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The season of lost of opportunity

By Michael Stewart (@golferbad)

The New York Giants had a chance to win their first game of the season, but couldn’t hold on to an early 4th quarter lead as they were defeated by the Los Angeles Chargers 27-22. Bad teams always find a way to lose a game and right now the Giants are a bad team.

Two late second FG’s (Eagles and the Buccaneers) or a late touchdown in the 4th quarter (Chargers), the Giants look lost and right now and to be honest, I can’t them reversing this trend with the remaining 11 games left. Against one of the worse run defense in the league the Giants ran for a season high 152 yards. Unfortunately; they surrendered 124 yards on the ground to a Chargers team that ranked near the bottom of the league in rushing.

Top reasons why the Giants lost

  1. Giants Defensive front 7: The Giants Defensive front 7 needed to make a statement against a team that was averaging only 69.5 yards per game; which was ranked 29th in the league entering the game. However; they allowed Running Back Melvin Gordon to rush for over 100 yards (105); which gave Quarterback Philip Rivers the ability to utilize the passing attack for 258 yards and 3 touchdowns.
  2. Big play ability: This was a very evenly played game between two teams that were evenly matched. The difference here is that the Chargers were able to make bigger plays than the Giants; which resulted to either a score or kept a drive alive.
  3. Pass Rush: The Chargers sacked Manning five times for a loss of 42 yards compared to no sacks for the Giants defense against Rivers. As I mentioned in my preview, Philip Rivers has the ability to make a secondary look bad if given enough time in the pocket. Well, the Giants lack of a pass rush handed Rivers a silver platter and he certainly took full advantage of it.

Hero: Philip Rivers: Rivers and Manning might have played to a draw on paper, however; Rivers made the tough passes when needed and guided the Chargers to the winning drive in the 4th quarter; which Manning failed to do when he had the chance; only to throw an interception late in the game that sealed the Giants fate.

Goat: Giants Defense Front 7: You would have thought that the Chargers were ranked higher in the league by the way running back Melvin Gordon ran the ball today. Once again, a few missed tackles and poor tackling technique allow Gordon to run for extra yards after 1st contact.

Final Thoughts: Watching the Giants is getting harder to do as they are finding more ways to lose a game. To throw more bad news into the mix, the Giants suffered injuries to wide receivers Odell Beckham Jr, Sterling Shepard, Brandon Marshall and Dwayne Harris. Marshall and Shepard appeared to have injured their ankle and Beckham looks like he re-injured his ankle injury he sustained in the pre-season.

Harris broke his foot and all four could miss some time. The Giants are now 0-5 since 2013 and before that during the 1979 season. Next up the Giants face the Denver Broncos who are currently 3-1 and averaging 24.5 points per game (13th) and are currently ranked 1st in total team defense. This will be no easy task for the Giants who are playing their worse football and now have several starters hit with the injury bug.