Stats That Mattered in Giants' 26-18 Loss to Steelers
With just eight weeks gone by in the New York Giants' 2024 season, the classic script for their grueling losses never seems to fail, and it certainly didn’t as the organization once again fell to the Pittsburgh Steelers on Monday Night Football.
In the crushing 26-18 loss that marked the team’s third in a row and slid them down to 2-6 on the year, the Giants didn’t show many signs of life on the offensive end in the first two frames of action.
Meanwhile, Pittsburgh was hungry for blood from the first snap and took it to their opponent, even as they came away nearly empty until the second half because of a respondent New York defense.
For the initial two quarters of competition, the two teams were copying each other with a bevy of field goals to hold an even leveled 9-9 score at the break.
However, the Steelers were the more dominant offense by a longshot as they gashed the Giants over a dozen times for long-distance conversions and feasted on the ground with Najee Harris, who had his third consecutive 100-yard rushing day of the season.
As everything tends to go, the Giants' defense would start to wear out and succumb to back-breaking plays that helped the Steelers pull away in the lead spot.
They were caught sleeping on a punt in the third quarter that led to a 73-yard touchdown return, and then the weakness of the injured secondary was discovered in the fourth as Russell Wilson put on a second-half clinic in dishing the football to his talented deep threats.
By the time the Giants offense started to figure it out in the second half, it was a little too late for hero ball. They did finish with a more honorable stat sheet of 394 total yards and a touchdown that was created by deep passing and a strong run game that broke through the Steelers’ defensive front late. Still, it was all leveled by the return of untimely turnovers that put a nail in the coffin of a fourth-quarter comeback and left the timeless plot that follows this team around every week.
It wouldn’t take much for a Hollywood scriptwriter to tell the story of their miserable campaign. For the first two months, the Giants have been a team that just can’t get out of their own way, and it’s cost them too many close games that could have gone their way.
Whether lack of touchdowns or injuries and silly mistakes, they are now what their record says they are, and that’s a franchise that has found more ways to lose than to upset the best teams in the NFL with everyone watching.
They have the talent, but until the basic issues are resolved, it will be a long road to becoming the teams they’ve seen run right over them in recent contests.
There is too long to go in the regular season for these ailments to continue for another nine games of their schedule, and it is one that lightens up a little in the coming month.
If the Giants want to right the ship a bit and salvage the season from being a 2-3 win campaign, they have a lot to learn, and it must start with the horrific numbers that defined their latest primetime defeat.
15
It felt like it would be one of those nights for the Giants' defense as the Steelers' offense came out of the gate and began eating their coverage up from the opening whistle with chunk yardage plays.
In the first thirty minutes of football, Pittsburgh sharply executed three straight drives of at least seven plays and 57 yards, with two spanning over four minutes of the game clock.
Within those possessions, Russell Wilson and company couldn’t be slowed down from moving the football until they inched close to the red zone, gashing the opposing unit 15 times for plays of 10+ yards en route to visits inside the 20-yard line.
Most of the damage came through the legs of the team’s No. 1 running back, Najee Harris, the top-10 ball carrier who has been tearing up poor run defenses in the past couple of weeks for consecutive 100-yard outings.
He pushed the pigskin 10 times for 82 yards to lead the Steelers in individual production, and the gaping holes he found helped compliment a few midrange passes that Wilson dished to several different pass catchers.
The Steelers opened the night with a 10-play, 57-yard drive that spanned 4:41 of the opening quarter and got going with three big plays in the first five snaps. Wilson connected with third-year receiver Calvin Austin III for a 12-yard gain to open the drive and then quickly pounded the ball two times with Harris for 10-yard gains on each attempt.
Jaylen Warren followed that sequence with another 17-yard gash that placed the football down at the New York 12-yard line for an early visit to the red zone. Still, the Giants defense would hold firm, and with a facemask penalty by the Steelers on a momentary touchdown grab by George Pickens, keep the game to a 3-0 deficit at the end.
