PHILADELPHIA - Somebody certainly looked like an 0-4 team on Sunday night. It just wasn't the Philadelphia Eagles.
A week's worth of trash talk and bravado and Jason Pierre-Paul's big mouth and bad math ended in a loss that was filled with both insult and injury. On Sunday night, in front of a national TV audience, the Giants barely even showed up to Lincoln Financial Field, getting dominated in every phase of football by the rival Eagles in a 27-0 loss that was painful and ugly and soul-crushing on more than the scoreboard.
Everything about this game was bad for the Giants from the very start but nothing was worse than the way Victor Cruz was lost for the season to a torn patellar tendon with 9:35 left in the third quarter. On fourth-and-goal from the 6, desperate for points after being shut out in the first half, Eli Manning dropped back and lofted a pass to Cruz, who seemed open in the back of the end zone.
It was on this very same field three years ago that the legend of Cruz and the TD-celebrating salsa was born. But on this night, on this unforgettable play, Cruz jumped off his left leg, getting strangely little lift, and he couldn't haul in the TD. As the ball rolled away, he crumpled to the ground in the back of the end zone, both arms tightly clutching his right knee. He was carted off the field, and the Giants announced the season-ending injury just moments later.
It was as if the ghosts of everything that went wrong in 2013 had returned to haunt the Giants. Just a week ago, the Big Blue offense seemed so dangerous, so overflowing with weapons, but it's now without its finest two talents; RB Rashad Jennings is still dealing with a knee injury, and now, the team's finest receiver over the last three years is gone.
It was just a week ago, everyone was raving about how the O-line was jelling, but that unit collapsed on Sunday night, allowing Manning to absorb five sacks, two more than he'd taken the last three games combined.
But the Cruz injury was the most crushing blow for a Giants team, deflating any positivity they'd had left. Oh, they showed up riding a three-game winning streak, poised to make a statement to the NFC East division against an Eagles team that they'd poked and prodded all week with trash talk.
But even before losing Cruz, this game was over, practically from the very first snap. The Eagles scored on their first two possessions, and they'd built a 10-0 lead with 4:02 left in the first quarter, when Nick Foles threw a beautiful 15-yard rainbow of TD pass to a diving Zach Ertz, just out of the reach of Giants corner Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie, in the right side of the end zone.
Early in the second quarter, the lead would swell to 17-0, when Foles found another tight end, the streaking James Casey, for a 26-yard score.
And the Giants offense, shell-shocked from the very start of this one, were completely powerless to recover. With promising rookie Andre Williams struggling to create yards behind a porous offensive line, the entire offense reverted back to its messy 2013 form; just four plays in, Manning was sacked and fumbled near midfield, and only a diving Justin Pugh saved a turnover.
And when the Giants did get something going, it was always one step forward, 10 steps back. There was Antrel Rolle's interception late in the first half, which wound up in a punt. There were penalties and all those sacks.
And there was the last drive of Cruz's season, when the Giants were trying to convert a Zack Bowman interception into points. Just when everything had seemed to be going so wrong, after the Giants had announced that corner Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie was done for the night with back spasms, DRC's replacement, Bowman, had given them a ray of hope, picking off an errant Foles pass at the Philly 35, and Manning was driving.
Five plays before Cruz collapsed to the ground, on third-and-4 from the 15, Larry Donnell double-tipped a tough Manning pass to himself in the end zone for a score, only to have the play called back because of a Will Beatty hold.
So the Giants tried to battle back and repositioned themselves to get on the board for a TD on fourth down.
They were left with their biggest step back of a once-promising season.
Posted by Unknown on Sunday, October 12, 2014 - Rating: 4.5
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