New York Giants: Defense shows plenty of promise in loss to Patriots

In a game that could’ve gone a lot worse, the New York Giants defense turned up. There are plenty of positives to take away from this game.

Before we started, this game was only ever going to go one way. The New York Giants went into a primetime Thursday Night Football game in Foxborough without star running back Saquon Barkley, who hopefully missed his last game due to his ankle injury.

If this wasn’t enough, starting tight end Evan Engram missed out due to a knee problem. And to make things worse, Sterling Shepard and backup running back Wayne Gallman were both sidelined due to concussions that were picked up on Sunday.

The Patriots went into Thursday night’s game as 16.5-point favorites and it looked as though this would be a safe bet early on as they started off their opening drive with a 19-yard pass, followed by a 22-yard run. However, this Giants defense decided to turn up in New England. They managed to force a turnover on downs on the Patriots’ first drive and forced the Pats to punt three times in the opening quarter.

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Offensively, the Giants gave themselves no chance of getting a legitimate chance in this game. Daniel Jones threw for three interceptions and there was a blocked punt touchdown and a fumble recovery touchdown for New England, also.

Those five turnovers were pretty basic ones and plays you just can’t have if you want to go to Foxborough with any fighting chance. Literally everything was going the wrong way for the Giants — but it didn’t even feel this way when watching it.

The Giants defense was actually great against New England. You look at the scoreboard and see a 35-14 final score and think to yourself “of course”. However, it doesn’t even begin to tell the story of this game.

The Pats had all the possession, which was due to the inability of the Giants offense to get anything going, which resulted in 39:36 minutes of Patriots offense. But the New England offense also scored just 21 points. And this is something that’ll give the Giants defense a huge boost moving forward.

Janoris Jenkins had himself another night as he picked off a Tom Brady throw that was aimed at Julian Edelman. Jenkins’ coverage was perfect as he lurked over the middle and intercepted the football at the Giants 3-yard line, sneaking away from Edelman’s attempt to reduce the damage and taking it back 65 yards.

In the end, there was a 15-yard penalty for unnecessary roughness, which put the Giants back to halfway. But, ultimately, the Giants defense was matching this great offense.

Deep into the second quarter, the Giants defense scored a touchdown of their own as linebacker Lorenzo Carter made a fantastic play to sack Brady on his own 43-yard line, resulting in Markus Golden making a heads-up play to snag the football and take it to the house on the back of a tremendous leap due to the fact that he was being held short of the end zone.

A huge positive was the linebacker play. After getting annihilated by the Vikings last Sunday, this group of linebackers, which also included a returning Alec Ogletree and David Mayo, had a great night.

Now at 2-4, this Giants season is getting close to what we expected. With so many injuries thus far and a rebuild going on as we speak, Giants fans should be pretty proud of their team. This offense isn’t great right now, but Daniel Jones is looking great at times, and he’ll continue to grow with guidance under Eli Manning. The defense showed that it has plenty of potential on Thursday night. And with Barkley hopefully back by the next game, there’ll be more to look forward to.