Tag: saquon barkley

MINNEAPOLIS — Five years. Five years spent wondering where it had all gone wrong. Five years agonizing over why the latest new head coach turned out to be the latest wrong head coach, why the general manager wasn’t any savior. Why this, why that. 

Five years that reminded you of the dark wilderness years when your fans were in revolt, and your father and uncle needed to be separated by NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle, and George Young was summoned to rescue the franchise. 

No one deserved a season like this one more than John Mara, the biggest Giants fan of them all. 

’Tis the day before what could be an improbable and exhilarating Mara Christmas, for the devoted owner, for Giants fans everywhere. 

Back up from Rock Bottom, here come the New York Football Giants, hungering for a win over the Vikings on Saturday that could … with help … secure their first playoff berth since 2016. 

Here comes Brian Daboll, the competent, culture-changing head coach Mara couldn’t find until he blew it all up and trusted rookie general manager Joe Schoen to find one for him. 

Here comes Daniel Jones, bloodied, but unbowed, following three years of Quarterbacking 101 negligence, an ugly duckling blossoming into a beautiful swan before our eyes under Daboll’s guidance. 

Here comes Pro Bowler Saquon Barkley, running to daylight on two healthy knees again. 

Here comes Kayvon Thibodeaux, who had himself a Lawrence Taylor night against the Commanders and isn’t interested in being any one-hit wonder. Alongside will be Pro Bowler Dexter Lawrence and what will need to be a Big Blue Wrecking Crew to keep Kirk Cousins from playing catch with otherworldly Justin Jefferson, or perhaps leading another comeback for the ages. 

Here comes defensive coordinator Wink Martindale, with his infectious swagger, keeping the Giants in virtually every game with half his secondary on the sideline. 

Here comes Graham “The Toe” Gano, automatic weapon. 

From 2018-21, Mara watched his Giants play 65 games. He watched them lose 46 of those games. 

Barkley was filled with hope and optimism before his first NFL game. He and Odell Beckham Jr. were going to be a dynamic duo. Eli Manning was years away from the Manningcast. 

“I believe that this team has a great chance to be a great team,” Barkley said at the time. 

It didn’t. It wasn’t. From 2018-21, Barkley was 19-46 as a Giant, too. 

Now? Now he is 8-5-1 this season. The playoffs aren’t fourth-and-long. The playoffs are first-and-goal. 

“I can feel it. I’m hungry for him,” Thibodeaux told The Post. “He’s brought out the beast in me, in just seeing we really do have a chance, and this is something that doesn’t come by easy.” 

From 2019-21, Jones was 14-35. 

“He doesn’t even know if he’s getting a contract next year,” Thibodeaux said, “and that’s none of my business. I don’t know whatever goes into it. But it’s just like the relentlessness to continue to play with all of these pressures being the quarterback in New York City, hats off to him ’cause he’s just been delivering week in and week out.” 

It should be a no-brainer that the twin faces of the franchise, Jones and Barkley, deserve to keep delivering for the 2023 Giants and beyond. 

“We gotta keep good things going,” Thibodeaux said. “You don’t need to fix something that’s not broken.” 

Mara’s Giants are no longer broken. 

“If I had a voice,” Thibodeaux said, “I’d say those are our leaders, and I love being on the team with ’em, and I feel like they’re gonna lead us to greatness.” 

It’s Year 1 of the rebuilding, and here come the New York Football Giants anyway, ready, willing and Daboll to gift themselves their first Mara Christmas in what seems like an eternity. 

This could have gone differently. This could have gone sideways. The Giants had 14 days to stew about their last game, a disappointing showing in Seattle. During the bye week they’d lost an essential part of their emotional DNA when safety Xavier McKinney had an ATV accident. 

And the opponent … well, you’re not human if you don’t notice they aren’t very good. 

All of these things could have been in play on a windy day at MetLife Stadium, the first day when you had to admit to yourself that autumn had finally arrived, that winter is definitely on deck. All of these things could have conspired to sabotage the Giants, to impair their grinding journey toward the playoffs. All of these things could’ve been like stepping on a hidden mousetrap. 

None of those things happened. The Giants started the game as efficiently as you can: three-and-out on defense, touchdown on offense. The rest of the game may have been a grim slog, and it may even have been hard for the Giants to keep their home audience the whole way since the other 1 o’clock TV game in market was the extraordinary Bills-Vikings game. 

The Giants didn’t care. They took care of business. They beat the 1-7-1 Texans 24-16, they improved to 7-2 and they made sure there would be little mystery to the proceedings by leading wire-to-wire for the first time all year. 

“We did a lot of things well,” Giants coach Brian Daboll said. “Guys played hard, played physically, we had some timely turnovers. It was a good team win.” 

Daboll had some extra motivation since his youngest daughter, Avery, was celebrating a birthday and had requested as her present a victorious game ball. 

“Talk about pressure,” he said. 

The Giants’ motivation came in simply playing a pitch-perfect game, which is what they did. Daniel Jones achieved the highest passer rating of his career — 153.3 — and he did that by completing 13 of his 17 passes (two for touchdowns) and turning around to hand the ball off 42 times. Thirty-five of those hand-offs went into the ultra-reliable hands of Saquon Barkley, who work-horsed his way to 152 yards and a touchdown. 

“It was fun,” Jones said of his afternoon. “To watch the guys upfront, they did a great job, controlled the line of scrimmage. We had a great plan coming in, and Saquon did a great job running it.” 

Daboll blanched a little bit when someone offered up the word “conservative” to describe the game plan he put together for Houston. 

“We tried to do what we thought we could do,” Daboll said. “Each week we do what we think we need to do for that particular game. If it’s 60 passes, it’s 60 passes. I wouldn’t give it a label, we just do the best we can to formulate a plan.” 

The truth is, it was exactly what the Giants needed to do against a Texans team that is every bit the reflection of their record. The Giants were good enough to overwhelm them on the defensive side of the ball, strong enough to overpower them on offense. So why risk mistakes, on either side, that would allow the Texans to stay in the game? 

So if it was a vanilla plan … well, vanilla can also be delicious, no? 

“We’ve got a lot of players with chips on their shoulders,” Giants defensive end Kayvon Thibodeaux said. “We have a lot of players who like to play with their backs to the walls.” 

They are also an interesting mix of veterans who’ve known nothing but failure with the Giants and newcomers who know nothing but success across this season’s first nine games. But even in tasting success they know how fragile it is. 

This was the first game in which they didn’t trail at some point. And even though there wasn’t one moment after Jones found Lawrence Cager for the touchdown that gave them a 7-0 lead that the Giants felt in any peril of losing, this wound up yet another one-score victory — same as all six of the ones that came before. 

Cager, the ex-Jet, represents another element of the Giants that has become a source of real strength: guys who seize opportunities when given them. Isaiah Hodgins, a recent pickup from Buffalo, was another (two catches, 41 yards), as was Dane Belton, subbing for McKinney, who picked off Houston quarterback Davis Mills — snuffing the Texans’ last legitimate hope of a miracle. 

The Giants? They need no miracles. They show up every week and they compete. Not every week will merit preservation by the historical society. At 7-2, there isn’t a soul clad in blue who cares about that. Not even a little.