The Giants had the biggest game of their season won. Until they didn't. And a game-winning field goal for Denver sent them home with a brutal defeat.
DENVER - Jaxson Dart spoke for a heartbroken franchise, trying to come to grips with the latest inexplicable loss endured by the New York Giants.
The rookie quarterback stood at the podium inside the interview room of Empower Field at Mile High, choosing his words about as carefully as he could while surfing through a wave of disbelief.
"I never thought we were gonna lose this game," Dart said following Sunday's 33-32 defeat to the Denver Broncos,
Inside the losing locker room, the emotions were pouring out of Brian Burns, and in a way, he was representative of an entire fan base that was kicked in the teeth once more. The Giants' co-captain and the soul of the defense since the summer when his presence lifted the team took the NFL lead in sacks with two more, giving him nine on the year.
Yet after this one, Burns sat quietly inside the booth that served as his locker, dabbing his eyes with a towel while refusing to accept the reality that had just transpired on the field in the closing seconds.
"You can't play three quarters of amazing defense or great defense and give it all away in the end," Burns said, his injured right foot, wrapped in a compression sock, placed in a walking boot for precautionary reasons as the Giants prepared for a four-hour flight home to New Jersey that was sure to feel plenty longer thanks to the physical and psychological toll this one will undoubtedly take.
The Giants led 32-30 with 33 seconds remaining after Dart scored on a 1-yard plunge, adding to his performance that included a career-high 283 yards passing and three touchdowns through the air.
Backup kicker Jude McAtamney missed his second point-after try of the game, three in the last two weeks, so the door was left open for the Broncos to steal this one. That's exactly what they did, too, but the unacceptable part is how the Giants decided to attack the Broncos and quarterback Bo Nix with the game on the line.
Instead of putting the game in the hands of their best defensive players, as the Giants did against the Eagles when they forced Jalen Hurts to throw a game-changing interception to Cor'Dale Flott, the decision was made to let Denver attack them.
It was the blueprint that led to the Giants' loss in Dallas in Week 2, when they learned a lesson that no one figured they would ever want to go through again. But rather than putting Burns, Kayvon Thibodeaux, Dexter Lawrence and Abdul Carter on the field and telling them to go win the game by chasing down Nix, the coaching staff - presumably defensive coordinator Shane Bowen - went in the other direction.
The Giants rushed only three players and put the game in the hands of a secondary that was down two starters (safety Jevon Holland and cornerback Paulson Adebo), lost during the game to knee injuries.
Nix and the Broncos got to midfield in one play, a 29-yard pass to Marvin Mims Jr. Then Nix went after Tae Banks, in the game only because of Adebo's injury, and yet again, he failed to turn and look for the football, allowing Courtland Sutton to catch a 22-yarder on the left sideline.
That set up Wil Lutz for the game-winning 39-yard field goal, a hard-to-believe finish for a Giants team that, as an organization, has lived through many of these - too many to count - over the past decade-plus.
No team in NFL history had ever allowed zero points through three quarters, then allowed 33 in the fourth - until Sunday.
Brian Daboll said he didn’t say much afterward.
“Not a lot of talking to be done when you lose a game like that,” he said.
Actions, not words, are all that matter for the Giants now.
“We’ve done it multiple times,” veteran defensive tackle Rakeem Nunez-Roches said. “We’ve been in situations where we could have a team suffocated and somehow we gave them life, we had a turnover, we had a penalty, and then there goes the change and we never recover from that."
He paused before adding: "We have to get that out of our DNA.”
Whether the Giants' season is D-O-A depends on finding a way to do that across the board.
Dart's inspired play is a start, and he's only getting started. But for a franchise numb to so many of these in the past, the pain after this one was beyond measure.
"This sucks," Dart said, adding with a whisper: "I hate losing."
Losing the way the Giants did here Sunday takes that disgust to another level entirely.
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This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Losing how Giants did takes the pain of a franchise to another level
Category: Football
