New York Giants Week 7 Report Card | Some Good But a Lot of Yuck
The only thing worse than a Giants loss is when they beat themselves.
That’s what happened Thursday night at Lincoln Financial Field, a venue that has become a House of Horrors for this Giants team.
Mistakes galore made at the worst possible times doomed the Giants in their quest to string together back-to-back wins for the first time since Weeks 15 and 16 of last year and to snap a seven-game losing streak at "the Linc" dating back to 2014.
Instead, they walk away with a soul-crushing 22-21 loss to their division rival and a loss that drops them to 1-6 on the year and 1-2 in the NFC Least.
Yuck!
And speaking of “yuck,” here are this week’s grades.
Rushing Offense: B-
Good for Wayne Gallman. I’ve always been a fan of his running ability (but not the dropped passes or turnovers), and Gallman came through when he saw his reps increase following Devonta Freeman’s injury.
Gallman finished with 34 yards on ten carries and one rushing touchdown. If Freeman has to miss the November 2 game against the Bucs, it will be interesting to see if he gets an uptick in his workload.
Otherwise, there were opportunities for the Giants to run, and they did so. Even if you were to subtract Daniel Jones’ 80-yard run from the equation, the Giants would have averaged 3.81 yards on the ground. Not awesome, but not a horrible average, either.
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Passing Offense: C-
Turnovers aside, it’s not fair to pin this loss on Daniel Jones, who had one of the most inspiring games of his young career despite the pedestrian looking numbers (20 of 30 for 187 yards, two touchdowns, one interception).
But Evan Engram? Good kid who works hard, but his game has been off ever since he returned from his season-ending foot injury last year.
On both the interception and the dropped ball, Engram looked hesitant out there, almost as though he was afraid of getting hurt. And if that has indeed seeped into his mindset, that’s not a good thing moving forward.
Meanwhile, rookie Andrew Thomas continues to struggle, but what’s particularly maddening about his performance is consistency.
On one play, he can look like the fourth overall pick in the draft, but on the very next, he looks like an All-World draft bust.
But for those hoping for the Giants to pull him, that probably won’t happen as the only way Thomas is going to improve is if they stick with him and keep giving him reps.
Run Defense: B
The Eagles didn’t run the ball that much (26 attempts) as they did passing it (43 attempts), but when they did run the ball, the Giants were mostly up for the task.
Boston Scott is proving to be the new Giants killer on the Eagles team, rushing for 46 yards on 12 carries, but at least he didn’t score.
And kudos to the Giants defensive front—Dalvin Tomlinson, Leonard Williams, and Dexter Lawrence—who had another solid game against the run. When your defensive front registers zero missed tackles, that’s a good thing.
Pass Defense: D
The Giants pass defense played one of its worst games of the season, missing out on plays that resulted in chunk yardage.
If that wasn’t bad enough, there were late-game penalties by Logan Ryan and James Bradberry—two veteran players who are otherwise disciplined in their approach--that simply shouldn’t be happening at this juncture.
The Giants registered 26 total pressures on Wentz’s 43 attempts, but it wasn’t nearly enough against the Eagles’ banged-up offensive line. Wentz completed 70.4% of his pass attempts when not under pressure, including throwing for his two touchdowns.
It’s unclear if the Giants defense was tired at the end when the Eagles started to break things open with two long scoring drives, but the pass defense had a hand in this disappointing loss.
Special Teams: C
Corey Ballentine’s failure to look back at punter Riley Dixon, especially after probably realizing he had no one covering him on a first-quarter punt, was about as blatant of a brain blip as one can have.
Ballentine added to a poor showing with a 15-yard personal foul penalty thanks to poor tackling technique when he lowered his head before the Eagles final drive.
The Giants got decent coverage on points, but on kickoffs, it was another story as the Eagles finished with 38 yards on two returns, including a 22-yard return by Corey Clement through a Giants coverage scheme that broke down.
Coaching: C-
For the most part, Joe Judge and his staff have done a good job with this team, and hey, how nice was it to see a coaching staff use their timeouts wisely?
With that said, this team has now completed seven weeks of play. The coaches keep talking about doing a better job of getting the players ready to play and putting them in a better position.
At what point does the talking stop and the action behind the words kick in?
