For a football player, particularly an offensive lineman, there isn’t anything more damning than being told you were physically manhandled in a game.
Coach Tom Coughlin, directing his wrath squarely at the Giants offensive line, made it as clear as he possibly could after last night’s 17-10 loss to the Eagles at MetLife Stadium that his team was beaten physically.
“That’s the biggest disappointment that we have had around here in a long time,’’ Coughlin said. “Our offensive line was completely outplayed by the front eight of Philadelphia. We got physically handled. My question for them was, ‘Why?’ What does it take to understand what the Eagles were going to be like coming here? You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that the team is 3-6 with their backs to the wall, they are going to play their butts off.
PHOTOS: EAGLES BEAT GIANTS, 17-10
“To get to where we wanted to go, we had to play better and harder and we didn’t.’’
The microcosm of the night came on the Giants’ final offensive play, when, after they had driven to the Philadelphia 21-yard line with 1:25 remaining in the game and a great chance to tie it, Eli Manning was sacked so hard from behind by Eagles defensive end Jason Babin, he fumbled away the Giants’ last chance.
“[We] top it off by putting ourselves in position to tie the game and go into overtime and again we have penetration, breakdowns in protection, somebody gets beat and the quarterback doesn’t see him,’’ Coughlin said, spitting out his words. “We didn’t protect the ball and the ball comes out, so the opportunity to give ourselves a touchdown there with overtime coming forward doesn’t happen.’’
The Giants finished with 29 rushing yards, 21 on 12 carries by Brandon Jacobs, who seems to be constantly complaining about playing time.
Coughlin called the 29 yards rushing “about as pathetic as it can get.’’
“It was a very poor performance,’’ he said.
“You have questions and I have no answers,’’ Giants right tackle Kareem McKenzie, who was blocking Babin on that sack-forced fumble play. “We didn’t do anything well on offense and it showed. Were we out-physicalled? Yeah, we were.’’
Giants center David Baas said this loss and the way it unfolded “is definitely going to burn for a long time.’’
Chris Snee, the Giants right guard who was battling dehydration from an illness the past two days, said he was throwing up between plays — and it had nothing to do with the poor play of the offense.
“We have nothing to be happy about offensively,’’ Snee said. “They just physically beat us.’’
In many cases, statistics don’t tell an accurate story about a game. On this night, the stats were spot on. The Giants managed only 12 first downs and just 278 yards of total offense, they were 5-of-14 on third down conversions and they had possession of the ball for just 23:42.
“With so much on the line, playing at home on Sunday Night Football, to play the way we did there’s no excuse,’’ Giants left guard David Diehl said. “We didn’t play well as a team, as an offensive unit. Blame it on the offensive line, that’s fine. We’re grown men. We can take it.’’
The problem is they played not like grown men but like boys last night, and they clearly couldn’t take what the Eagles dished out.