Pittsburgh would come back with some more flashy moments on the second drive and on a mixed bag of pas and run plays. Wilson connected with Darnell Washington for a 29-yard bomb, just the receiver’s 11 catch of the season, on the second play from scrimmage, and then Harris took it another 26 yards to the Giants’ 8-yard line to sniff the endzone.
Again, the Giants defense went stout and shut down any hopes of six points for the Steelers in the next plays, two of which were incomplete pass attempts. They settled for a second Chris Boswell field goal and then allowed the Giants to respond with two of their own for a 6-6 game by early in the second quarter.
Even on the third rodeo, it didn’t stop the opponent’s bruising from continuing. The Steelers made three 10-yard plays happen in their first five snaps once again to advance the ball quickly into Giants territory and then added more with Pickens’ 14–yard catch on 3rd-and-4 to set up a third redzone dance from the Giants’ 11.
Wilson found Pickens over the middle for a nine-yard touchdown grab, but for a second time, it was called back for a miscue by the receiver, who didn’t get his second foot down to complete the score. Pittsburgh notched their third field goal with Boswell to take a 9-6 advantage with 6:12 left in the first half, which the Giants would copy on their next turn for a 9-9 draw at the halftime whistle.
If you’re looking for a positive from the first two quarters, Shane Bowen’s group did their part to maintain a grip on the affair and keep the Giants in the ball game for at least half of it.
There is always the other side of the story, and that’s New York failing to capitalize enough on the other end with touchdowns instead of field goals, for which they ended with three despite a few chances to land a bigger punch.
And in the second half, those failures would eventually cut them deeper as Pittsburgh found payday twice with a bunch more of the big chunk plays that characterized the first 30 minutes.
Austin was the first man to take it to the house on a 73-yard punt return in the third quarter and then did it again with a 29-yard haul in the fourth to give the Steelers a dominant 23-9 lead.
The Giants can’t have these performances continue to kill their hopes of competing in games for the rest of the regular season. It’s hard when the secondary is banged up with injuries from the jump, but there were fundamentals in question throughout the night that also made Pittsburgh’s all the more lucrative offensively.
11
Among all the miscues that contributed to the Giants' loss in Pittsburgh, the endless penalties up front continuously stifled the offense and destroyed their chances of threading the Steelers' defense for more than they did on Monday night.
Just two weeks after the loss of left tackle Andrew Thomas to a foot injury, the Giants offensive line has looked far from the same. With four sacks allowed against the Steelers, they’ve given up 12 total in that span after boasting a few contests with two or fewer, a complete 180 for a unit hanging around the league's top tier in notable blocking metrics.
However, those negative plays weren’t as damaging and inexcusable as the nonstop penalties that occurred under the offense’s watch, most of which came from fundamental football errors that don’t characterize most teams in the NFL after eight weeks.
The Giants finished the loss with 11 total infractions for 65 yards, including eight on illegal formations or shifts before the snap, their highest single-game tally of the 2024 season.
Some were sprinkled into almost every possession for the team, but one of the most egregious happened on the Giants’ second possession. Daniel Jones led a steady 12-play, 48-yard drive spanning 5:26 from his own 34-yard line all the way to the Steelers’ 21, looking for his first passing touchdown in over 1,070 days.
Early in the drive, the Giants were moving effortlessly behind solid running by Tyrone Tracy Jr., who had two nice rushes for 30 yards in the first three plays and some surprisingly deep passes for Jones.
One of them went to tight end Theo Johnson for a 10-yard gain into positive territory but was called back for an ineligible man downfield penalty on new left tackle Chris Hubbard.
Then, as New York inched closer to the endzone at the start of the second quarter, Jones connected with tight end Chris Manhertz for a 16-yard gain that the traditional blocking guy took into the paint for the score that would have given them a lead.
That was again until the dirty laundry flew for another illegal shift call on Malik Nabers, whose feet weren’t set before the snap was made after a pre-snap motion, nullifying the rare six-point score and keeping the team to another field goal by Greg Joseph.
