Giants look to build a modest win streak with Patriots up next
Saquon Barkley of the Giants celebrates after a touchdown with teammates in the game against the Commanders during the first quarter at FedExField on Sunday in Landover, M. Credit: Getty Images/Patrick Smith
The Giants needed a game like Sunday’s.
They needed a win, one way or another. That it came in a total team-effort fashion made it even better.
A lot of players could feel good about themselves.
That sets the stage for Sunday’s home game against the Patriots.
The Patriots (2-8), who are coming off their bye, are the lowest scoring team in the league with 141 points. The Giants (3-8), whose bye is next week, are second at 149.
The best possible outcome on Sunday would be a wild, high-scoring affair. We’re not counting on that.
Four teams -- the Dolphins, Ravens, Cowboys and Bills -- have all scored more points than the Giants and Patriots combined.
But the Giants are coming off a 31-19 win over Washington in a game where they played complementary football, forced six turnovers and were the better team. They have an opportunity to get on a winning streak, no matter how modest.
And as sometimes happens in the celebration of a winning postgame locker room, three of the prominent Giants – Saquon Barkley, Dexter Lawrence and Bobby Okereke -- also provided some interesting tidbits.
Barkley scored the first touchdown of the game on a 24-yard pass on a wheel route from Tommy DeVito. Particularly with linebacker Jamin Davis covering Barkley on the play, that wasn’t a fair fight. Barkley seemed to add a little stutter step at the top of the route.
The touchdown came on the play after DeVito found Darius Slayton for 24 yards on third-and-13.
Gaining early confidence in a game can be critical. So can the correct play call.
After the game, Barkley indicated the play call was one he’s “been asking for for a long time.”
Hmmm.
“So, when [the play] got called, in my mind, I was like, ‘I can’t mess this one up.’ It feels good to get into the end zone twice and feels good to get a win.”
A couple of things about that: Barkley and wheel routes go together like peanut butter and jelly. He shouldn’t have to bide his time waiting for that play call, in particular. Most linebackers can’t run with him and if the defense devotes a cornerback to Barkley when he’s aligned at the boundary, then someone else should be open.
Of the six turnovers generated by the Giants, five were on defense, the other on special teams.
The usually indefatigable Lawrence said after the game that he was “excited and tired at the same time.”
At Washington, Kayvon Thibodeaux had two sacks of quarterback Sam Howell. With those two plays, Thibodeaux became the first player under defensive coordinator Wink Martindale to have a double-digit sack total in a season.
Asked about Thibodeaux’s game recently, Martindale said the second-year linebacker has done “everything” well.
Lawrence had this to say in the postgame locker room about Thibodeaux: “It’s a positive to see. Just for him to listen and learn his position more and be a pro’s pro.”
Okereke liked what he saw from the defense in terms of perseverance.
“To finish that game, there were a couple of long drives,” he said. “I know we had a 12-play, 13-play and [another] 12-play drive. So when we came out for that last drive, we all knew that we were tired. But it was pretty much just execution. [If] everyone did their job, we knew we’d come away with the win.”
Kimberly Jones covers the Giants for Newsday, a beat she first worked in the early 2000s before joining the YES Network to cover the Yankees. She worked for the NFL Network for more than a decade and has been heard semi-regularly on WFAN.
