Giants Bend Don't Break to Beat the Bengals on Monday Night Football

By Djack

6-3 has never felt so good, I don't know if that's because 6 wins was all we got last year, or that the Giants have yet to play a complete football game, and still managed to have 6 wins through 9 games. Last night was another perfect example of that, all night I had 0 confidence we were going to win that game, but when it came down to crunch time we were able to execute well enough to claw out another win. Sitting in sole possession of second place in the highly competitive NFC East along with sitting as the top wildcard team, I'm actually more confident now in the Giants than ever before because I know we haven't come close to reaching our ceiling yet.

Giants received the ball to start the game, normally I hate getting the ball first, especially since the Giants haven't scored a touchdown on an opening drive since week 11 of last season. Well, last night the Giants opened up the game with a beautiful 8 play, 80 yard drive, that resulted in a touchdown pass from Eli Manning to Jerell Adams. It was a perfect drive, Eli was 6/6, I was feeling good about things, maybe this was the week the Giants offense would finally mesh, maybe we'd finally return to last year's form, but I'd be wrong. Anyways the Giants defense came out let up a huge play to Tyler Eifert on some weird personnel group formation that confused the shit out of everyone, including the Giants defense. Bengals would take just 3 plays to tie the game up at 7 with an Andy Dalton to AJ Green touchdown pass to cap the drive. Giants offense came back out, looked nothing like they did on the first drive, and went 3 and out giving the ball right back to the Bengals offense, so much for everything coming together tonight. Luckily for the Giants this season our defense has decided to play out of their god damn minds, last year we were the second worst defense in the league, but that has all changed as this Giants defense has now become the foundation to our success. They'd be able to keep the Bengals offense to under 20 yards on each of their next three drives, which was much needed since our offense decided to fall back asleep. Eli threw an interception with about 5 minutes left in the half, the corner read it like his favorite magazine, and it didn't help that rookie wideout, Roger Lewis Jr., fell down on the play, boy did that young boy have an awful game last night. That's beside the point though, Bengals had the ball on our 7 yard line, but our redzone defense is the best in the league, and was able to hold them a field goal, which was huge shift of momentum back to the Giants. Eli, as he's done so many times after he's thrown a pick, comes back onto the field to lead the Giants on a touchdown drive, his quick memory is one of his best traits as a quarterback, nothing phases Eli. Giants went into halftime up 14-10.

Second half got off to an awful start, Giants special teams butchered the kickoff coverage, allowing the Bengals to get the ball all the way to our 13 yard line to start the drive. 2 plays later Jeremy Hill found the endzone, and just like that the Bengals were ahead, 17-14. Giants went three and out to open up the second half for their offense, Bengals got the ball back, drove down the field, and tacked on another 3 point with a field goal making the score 20-14. Giants followed that up with back to back abysmal drives and I was beginning to lose all hope in our chances to win this game. The defense was allowing us to hand around, they shutdown the Bengals for the rest of the game, after the field goal the Bengals had midway through the third that put them up 20-14, they only had 37 yards of total offense. Giants started their game winning drive from the Bengals 47 yard line, they got inside the 10 with ease, but were having some troubles getting it into the endzone. 4th and goal rolled around and Ben McAdoo with 14 minutes left in the 4th quarter decides to go for it instead of taking the three points to bring us within a field goal. McAdoo calls the perfect play, for the first time all season, and Sterling Shepard catches the game winning touchdown pass, the big gamble paid off, and now McAdoo looked like a genius, meanwhile for about 90% of the game our offense looked ineffective. Landon Collins would get his 4th interception in the last three games on the following drive, the Giants had a chance to extend their lead, and put the Bengals in a body bad. Instead Eli throws a deep ball into triple coverage, it gets picked off, and after one play the Bengals are back on the field. Didn't matter though, the defense was playing out of their minds, and Spagnuolo was releasing the Kraken on Andy Dalton. Giants sacked him twice on their final drive, the Bengals gave the ball right back to the Giants, and the Giants had a chance to close it out on offense, which is something we've struggled with all year due to our shitshow of a run game. To my surprise the offense was able to embrace the closer role, Rashad Jennings did a good job of getting the yards we needed to pick up first downs to ice this game. Giants win 21-20, advance to 6-3 on the season, and I'm getting way too excited. We have the Bears and Browns the next 2 weeks, so that should be 2 free wins as long as we don't wet the bed. At that point we'll be 8-3, barring one of the worst collapses in NFL history, the Giants should be able to pick a wildcard spot at the very least. If that's the case watch out NFL because the Giants tend to make noise when they can actually get into the playoffs, this defense is certainly competitive enough to go against anyone in the league, if we can just get the offense flowing like it was last year I'd say give us the Lombardi Trophy right now. Let's not forget this is the NFL and this is the Giants, nothing is conventional, and nothing is easy to predict with much certainty, so let's just wait it out while enjoying the ride.