Giants DC Shane Bowen apologizes, but defense cannot remain such a sorry sight
Giants defensive coordinator Shane Bowen during training camp on Aug. 6 in East Rutherford, N.J. Credit: Ed Murray
Shane Bowen is a sorry defensive coordinator.
Read that sentence any way you like. It can mean one of two things, and both versions have shades of truth in them.
For many Giants fans, it indicates that his play-calling on some of the most critical downs of last week’s overtime loss to the Cowboys left plenty of room for criticism, that his schemes were so poorly suited for the circumstances that they were as much a part of Dallas’ comeback win as the wide-open completions they allowed and the crushing field goals to which they led. It was a clumsy game plan that caused many to sour on his acumen and reinforced the beliefs of those who long ago already had.
For the Giants themselves, though, it comes across as something else. Because in meetings with his unit on Monday, as they evaluated the events of the defeat, Bowen put the blame on himself. He apologized to the players for it.
On Thursday, he brought his mea culpa out in public.
“I wish we would have been tighter, a little bit tighter,” Bowen said of the defining play out of the staggering 92 that the defense performed, a 17-yard completion from the 33 to the 50 with nine seconds left that put the Cowboys within the range of kicker Brandon Aubrey, who would go on to tie the score with a 64-yard field goal. “Just like all these calls that don’t work, it’s a second-guess that you probably wish you went in a different direction . . . A tough, tough situation to come down to that one play. I have to be better.”
Yes. Yes, he does.
There have been plenty of games in his year-plus tenure with the Giants in which the defense played well enough to win but the offense sputtered and another loss was tossed onto the growing pile. Heck, in Week 1, the Giants allowed a not-awful 20 points to the Commanders and lost mostly because they couldn’t score a touchdown.
But that’s what made this Cowboys loss so hard to watch and stomach. The offense did play well. It played great. Russell Wilson was chucking the ball all over the AT&T Stadium field and Malik Nabers and Wan’Dale Robinson were sprinting past the Dallas defensive backs. It was one of those plays — a 48-yard touchdown pass to Nabers down the seam — that gave the Giants a 37-34 lead with 25 seconds left in regulation.
Then Bowen had his secondary playing deeper than it should have been, looser than it needed to be, and the Cowboys tied it before winning the game in overtime.
“It’s tough. It’s tough,” Bowen said of having to come clean. “I think that’s the thing. All of us are accountable for it, right? Obviously, I’m accountable for that and that call. I told them I wish I would have been a little bit tighter, made a little bit different call for you guys. It would have been a better situation.”
Such accountability resonated in the locker room . . . even among the players who didn’t think it was required.
“No matter what the call is, we’re on the field and we make it come to life,” safety Tyler Nubin told Newsday. “Those last few plays were on everybody. We know Coach is always going to be the first to take blame for something. That’s just the type of coaches we have. They’re going to try to protect us. But we’re in this together and that [apology] solidifies it.”
There’s only one way to make up for it, obviously. Bowen has to change. He has to adapt and trust his players, many of them relatively new to his orbit, such as big free-agent additions Jevon Holland and Paulson Adebo. He has to find ways to unleash the yet-untapped potential of rookie Abdul Carter. He needs to bring more aggression to his decision-making, have the guts to gamble a bit and have a better understanding of the stakes late in games when the defense has a chance to seal a victory.
And he has to do it quickly, because Kansas City and Patrick Mahomes are coming in on Sunday night to face the Giants at MetLife Stadium.
Bowen already was sitting on an unsteady one-legged stool heading into this season after last year’s performance, and the glower of John Mara in his postgame remarks (the team’s president and CEO said he was “tired of watching teams go up and down the field on us”). The organization kept Bowen, though, and poured those resources into personnel.
Through two weeks this year, the Giants rank last in the NFL in yards allowed (455.0 per game) and 29th in passing yards allowed (277.5).
“I feel pressure to do my job,” Bowen said. “I’m here for the guys. I’m in charge of that group. And between me, the defensive staff, the players, we’ve got things we’ve got to fix. We understand that. We’re working hard to find solutions, to make adjustments where needed. But ultimately, it comes down to everybody doing their job. Do your job a little bit better, a little bit more consistently. Hopefully we can continue to build off the good things, learn from the bad things and get those nixed where we can take some strides here and win. Find a way to win.”
If Bowen can’t do that soon, it will be a very sorry situation indeed . . . no matter how you read it.
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.
