What Went Wrong: Five Takeaways from NY Giants’ Week 3 Defeat

One of the appeals of head coach Brian Daboll was his background as an offensive guru, a reputation he solidified with the Buffalo Bills and Josh Allen.

Since coming to the Giants, however, Daboll’s offense seems to be more about chasing the next Josh Allen than anything. 

Not counting this young season, which got a boost thanks to the Week 2 production explosion, the Giants offense has yet to be a top-15 unit during the Daboll era, the best season being 2022, his first, when the Giants finished 18th in the rankings.  

If that’s not bad enough, then how is it that the Giants, despite supposedly knowing what to expect from the Chiefs' defense, couldn’t figure out a way to counteract old friend Steve Spagnuolo’s successful attempt at making Malik Nabers a non-factor in the game? 

Surely the Giants watched film of the Chiefs against the Eagles and saw what Spagnuolo did against their top receivers. So it baffles me as to why, armed with that information, the Giants seemingly had no solution to countering the Chiefs’ attempt to make Malik Nabers a non-factor.  

Start Throwing Darts?

The cries by the Giants' loyal fans who came out for Sunday’s nighttime affair weren’t hard to miss: “We want Dart! We want Dart!”

Benching Wilson for Dart is clearly among the low-hanging fruit in terms of moves this team could make to fix the lethargic offense, but would making that change before the kid is ready really be in the franchise’s (or Dart’s) best interest?

Daboll, who has to be feeling the heat under his seat growing by the week, might not have any choice but to make that move.

While Dart could potentially give the Giants a little more than Russell Wilson, at the end of the day, Dart is going to execute what is called.

But if that system is unimaginative or can’t top what the defense is doing, does it really pay to risk throwing the kid in there before he’s truly ready for the bright lights?

Ain’t That a Kick in the You-know-what?

Injuries are something no team has yet to accurately predict or avoid–no one knows that better than the Giants, who have been one of the most injured teams in terms of man-games lost over much of this dry spell the team has had.

But business is business, and when it comes to kicker Graham Gano, who is coming off back-to-back injury-shortened seasons in which his legs were affected, why this team didn’t restructure his contract to lower his $5.665 million cap hit is a head scratcher. 

Gano is owed $4.415 million. Could the Giants have sought to convert some of that money into a per-game kicking bonus? Sure. Would Gano have accepted? Probably not, unless a convincing argument was made that so long as he continued to do his job at a high level, it wouldn’t matter how the money came.

Instead, the Giants seemed to take a passive approach, unwilling to roll the dice on a young kicker and opting to stick with a veteran who, when healthy, is good, but whose lower-body issues have cast some doubt as to whether this is the beginning of the end for his career.

At the end of the day, Gano’s groin injury didn’t cost the Giants the game against the Chiefs because it didn’t get to that point. But it has cost them in the past (2023 vs. the Jets, 2024 vs. the Commanders), and it could ultimately hurt them again this year if Gano has to miss significant time, given the money tied up in his contract (none of which is guaranteed this year, by the way).

Atta Skat!

My heart bleeds for running back Tyrone Tracy, Jr., who, it looks as though, will have to miss multiple weeks after reportedly suffering a separated shoulder toward the end of the first quarter.

But even before Tracy’s injury, I think it was fair to wonder if Cam Skattebo was starting to establish himself as the top running back on the team.

Through three games, Skattebo leads the Giants' running backs with 102 yards on 23 carries, a 4.4 average. He’s also forced eight missed tackles and has a 3.48 yards after contact average–again, all leading the Giants running backs. 

His average yards after contact puts him 13th in the league among running backs with at least 20 carries.

This isn’t to say that Tracy’s short career with the Giants is done. If anything, the intention was to have a committee approach, and the young man will certainly be a part of that committee once he’s healed up and ready to go. 

But it does seem that Skattebo has finally brought an identity to the Giants’ running game that has been missing since Saquon Barkley’s departure.

On the Defense

Win as a team and lose as a team, right? That’s what the old saying is, and what coaches and players will tell anyone who asks, such as was the case with outside linebacker Brian Burns, who, by the way, had himself another strong showing. 

While the defense did its part to keep the game close through three quarters, the dam eventually broke, and the point-scoring flood became too much to clean up. 

That said, the defense had its moments that contributed to the loss, namely the failure to capitalize on opponents' miscues. 

There was, for example, safety Dane Belton’s failure to pick up a live ball on a swing pass thrown by Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, a pass that went backwards. 

On the same play, linebacker Bobby Okereke, perhaps trying to help the offense out by eyeing the end zone, failed to secure the ball by simply falling on it. Instead, Mahomes managed to regain possession and avoid gifting the Giants the ball deep in Kansas City territory. 

Another issue with the defense? Through three games, the Giants have generated an 11.0% pressure rate (29th in the league), but have just one interception to show for it (plus three dropped interceptions, two of which came against the Chiefs). They have yet to recover an opponent’s fumble.   

Final Thoughts

No one is expecting a perfect game week in and week out, but the Giants should be a lot better than what they have shown from top to bottom, given the talent on the roster. 

The easy answer, to borrow a line from Daboll, is for “everyone to play better and coach better,” but if it were that simple, wouldn’t this team have already figured out how to do that long before now?