Week 2 TNF - The Football Team Survives the Giants

That turned out to be a highly entertaining game.

So, I've been thinking all day. Everybody needs a gimick, right? Well, I haven't really been sure what mine might be until I couldn't find a way to watch tonight's game with my eyes. But I was able to listen to the radio broadcast! So maybe I listen to the radio broadcasts and I do some gimicky, listicle type things with the different radio teams.

It is a very different experience, listening to the radio.

First of all, the radio broadcasters are employees of the teams – so they know the teams, the players, the coaches, the organizations so much better than the TV broadcasters. And they know the opponents about as well.

So, anyway, I listened to the Football Team's broadcast. I wanted the Giants', but it was more difficult to find. Turns out, I think I might have chosen the right team. With Kevin Harlan not calling the Giants anymore, the Washington Football Team's Julie Donaldson, DeAngelo Hall and Bram Weinstein was an excellent time.

Let's talk about the game.

Is the Giants' defense good, or are their opponents' offenses opportunistic? The two scores going into halftime felt inevitable. In fact, as slowly as the Football Team's offense started, their running game was working well enough and you just had the feeling Terry McLaurin was going to break out. He had something like six catches in the first half. DeAngelo Hall was talking about how the Giants weren't going to come out of halftime and just let McLaurin beat them, and boy was he right.

Really, what is the deal with the Giants' offense? Is it Jason Garrett? I mean, he is perhaps the most forgettable coach in the NFL in my lifetime. Colin Cowherd jokes that Garrett needs to hire a publicist. But maybe being forgettable is how he remains hired.

...Is Jason Garret that guy in Office Space? 

Milton!

“Mr. Judge told me to talk to payroll and then payroll told me to talk to Mr. Judge and I still haven't received my paycheck and he took my playbook and he never brought it back and then they moved my desk to storage room B and there was garbage on it....”

Ahem.

Daniel Jones seems completely allergic to consistent play. When he's running, he looks fine. When he has to throw the ball, he's off-target with Kenny Golladay, but finds Sterling Shepard and their tight end in big spots. And when he's throwing well, the rest of the offense melts down with penalties. They did it several times throughout the game, none more egregious than when they were marching toward scoring for a third straight time out of the half.

At that point in the game, I was kind of surprised the Football Team had managed to keep the game close. The broadcast team were so up with the second half touchdown, then the announcer was completely gutted by New York's field goal, extending their lead to six points at 23 – 17.

But that lead was misleading. I wrote in my notes “By 3^rd quarter, only thing stopping WFT is penalties and resting Young n Sweaty.” In fact, the radio team made a point to point out that the only time the Giants offense was finding any success at all was when either – and especially both – of them was off the field. That's problematic for New York. Also not great new for Washington. If your ends cause that much havoc and the dropoff is that dramatic without them....

After the touchdown, the broadcast team started talking about how Heinicke was looking weird. Threw a couple weird passes, ran kinda funny of the drive that fizzled in another field goal, leaving them down.

I kept hearing Landon Collins' name. Seems like he was out of place in the run and short passing game more than a few times.

By the fourth quarter, the radio team had been talking about the Football Team needed to challenge Giants DB Bradbury deep or he was going to keep sitting on short routes and probably pick one of them off sooner or later for a while. Then Julie Donaldson said a couple of things I found amusing. First, she was talking about how Daniel Jones is a question mark at quarterback everywhere but in Washington. Evidently he's played really well against them. And I laughed and said to myself, “Well, that's what it feels like when your team is also looking for a Franchise guy!”

And then a few seconds later Heinicke throws the TD that gives them the first lead of the second half.

I forgot that Bobby McCain went to Washington. His name got called a few plays in a row. It's nice to see him play an important role in Rivera's defense.

I was getting all hype once the clock started ticking down to 3 minutes. I wrote Heinicke's passing statistics, even. Well – I wrote 28/36 for ~300. And then the next play he throws a pick. Which was hilarious, because Julie Donaldson was also patting his back for having thrown no picks yet. Then he throws what could and probably should have been a back-breaking pick with his back to his endzone.

But his defense bailed him out.

That's the great thing about true team, complimentary football. If the defense gives up a tud, there, this game is over. But they don't. They hold for the FG and give their offense time to fight back into the game.

And is it me, or have we already been treated to so many great, close games on Primetime this season? Neither of these teams is great by any shade of the imagination. But it has been great to watch a bunch of games come down to drives as-time-expires.

DeAndre Hall was critical of the way the WFT dealt with the clock in the two minute. I loved the gutsy playcalling to keep the ball in-bounds and hurry-up. The Neutral Zone Infraction felt like the end of the game. You could almost feel it palpably in the booth, the crowd in the stadium. All that time the officials spent to get the game back on track was a hayuge advantage to the offense. And you could see it when they lined up to play ball again and the Giants immediately called an ugly time out.

All it would have taken was for the Football Team to call Four Verts and for one of the Giants' DBs to be caught napping because of irritation with the refs, and it's game over.

But talk about lucky on the field goal. You don't get the defensive penalty, it doesn't matter how gutsy you were and how well you managed the clock to get in position if you miss the damn kick!

I turned to my girlfriend as Bram Weinstein was setting the scene for us. You could hear the stadium in the background. I told her, “Imagine the pressure. You've just watched your offense use every advantage the football gods could give you to be in this game and in reasonable position for you to hit this. You can't miss.”

And then he misses.

Absolutely incredible.

Takeaways

It is problematic that Saquon isn't 100%. If Jones can't use him like CMC in Carolina, dumping him the ball as an extension of the running game, this offense has a ceiling on it. If the reason Jones can't use Barkley that way is because Barkley's hurt – or just isn't the same anymore – the Giants are going to look like they've wasted two first round picks.

Year two between quarterback and coordinator is supposed to when the magic starts happening. The only thing the Giants do well is run the ball with Daniel Jones. And the WFT radio broadcast guys, I imagine it was DeAngelo Hall kept pointing out that Garret is doing the same things with Jones he did with Dak his rookie season. Are they trying to develop Jones into a pocket passer?

I am immensely pleased with how Washington played in this game. I unashamedly root for Heinicke. I hope this game is a sign of improvements to come and not his ceiling.

Closing Out

So I think for this weekend I'm going to rank the games, try to have a little fun with it. We'll see. And I'm planning to try to listen to a game on the radio and watch another with my eyes, see if I can cover twice the games. We'll see how that works out, too. Til I can figure out how to get GamePass.

And, hey, maybe I can come up with a list of teams you need to listen to with your GamePass account when you want to listen to four hours of audio and don't want to watch anything with your eyes! Maybe I can provide a service for your life.

I'm only being a little ironic.

Thanks for stopping by! Feel free to let me know how very, absurdly wrong I am about everything I'm saying. I could probably use it.