As the game wore on, the penalty woes never ceased to exist. New York's second drive of the third quarter was marred by an illegal shift called on Darius Slayton, which put them into 3rd-and-long territory and a sack by Alex Highsmith that negated six yards.
The next play was just as debilitating, as the Steelers found a punt return crease with Calvin Austin III to take it all the way for a touchdown and the 16-9 advantage.
On their lone touchdown drive of the game, the offensive line kept their mistake-heavy performance going with an offensive holding call on Jermaine Eluemenor that put them back into a 3rd-and-16 position. Still, the Giants were lucky to overcome that and punch in a score behind the legs of Tracy, who cashed in from 45 yards out to cut the game to 23-15.
All that doesn’t even account for the terrible delay of game calls that added insult to injury on select possessions and sent head coach Brian Daboll up in smoke as his offense poorly mismanaged the play clock.
At the same time, the blame goes both ways for those issues and it cost the Giants valuable yards and conversions that are so hard to come by with a mediocre huddle.
It all goes to say that the Giants group has been heading in the wrong direction in all aspects of their offense and it has to be very concerning after they looked better from Weeks 3 through 5.
Mistakes are some of the biggest discrepancies in their close defeats and must be fixed if any are to turn into wins later this season.
100+ Times 2
The Giants didn’t have much going for them in Monday night’s loss, but one bright spot was their two 100+ yard contributors, who powered the team in both phases of the offense.
Throughout the year, finding those highly impactful players has been hard for New York to come by, and they finally had two of them against the Steelers.
One was wide receiver Darius Slayton, who turned in his second 100-yard receiving day of the season and the second in a month by posting four receptions for 108 yards and a 27.0-yard average to lead the team in that department.
His partner in crime was rookie running back Tyrone Tracy, who despite facing a tough Pittsburgh defensive front that excels at stopping the run, went bonkers on the ground for the second time in his NFL debut with an astounding 20 carries for 145 yards (7.3 average) and one touchdown, the best stat line of his early career.
Daniel Jones and Slayton have had a very tight-knit passing relationship since their rookie campaigns in 2019. The former fifth-round pick was the quarterback’s favorite target and has led the Giants in receiving production in a handful of his six seasons.
Still, his impact has felt a bit less in 2024 because of the emergence of rookie sensation Malik Nabers, who is now getting a lot of targets from Jones.
However, the two rekindled that connection in the first quarter against Pittsburgh when Jones darted a 43-yard pass to Slayton on the Giants first drive of the game, setting themselves up at the Steelers’ 16-yard line in a matter of four plays.
The sight of a deep play was one for sore eyes until it didn’t result in a touchdown at the end of the possessions. Instead, it nailed only a 29-yard kick to tie the score.
Jones would look for Slayton three more times in the first half, going 2 for 3 on an incomplete deep shot down the left sideline and then two gains of 36 and 11 yards to set New York up for their second visit inside the Steelers’ 30.
The march was silenced in the next three plays at a 6-6 draw, but it helped Slayton earn his best average catch outing since Week 16 of last season when he averaged 30 yards a snag against the Philadelphia Eagles on Christmas Day.
Tracy’s night took a little while to get started as he battled a stout Steelers front that ranked among the league’s best at swallowing up opponent’s rushing gaps. He didn’t have much going in the first half before finally breaking through some holes and exploding downfield to create offensive momentum for the Giants.
It started on the Giants’ first possession of the second half when Tracy bulldozed the Steelers for 26 yards to push the team into enemy territory in just two plays.
He added five more yards on an ensuing carry but the Giants were stalled by two straight sacks from T.J. Watt and Alex Highsmith and forced to punt.
As mentioned, he got heated up again a few drives later on a 2nd-and-10 from the Pittsburgh 45. The Giants were behind the sticks after a failed pass by Jones to Nabers that went incomplete, but Tracy said not to worry, taking the pigskin 45-yards through the B-gap and down the left sideline for an amazing touchdown run and his second in a Giants uniform.
