The New York Giants fell to the Arizona Cardinals, 27-21, in Week 7 at MetLife Stadium and the score indicates a much closer game than how this one felt.
The Cardinals came out swinging, jumping out to 17-0 lead, and while the Giants chipped away and climbed back in the game, it was ugly from top-to-bottom. The players struggled, the coaches struggled and as a result, the soggy fans suffered.
“People spend their hard-earned money to sit in the rain and watch us do that; it’s just unacceptable. I think, from top to bottom, we’ve got to be better,” wide receiver Golden Tate told reporters after the loss.
Veteran offensive lineman Kevin Zeitler, whose unit gave up an embarrassing eight sacks, was a bit more blunt in his assessment.
“It obviously just sucks, straight-up. That’s as bland and blunt as you can be. It sucked today,” Zeitler said. “We feel like we should never be in a position where we can’t score points, you know? It sucks.”
Through six weeks of the season, that had not been a problem for teams opposing the Cardinals. Entering Week 7, Arizona had one of the worst defenses in the league, especially when it came to guarding tight ends. But save for one beautiful throw from rookie quarterback Daniel Jones to Rhett Ellison, they did just that.
Not only did the Arizona defense record eight sacks and three turnovers, they limited the Giants to 4-of-12 on third down, 263 total yards, 4.0 yards per play and just seven points until mid-way through the fourth quarter.
Take away two big plays — the touchdown pass to Ellison and a 20-yard run by Saquon Barkley — and the numbers would have looked much, much worse.
“I mean, we made those guys look like the ’85 Bears,” Tate said. “I feel like a lot of the time we were kind of playing behind the sticks, where we take a sack, we have a penalty, we drop it, whatever it may be. We just gotta be better with the details and I’m going to probably say it for the rest of the year and my entire time, we don’t need to be the best team in the league, we just need to be better than the team we were going against and today we just absolutely weren’t.”
Unfortunately for Tate and the Giants, they aren’t just far from the best team in the league, they are arguably one of the worst teams in the league. And if not for the likes of the Washington Redskins and Miami Dolphins, there’s a strong possibility the Giants would be the NFL’s laughingstock right now.
