Remember September?
That’s the last time the Giants scored an offensive touchdown.
That was four games ago, spanning 205 minutes of game time entering Sunday’s home contest against Washington.
You can do a lot in 205 minutes. You can play a round of golf, watch a couple of movies, read a book, have several meals, go to a few happy hours, take a nice drive from the city to the country, see a Springsteen show.
“Two hundred minutes?’’ Giants running back Saquon Barkley said Thursday with an incredulous look when asked about the touchdown drought. “Dang! What was your question?”
The last touchdown the Giants scored came on Sept. 21 at the 49ers with 10 minutes remaining in the game when Matt Breida scored on an 8-yard run to cut the San Francisco lead to 17-12 in what ended in a 30-12 loss.
Two hundred and five minutes.
“It definitely seems that long … even a little bit longer,’’ said receiver Isaiah Hodgins, who scored the team’s second-to-last touchdown, on Sept. 17 at Arizona with 4:25 remaining to tie it at 28-28 en route to a 31-28 win, the Giants’ lone victory of 2023. “No one wants it to be like this.’’
Incredibly, the Giants scored four touchdowns in the second half of that Arizona game. Those four and the one at San Francisco are the only offensive touchdowns they’ve scored in six games this season.
They haven’t scored a touchdown of any kind at home in their two games at MetLife Stadium — a 40-0 loss to the Cowboys and a 24-3 loss to the Seahawks.
“I didn’t know it was 200 minutes, but it’s simple: We’re not executing,’’ Barkley said.
The maddening element to this for the Giants is the fact they’ve been in position to score touchdowns.
The first half last Sunday in Buffalo ended with the Giants on the Bills 1-yard line, where quarterback Tyrod Taylor experienced his brain-freeze with 14 seconds remaining and no timeouts and audibled out of a pass call to a run that failed and allowed the clock to expire.
That game ended with the Giants on the Buffalo 1-yard line again needing a touchdown to win, and Taylor’s pass grazed off the outstretched hand of tight end Darren Waller on the final play.
A key to the Giants handling of this drought is that they avoid pressing as the pressure to score mounts.
“When you start pressing and making more of it than that it is, that’s when you make mistakes and start doing stuff that ultimately isn’t going to get you what you want,’’ receiver Darius Slayton said.
“It can definitely get frustrating as an offensive player,’’ Hodgins said. “We know we want to score really bad, but the more you press the easier it is to make mistakes. We’ve just really got to lock in when we’re in the red zone, which has obviously been a point of emphasis this week.’’
A year ago, the Giants were ranked fifth in the NFL in touchdown scoring percentage in the red zone, crossing the threshold 64.81 percent of the time. This season they’re ranked 30th with a 31.25 percent clip.
“We’ve got to find a way to get into the end zone,’’ Slayton said.
Slayton, asked if the mood of the offense is one of frustration, anger or embarrassment, said, “It’s definitely not something to gloat about. At this point, what we’ve done in the past we can’t do anything about. All we can do moving forward is execute better.’’
In a weird statistic for a team that’s scored just five offensive touchdowns compared to 20 by the opposition is the fact the Giants have a time of possession advantage of 31:11 per game to opponents’ 28:49. They, too, have run 393 offensive plays to 357 for their opponents.
If anything, those two statistical anomalies place a higher emphasis on how terribly inefficient the Giants have been on offense.
“We’re getting down there [in position to score],’’ Breida, the author of the Giants’ last offensive touchdown, said. “It would be different if we weren’t getting into the red zone.’’
Asked how long it feels since he scored that last Giants touchdown, Breida said, “I’m a vet now and the seasons go quickly, so to me it feels like yesterday.’’
To Giants fans, it feels like a lot of yesterdays ago — 31 of them, to be exact, come game time Sunday.
Read more
