PFF grades and snap counts from the Giants’ 26-18 loss to the Steelers

A good effort against a good team wasted by mistakes

It’s still the same old story. A fight for love and glory. A case of do or die. But for the New York Giants, it’s die, mostly, as time goes by.

Monday night was the type of dispiriting loss the Giants have had too many of this season - another game against a two-loss playoff-contending team that they could have won (there have now been three of them) but lost because of mistakes and failures to rise to the occasion at key moments. Yes, you are what your record says you are, but they’re not far from having a much better record. Let’s find out who played well and who didn’t, and how much in the 26-18 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Offense

PFF grades

The Giants did not play terribly on offense last night. Unfortunately there were a few notable exceptions in an important category.

• Daniel Jones had an OK game (64.4), but that’s the problem. He’s often just OK and is not able to go out and win the game for the Giants. Jones actually did go downfield a decent bit: six passes of 20+ yards, six more of 10-20 yards. And he completed half of them. He was under pressure a lot (53.5% of dropbacks) and he handled it well:

Jones’ passing grade was only a little worse under pressure than when kept clean, and he was hardly affected by the blitz. He had two big time throws...but also two turnover-worthy plays, one of which was intercepted and sealed the loss. He also had four passes dropped by his receivers, which is becoming the norm. That’s sort of the story of the game - the offense is not far from clicking but small mistakes prevent it from doing so.

• The offensive line of course had a rough game in pass protection against one of the NFL’s best pass rushes. The worst offenders were Chris Hubbard (9.3) and Jermaine Eluemunor (40.4), who had to deal with Alex Highsmith and T.J. Watt, but Jon Runyan Jr. (46.8) was poor as well, while Greg Van Roten (77.4) played well and John Michael Schmitz (63.7) was OK, too. Hubbard gave up a sack, six hits, and five hurries, while Runyan was charged with a hit and five hurries and Eluemunor a sack, a hit, and two hurries. The offensive line did do much better in run blocking, with no one grading below average and Hubbard (91.0) and Van Roten (87.3) grading excellent. The line was charged with five penalties as well, with only JMS not being flagged.
• Tyrone Tracy had an excellent 80.4 run grade while Devin Singletary graded 62.2 in limited action. We’ll hope that Tracy’s concussion is not a long-lasting problem.
• Malik Nabers (71.5) and Darius Slayton (69.9) had pretty good receiving games, but Nabers’ two drops reflect a nagging problem with him. Wan’Dale Robinson was slightly below average (53.1). Tight end Chris...