If you’re a fan of great football, what more could you want from the Patriots’ 27-26 victory over the Giants? Sure, it would have been even better to see New York hold on to win (especially if you’re a Giants fan or, like, me a Patriots-hater).
But from an entertainment standpoint, this regular-season contest had it all, including numerous lead changes, devastating injuries, terrific plays, stupid plays, missed plays, over-officiating, under-officiating, overturned plays and -- this being a Giants game -- a fourth-quarter meltdown that hinged upon woeful clock management.
Because it was a close game that ended as time expired, everyone will tend to focus on the plays that happened from 2:01 on down, i.e., after Odell Beckham Jr.’s touchdown catch was overturned. If you do that, you’ll miss all the great back and forth in a game that seemed to be a mismatch on paper.
Endings are great and all, but an ending is only memorable if the lead-up allows it to be. Here’s what the lead-up included:
1. The Giants win the coin toss and elect to defer. Anyone who watches the Patriots knows this must have burned Belichick’s britches, as the Patriots coach loves to defer himself when he wins the toss. Why? Because usually it allows his team to have back-to-back possessions bridging halftime. The ever humorless Phil Simms said it was crazy to give the ball to Tom Brady first, with Simms providing his ever-nuanced opinion that if he were the opposing team he would never want to see Tom Brady on the field. Yes, Phil Simms is the kid who used to take his ball and go home.
2. The Patriots’ opening drive lasted more than eight minutes and involved several third-down conversions by New England. As soon as Brady found Scott Chandler for the touchdown to complete a seemingly perfect drive, I thought to myself, “That’s the kind of opening drive you’d see in a classic Super Bowl.”
3. Unlike the slow and methodical Patriots, whose best deep threat is a tight end, the Giants wasted no time tying up the score when Odell Beckham Jr. caught a ball behind Malcolm Butler and streaked past the bad-angling Pats safety Devin McCourty to tie the score 7-7. This, in a nutshell, is why the Patriots are susceptible to quick-strike teams like the Giants and the Steelers. New England’s best deep threat wide receiver is Brandon LaFell, who is only a deep threat when players like Jayron Housley try to intercept passes by putting their arms out like they’re bear-hugging a sequoia.
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4. The importance of the loss of Julian Edelman can’t be overstated. The guy is an All-Pro gnat and Brady’s favorite safety valve, and it’s no coincidence that the Patriots’ offense sputtered after he went down near the end of the first quarter with a broken bone in his foot. Early reports indicate he might be back in time for the rematch between these two teams. See below.
5. People on social media were killing the Giants for their late-game clock management, but let’s also give them credit for consistently being aggressive on offense, including the fade route touchdown pass to Dwayne Harris (who dragged his second foot successfully) at the end of the first half to put the Giants up 17-10. Harris was once again right in the middle of the good, bad and ugly in this game, and has been a vital difference-maker as a free-agent pickup from the Cowboys.
6. Up 20-10 with 3:29 left in the third quarter, the Giants punted, with Brad Wing booming a ball all the way back to the Patriots’ 11-yard line -- where New England punt returner Danny Amendola either called for a fair catch that wasn’t recognized by officials or was using the age-old trick of waving his arm to keep himself from falling off an imaginary cliff. Harris, a special teams ace, too, seemed to think he had called for a fair catch, as he went past Amendola to try to down any ball that potentially hit the ground and rolled toward the Pats’ end zone. Instead Amendola ran it back and -- thanks to several de-cleating blocks by the Patriots’ return team – almost brought it to the house before he was tripped up by his own player. That trip could have been more memorable, but the Patriots ended up scoring a touchdown, so it’s largely an afterthought.
7. Up 23-17 at the beginning of the fourth quarter, the Giants’ pass rush -- yes, they actually have one now, thanks in large part to the return of Jason Pierre-Paul -- sacked Brady, forced a fumble and recovered the ball at the Patriots’ 30-yard line. The Giants are now already in field goal position for Josh Brown, who might have been the lone Giant to play an unblemished game. Instead the drive goes backward due in part to a sack of Manning and the Giants have to punt. That’s just brutal -- to have the ball and the potential to go ahead by two scores in the fourth quarter and come away with nothing.
8. Again, the Patriots’ downfield passing game basically involves throwing to Gronk along the seams, which everyone knows. Somehow that doesn’t keep Giants’ safety Craig Dahl from taking a bad angle and letting Gronkowski, who is more or less the size of Battery Park, slip past him for the go-ahead touchdown on the Patriots’ ensuing drive.
9. So, time check -- there’s 11:33 left in the game, a full nine and a half minutes before the Beckham play, and it’s a one-point game. Even if you got called away on an emergency, you’ve seen a great game already. Sure, you’d miss the end of the game – when Harris inexplicably caught a pass from Manning with just over two minutes to play and ran out of bounds to stop the clock. And you’d miss Beckham not securing the go-ahead touchdown pass that would have given the Giants a 29-24 lead and the opportunity to go for two and be up a touchdown. And you would have missed Housley not intercepting that pass to LaFell. And you would have missed Landon Collins not clinching the game when he dropped an easy interception on the first down of the last drive. And you would have missed the Patriots converting a fourth-and-10 play to keep the drive alive, when Brady found another gnat, Amendola, right near the first-down marker. And you would have missed Amendola later catching a ball between the hash marks and turning up field to get the Patriots in range for Stephen Gostkowski’s 54-yard game-winning field goal.
10. Yeah, you would have missed all that if you checked out after Gronk’s go-ahead touchdown with 11:33 left. But you still would have seen a great game. Unfortunately you wouldn’t have seen the entirety of the greatest regular-season game so far this season -- and maybe, just maybe, a preview of Super Bowl 50.
