Big Blue View
Let’s go through the ‘Kudos & Wet Willies’ from Sunday’s latest New York Giants embarrassment, a 34-24 loss to the San Francisco 49ers that wasn’t nearly as close as the score might make you believe
Brian Burns — It felt like Burns, who entered the game tied for the league lead in sacks with 10.0, was trying to win the game by himself.
Burns had a sack/fumble, his 11th sack of the season, with :38 left in the half and the Giants trailing 17-7. The fumble was recovered by Abdul Carter at the 49ers’ 27-yard line. The Giants, though, could not score and went to the locker room still trailing by 10 points.
Burns finished with a sack, a forced fumble, a quarterback hit, a tackle for loss and four overall tackles.
If the rest of the defense playing as hard as Burns, maybe they wouldn’t have given up 105 points over the last nine quarters.
Rakeem Nunez-Roches — ‘Nacho’ did not have a great game, but it was clear from the plays he did make that the veteran tackle was giving effort. That counts for something the way the rest of the defense looked. He ended up with his second sack of the season, six tackles, a tackle for loss and a quarterback hit.
Jaxson Dart — The rookie quarterback is doing everything he can. He just can’t play defense or make all of the plays on offense alone.
Dart completed 24 of 33 passes for 191 yards, and ran eight times for a team-leading 56 yards. He accounted for all three Giants’ touchdowns, passing for two and running for one.
Wan’Dale Robinson — Robinson caught nine passes for 46 yards. Yes, that is just 5.1 yards per reception. It isn’t Robinson’s fault, though, that the Giants had him on the Daniel Jones stick route plan and didn’t try to get the ball to him down the field at all.
The Giants clearly need more at wide receiver. New receiver Ray-Ray McCloud caught just one pass for 5 yards. His only target came in the fourth quarter with the score 27-10.
Brian Daboll — Yes, the Giants were under-manned. That isn’t an excuse for a team being lifeless, having the same issues week after week, for running a simplistic, unimaginative game plan that looked like the Daniel Jones stick route offense and the first game of the preseason on defense. Oh, and what is with running Dart over and and over and over two weeks in a row in games that were hopelessly out of hand. The job is to develop him, not kill him.
The Giants are now 11-32 over the last 2½ years with Daboll at the helm. Injury-riddled at this point or not, it is a team that should be better than 2-7.
One more thing: All I could think of when the score was 20-7 in the third quarter, the Giants had fourth-and-goal at...
