Giants 2-7 again; how did they get here, and how could they move on from it?
The Giants' Brian Burns looks on during the third quarter against the San Francisco 49ers at MetLife Stadium on Nov. 2. Credit: Jim McIsaac
This Giants season was supposed to be different.
In many ways, it has been. The Giants have the league leader in sacks, who is on pace to threaten the single-season record in that category. They have the favorites to win both Offensive and Defensive Rookies of the Year. They have the kind of functional offensive line that they have been searching for throughout most of the past decade. Things should be promising. Things should be positive.
But the record?
It’s the exact same.
After nine games, the Giants are 2-7. Just as they were in 2024. Just as they were in 2023. And there isn’t much hope that this year will end up any better than those recent ones, either, going through the rest of November, December and early January with the same disappointing results and existential crises.
“It’s very frustrating just because of the hype that was surrounding the team and the level of energy and optimism going into the season,” Brian Burns, the linebacker with the aforementioned 11.0 sacks, said this past week.
Added guard Jon Runyan Jr.: “Yeah, it hurts. I think everybody in the locker room is pretty upset. I feel like going back to the offseason program, the training camp, I felt like we really built a strong brotherhood and culture throughout this locker room. And for us to be sitting in the same spot we were last year is not where we want it to be, not where we thought we would be.”
So how did the Giants get here again?
It’s pretty easy to pin it on a small number of events that have had huge consequences.
First is a pair of season-ending injuries to the top two playmakers on the offense. Wide receiver Malik Nabers tore the ACL in his right knee on Sept. 28 and running back Cam Skattebo dislocated his right ankle and suffered an open fracture of his right fibula on Oct. 26. Those were just as much emotional blows to the team as they were production ones — Skattebo’s in particular, with the grotesque visuals affecting the entire team.
“I kind of felt like the energy sucked out of us when our best player went down at midfield,” Runyan said of that injury in Philadelphia. “I felt like that kind of really shook a lot of guys, unfortunately, and it kind of took the wind out of our sails. But that’s how this league is. It’s brutal. You’ve got to keep going after witnessing something like that, and it’s tough.”
There have been injuries on the defense, too. Safety Jevon Holland and cornerback Paulson Adebo were hurt in the Oct. 19 game against the Broncos. Those were the two key free-agent splurges by the Giants in the offseason and were just starting to play to their promise when they went down. Neither has played since, although Holland appears on track to return Sunday against the Bears in Chicago.
But that brings us back to Denver. To that point at the end of the third quarter, when the Giants were up 19-0 and on the verge of improving to 3-4 and climbing right back into an NFC East race that has since zoomed right past them.
That debacle in Denver, allowing the 33 points and all that went into the meltdown, all happened in the fourth quarter. Fifteen minutes of play. But it feels as if the Giants still haven’t caught their balance from that game.
The collapse against the Broncos didn’t end with the last-second field goal. The Giants are collapsing still.
Not everyone agrees with that theory. Burns was adamant that that epic loss hasn’t resonated.
“I haven’t thought about Denver since that happened,” he said. “I tell you guys every week, every Sunday is a new Sunday to me. Once that week starts, this is a clean [slate]. I don’t think too much or dwell too much on what happened in Denver. It was a terrible loss, but at the end of the day, we’ve got more games.”
Others, though, see the throughlines, even reluctantly.
“I don’t think they could fully be connected,” Runyan said of the dots of the past three losses, “but I think there might be a little truth to that.”
The simple facts of the remaining eight games guarantee that this season will not be the same as the past two. They have to be different.
If the Giants improve, win a few of them and can find the footing that slipped out from underneath them in the Rocky Mountain landslide less than a month ago, it will be a change.
If they can’t, it will be difficult to justify bringing back the head coach, the general manager will be under intense fire and the organization again will have to try to redefine itself. That certainly will be different from the way the last few years wrapped up.
The promise of this past preseason was that things were going to change.
One way or another, the Giants still can deliver on that.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
