitchy jukes after catching the passes that came his way.

That he was able to do it in front of a large contingent of family members added to the excitement he felt.

"It was a great experience," he said. "Ain’t gonna cap it."

What was the most impressive play he made?

Probably a run for 1 yard, not because of the gain but because it was a play that was designed for him to throw the ball. Instead of forcing it and creating a mistake at a key juncture of the game – the Giants trailed by 11 in the fourth quarter – he showed surprising maturity for a rookie receiver and pulled the ball down.

"It wasn’t there so I had to take what they gave me," said Toney, a former high school quarterback. "If that would have [been open], I would have made the play."

Did we finally see why the Giants signed Kenny Golladay?

Yes as well. Golladay caught six passes for 116 yards, the two most significant being the 28-yard catch-and-run on third-and-7 that helped set up the tying field goal in the final minute of regulation and the 23-yarder that set up Saquon Barkley’s winning touchdown.

"Going into this week, I felt like my legs were starting to get up under me a little bit more," he said of dealing with hamstring and hip injuries since the start of training camp. "This is my fifth year. I'm starting to learn my body a little bit more."

What happened on the 52-yard touchdown pass from Daniel Jones to John Ross in the second quarter?

Ross caught the pass and had control, but just before crossing the goal line, he fumbled it and recovered it in the end zone. While the official ruling was a fumble and recovery, Jones and Ross both receive statistical credit for the TD pass.

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.