DENVER — Brian Daboll screamed at defensive coordinator Shane Bowen on the sideline, and tears streamed down Brian Burns’ face in the locker room, to encapsulate Sunday’s all-time Giants choke job loss, 33-32, to the Denver Broncos at Mile High.
“Disbelief,” veteran defensive lineman Rakeem Nunez-Roches said inside the Giants’ gutted locker room. “My biggest word is disbelief.”
NFL teams had won 1,602 consecutive games when leading by 18 points in the final six minutes, but Joe Schoen’s and Daboll‘s Giants (2-5) are trailblazers when it comes to making the wrong kind of history.
The Broncos scored all 33 of their points in the fourth quarter. It is the most fourth quarter points scored by a team that had been shut out in the first three quarters.
Ever.
The Giants suffered their eighth-biggest blown lead in team history and the largest since they coughed up a 21-point lead in 2014.
The Giants dominated early and led, 19-0, on a Tyrone Tracy Jr. rushing touchdown with 2:41 remaining in the third quarter. They pushed the lead back to 26-8 with 10:14 to play on a 41-yard Theo Johnson touchdown catch.
Then they relaxed, started “celebrating too soon,” in Nunez-Roches’ words, and engineered a jaw-dropping collapse for the ages.
“I wouldn’t say that’s human nature. I would say currently that’s our nature,” the veteran lineman said in a damning review of the Giants’ identity. “And we have to get that out of our DNA right now.
“We’ve done it multiple times,” he continued. “We’ve been in a situation where we could have had a team suffocated and in some way we gave them momentum, we gave them life, we made a turnover or a penalty. And then there goes the change that they need. And then we never recover from that.”
Nunez-Roches sounded fed up, and he was right: This is who the Giants are until they show otherwise.
Something has to change.
Daboll’s actions on the sideline seemed to indicate that Bowen’s job status could be that imminent change.
The head coach denied yelling at Bowen directly on the sideline as the Broncos drove for Will Lutz’s game-winning 39-yard field as time expired.
“No,” Daboll said. “We lost the game.”
But Daboll’s history is to chew out and scapegoat coordinators and assistants, then either fire them or gaslight them into resigning. That precedent is as well-documented as Daboll’s 3-16 record in the Giants’ last 19 games.
The head coach admitted he didn’t say much to his players after the game either. So they fly home without answers on how to avoid the letdowns that have become a defining characteristic of who they are.
“Not a lot of talking that needs to be done when you lose a game like that,” Daboll said, unhelpfully.
Rookie quarterback Jaxson Dart did throw three touchdown passes and scored a 1-yard rushing touchdown with 37 seconds remaining to go ahead, 32-30. But kicker Jude McAtamney’s second missed extra point left the door open for Denver, and the Broncos promptly drove 56 yards for Lutz’s game-winning field goal.
Bo Nix’s first completion on that final drive, a 29-yard rope to Marvin Mims Jr. up the left seam, was a sore subject for the Giants’ players in the locker room afterward.
Bowen rushed three and dropped eight players in coverage, similar to the scheme he ran on the Dallas Cowboys’ key completion in the Giants’ backbreaking Week 2 loss in Arlington, Tex. Safety Tyler Nubin seemingly overran the play and left an opening for Nix’s pass to find Mims.
Dexter Lawrence tellingly stared at a reporter for five seconds when asked about that play call before saying, “I’ll leave that to the coaches.”
Burns also was videoed screaming in frustration about “dropping eight” as he walked into the tunnel to the Giants’ locker room after the loss. But Burns later put the loss on the players’ execution.
“There’s no way in hell we [should] lose that game,” Burns said. “We gave that to them. We had some fallen soldiers. We ain’t even gonna critique that… We didn’t execute well enough. I put that all on us. We gotta play better. I know [Daboll] is gonna take the blame, and [people are going to say] it’s his fault and this and that. Nah. At the end of the day, we’re playing the game. We gotta make the play.”
The biggest gut punch is that the Giants (2-5) had a chance to fly home with a 3-4 record with a real chance at disrupting the NFC East with a second win in three weeks over the Philadelphia Eagles (5-2) next Sunday at Lincoln Financial Field.
Instead, they dug a deeper hole at last place in the division behind the Dallas Cowboys (3-3-1) and Washington Commanders (3-4). And they showed ownership and the front office that this team is not good enough to warrant an expensive trade for a No. 1 wide receiver that would require the surrender of premium future draft picks in return.
“We gotta f—ing finish, bro,” corner Cor’Dale Flott said. “That’s the biggest thing with all this. This ain’t easy. That sh-t hurt.”
Coincidentally or not, the Broncos deluge started when starting corner Paulson Adebo left the game with a knee injury and was replaced by beleaguered former first-round pick Deonte Banks.
Safety Dane Belton had made a key goal line stand in the second quarter, while playing in place of injured safety Jevon Holland (knee), to preserve the Giants’ 13-0 shutout lead into halftime. But the drop-off from Adebo to Banks was dramatic.
The Broncos attacked the edges in the running game in the fourth quarter to great success.
The defense also was tired, however, because Dart and the offense suddenly couldn’t sustain drives in the fourth.
Dart and the offense had two three-and-outs in a row. The first ended with a punt, and the second ended with a Dart interception to Broncos linebacker Justin Strnad with 4:47 remaining to aid Denver’s stunning comeback.
“I feel like as an offense we had a chance to end the game with the ball in our hands twice, do what we did last week against Philly and we weren’t able to do that.” left guard Jon Runyan Jr. said. “We let this slip through our fingers.
“In that situation, we have the ball, we have to finish that game with the ball in our hands, and we let our defense down,” Runyan said. “We put them back on the field going three and out twice. We turned the ball over, as well. The guys [on defense] were tired.”
That’s how Nix suddenly erupted for four total touchdowns — two passing and two rushing. His 18-yard designed run off the left side gave Denver a 30-6 lead with 1:51 to play.
Even in the face of the Giants’ epic collapse, Dart showed no quit.
He converted a 4th and 19 to Wan’Dale Robinson on the Giants’ final drive. He backed it up with a 38-yard pass Broncos interference penalty on a deep ball intended for Beaux Collins at the goal line.
And he reached across the goal line for that 1-yard touchdown and another Giants lead with 37 seconds to play.
But the lasting image of this game still hadn’t happened yet.
The lasting image was Daboll screaming at Bowen seconds after Nix had completed a 22-yard pass to Courtland Sutton with Banks in coverage to set up a spike and stop the clock for Lutz’s kick.
Daboll’s spirited dialogue with Bowen continued as the coaches stormed off the field to the losing locker room. And now consequences lie around the bend.
It’s just a question for whom. And how soon.
Someone has to pay for this embarrassment. This disaster. This team’s unacceptable DNA.
