E-GIANTS
Dave Klein was the Giants' beat writer for The Star-Ledger from 1961 to 1995.
He is the author of 26 books and he was one of only three sportswriters to have covered all the Super Bowls up until last year. Dave has allowed TEAM GIANTS to reprint some of his articles.

{This week, our own Scott Landstrom takes a painful, last look at the loss to the New Orleans Saints
with an eye on the the season so far as well as next week's Christmas clash in Philadelphia.)

By Scott Landstrom
Well, as the season progressed, the evidence taught us that there are three distinct personalities that this Giants team can manifest on the road.

The first is as a competitive, resilient team that bounces back from adversity, as seen in the Giants' first road game in Arizona, coming back from a 20-0 halftime deficit to score 31 points in the second half and win in dramatic fashion.

That same persona was in evident at Washington, when the Commanders were driving for what would have been the winning touchdown, had they scored, only to see Giants' linebacker Isaiah Simmons pick off a wounded duck pass caused by Dexter Lawrence's hit on Washington quarterback Sam Howell at the release point, and took it 54 yards to the house for the clinching score in a 31-19 victory.

Then there is the second personality, a hard-fighting, physical team that remains competitive in a game before making a critical last minute error, in one case, having the officials blow a call on the last play of the game as in the loss at Buffalo. With no timeouts left, backup quarterback Tyrod Taylor audibled from a pass play in the end zone called by offensive coordinator Mike Kafka to a Saquon Barkley run from the Bills' one-yard line. Barkley was stuffed at the line but the Giants ran out of time before Taylor could line up and "clock the ball," missing out on an opportunity to even score a field goal.

Had Taylor simply thrown an incompletion (as Kafka called) and made a field goal, they could have won the game with another field goal when they were down on the Buffalo two-yard line at the end of the game. But Taylor screwed up the clock management instead at the end of the first half with that play change, which would haunt the Giants when the bumbling officiating crew missed a two-handed hold of Darren Waller on the final play of the game that even my Bills fans friends admitted was a heinous oversight.

Now - sigh - we come to the third and most damaging persona that reveals itself at times in road games, when they are instead a non-competitive punching bag of a team that can't get out of its own way. Sadly, Giants Nation, this is the personality we witnessed in New Orleans on Sunday as the Giants were basically outplayed in every element of the game in the 24-6 beat-down that wasn't as close as the score would indicate.

Running backs Barkley and Matt Breida managed only 24 yards rushing on the game on 12 carries, a woeful average of two yards per carry. The only rushing success the Giants had was when Tommy DeVito escaped the collapsing pocket and ran for 36 yards on only four carries. Basically, DeVito had to lead the passing attack and the running attack on his own.

DeVito's offensive line was given the game ball against the Packers for allowing zero quarterback sacks and for leading a rushing attack that went for 203 yards. Fuhgettaboutit!! They allowed seven sacks in New Orleans, eight quarterback hits, and 25 total pressures on only 34 DeVito pass attempts. The linemen acted as though they had never faced a defensive line stunt before, and veteran left guard Justin Pugh was particularly awful, scoring the second worst game grade of any guard in the NFL in Week 15.

How did New York's pass rush fare, you ask? One of each, as lame as that sounds. One hurry, one quarterback hit and one sack. Three total pressures.

I just do not know what defensive coordinator Wink Martindale was thinking. It was a trip down memory lane to the "soft zone" that Johnny Lynn used to favor when he was DC for New York. I was yelling at my screen when I saw cornerbacks Adoree Jackson and Deonte Banks lining up 10-12 yards off their man, virtually ceding 5-8-yard slant patterns for the Saints to cherry pick. With New Orleans' best receiver inactive for the game (Chris Olave), I am at an utterly mystified loss as to why Wink abandoned his favorite man coverage for this soft zone.

I will tell you this. If Martindale calls the same pass coverage next on Christmas Day against a very angry Eagles team coming off three straight defeats, Jalen Hurts, A. J. Brown, and Devonta Smith might score 40 on us.

Other games this year in which we have seen this overmatched persona on the road include games in San Francisco, Dallas, Miami, and in Las Vegas. That's five of eight road games in which the Giants have just been taken to the woodshed by the host team. I guess that makes this the dominant road personality for this team, one that is much more likely to get blown out of the stadium than to be competitive, or even win, on the road.

And let's face facts. It is not as though the Saints are some kind of juggernaut that just steamrolled the Giants. They are a .500 team, no better, no worse at 7-7. The Giants made them look like world-beaters and that tells you - especially since they entered the game with three straight victories - that there is something not quite right about the psyche of this Giants team. It's like that old commercial, when the elderly person says, "I've fallen and I can't get up!" from the floor. When the Giants get into this mode, and are getting waxed, they don't seem to know how to reverse the momentum of the game.

Even DeVito, the magical Italian from Jersey, came crashing back to earth after playing the previous three games at an elite level, carrying a cumulative passer rating of 119.5 over those combined games. He short-armed his very first throw to Darius Slayton when the receiver ran a go pattern and was eight feet clear of his defender, and missed several other throws as well, en route to a 20-of-34, 177-yard performance that carried a pedestrian 72.8 passer rating with it. And an even-worse QBR of 14.5 (compared to opposing QB Derek Carr's 87.7 QBR and 134.8 passer rating).

For their part, the receivers did not seem to be able to gain separation on the defensive backs, so it wasn't often that someone was as open as Slayton was on that first pass.

As far as PFF game grades go, they saw the same thing we saw: a team that was outplayed in every facet of the game. The highest-rated player on offense for New York, tight end Darren Waller, had a 66.1 game grade, which is a very average grade among tight ends. So when your highest-graded player is merely average, it likely wasn't a very good day on the scoreboard.

To finish on a more upbeat note, if there is one player who stood out in this game, is was defensive tackle A'Shawn Robinson, who merely led the team in tackles from the interior line, making 8.0 solo tackles, and scoring the highest game grade on defense with a 76.0 with an outstanding 82.9 run defense component grade. I know the trade of Leonard Williams was a blow to the locker room and the psyche of the defense, but if Robinson can play like this, he was every bit as good as Williams on this day.

Next week, the Giants get to play a very pissed-off Eagles team, and we all know who their favorite punching bag is, now don't we? The Giants travel down the NJ Turnpike to meet the hated Eagles' on their home turf, Lincoln Field, in Philadelphia, so you'd better hide the women and children, and hope fervently for a reversal of fortune after this forgettable Saints game.

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