The Steelers eventually figured Tracy out and forced the Giants to turn back towards their passing attack to keep up with the deficit that grew off a punt return and chunk passes by Russell Wilson.
Jones and company couldn’t get it done, and it made Tracy's work all that more important to keeping their offensive huddle moving and the contest at bay.
With his stat line, Tracy now holds two rushing outings of at least 17 carries and 129 yards, a performance he achieved first in Seattle in Week 5 to defeat the Seahawks.
He continues to impress and give the team confidence of a potentially long-term answer following Saquon Barkley’s departure, even doubling the number of 100-yard games the latter had in blue last season.
In a season filled with offensive ineptitude, having some performances as Slayton’s and Tracy’s can be something to build on moving forward. No surprise, the next bit step has to be turning these contributions into points on the scoreboard.
2
Just when one thinks the Giants have created something momentous for themselves and the fate rests in clean execution, they quickly find ways to hand it right back with a never-ending turnover problem.
While the Giants haven’t been a terribly careless team with the turnovers this season, as they hold just five on the offensive end with Jones’ rare interceptions, it’s the ones that do occur at the worst times when New York is driving downfield with the game on the line that stands out. The Steelers gave them that opportunity again on Monday night with a timely fumble.
In the waning minutes of the fourth quarter, Pittsburgh had an eight-point advantage after Calvin Austin’s second touchdown with a chance to hit one more score on a tired Giants defense and put the contest to rest for what would be their 22nd straight win at home on Monday Night Football.
Yet, on the second play of the game, quarterback Russell Wilson would cough up the football after being hit from behind by a combo sack from inside linebackers Bobby Okereke and Micah McFadden to create a frenzied muddle on their home turf.
At the end of the scrum, Okereke, who also finished the game as the Giants leading defender with 14 total tackles and a half sack, collected the ball to recover the fumble and hand his team the reins with 4:30 left in the fourth quarter to start a game-tying drive at the Pittsburgh 34-yard line.
It would be all for naught, thanks to the inevitable late-game woes of Jones and company, which only needed a few plays to give it right back. Five plays later, down at the Steelers’ 19-yard line, Jones was sacked in a flash by All-Pro edge rusher T.J. Watt, who earned eight yards on the takedown and pried the football loose from the quarterback’s careless grasp to flip the possession back over to his squad with about three minutes left to play.
The miscue might have been the latest to damn the Giants after a huge swing on the defensive end, but it happened not to be the last, either.
New York’s offense earned one more shot at glory to a quick stop by Bowen’s group for another 1:53 seconds to make the unthinkable happen under the primetime lights, albeit ones that were still too bright as they reached Steelers territory again.
With little time to his favor, Jones began the drive looking like he would end all the chatter of the primetime woes that have followed him with a bunch of well-executed passes.
He found Malik Nabers and Theo Johnson for four catches that moved the Giants from their 7-yard line to the Steelers’ 35 with 34 seconds left on the clock and a raucous crowd starting to get concerned.
Never were the players on the other side, though, as they put pressure on Jones and got him to react nervously as his offensive line crumbled. Jones sent the pigskin sailing over the head of his intended target, Devin Singletary, and into the hands of cornerback Beanie Bishop Jr., who sealed the game with an interception and gave the quarterback his new record, falling to 1-16 on the big stages.
No matter how perfect the situation appears to align for them, the Giants have a long history of committing turnovers in the biggest moments of games, and Jones has been the biggest culprit for these errors.
He has yet to figure out how to make the right reads, stay composed under pressure, and not let doubts overtake the confidence of his throws, and it has led to a tenure marred with failed fourth collapses like the one that happened in Pittsburgh this weekend.
Making these same mistakes every week makes it very hard to consider the positive numbers Jones has been able to muster up in a decisive year in the same light.
He has been more productive in the air and added his touch in the trenches, but it’s his inability to take his team down the field and finish game-winning drives that separates him so vastly from the great arms in the NFL today.
Instead, it could help solidify the decision that faces the Giants at quarterback this offseason, which is heading towards searching for the next guy as a lost season continues into oblivion.