The Giants are in franchise hell and the embarrassments are piling up

They trudged out of MetLife Stadium again after watching their quarterback unable to win at home and a once-proud defense collapsing at every big moment and embarrassing all of the Lawrence Taylor bobblehead giveaway winners.

Their 27-22 loss to Jayden Daniels and the Commanders leaves them with a 0-5 home record as The Greatest Woe on Turf.

Where the phenomenal rookie toasts his offense and the all-world nose tackle toasts his defense.

Where the head coach needs to think long and hard about ending the Daniel Jones era should he lose 7-2 to the Panthers in Germany and head another season toward another premature end.

Daniel Jones wasn't all that bad in the second half on Sunday. In fact, he was better than usual at MetLife Stadium. The problem is that he was bad enough when down 21-7 in the first half and the Giants were never able to recover because they don't know how to win.

The game plan featured a one-dimensional ground-and-pound smashmouth attack that Brian Daboll defended as he averaged 6.8 yards per carry.

But it came at the expense of a frozen Malik Nabers, whose only Jones goal in the first half was saved by Frankie Luvu.

Nabers' frustration was only compounded by watching his precocious LSU quarterback Daniels (15-22, 209 yards, 2 TDs, 0 INTs, 8-35 rushing) mimic “The Natural.”

Jones had 50 rushing yards on 142 yards of offense in the first half, but was 4 of 6 for zero yards – ZERO yards!! – and a fumble in the first half.

And like this:

“I don’t name the plays,” Nabers said. “If you run out of time in the first half, you try to get as many points as possible in the second half. As an offense you have to be versatile. You have to be able to walk. You have to be able to pass. You can't choose between half and half of what you want to do. But like I said, I’m not the playmaker.”

Uh-oh.

And he's not the general manager.

“You have to build up,” Nabers said. “To be successful you have to use the right people. You have to get the right keys. To win, you have to get the right people on the team. Apparently the commanders did. They have the right people they want on the team and they are on the rise.”

Daboll and GM Joe Schoen aren't just in quarterback hell, they're also in franchise hell and are having a hell of a time at 2-7.

What goes unsaid about Daboll's first-half plan is that he had more confidence executing it than Jones did in passing it. Until it was too little and too late.

“It had nothing to do with Daniel throwing it or not,” Daboll said.

Aside from all the good that Ground & Pound did, the Giants only scored those seven points – on Jones' first home touchdown pass in 672 days, a 2-yarder to tight end Chris Manhertz.

You can't beat a dual-threat quarterback with a single-threat quarterback.

“Maybe I wasn’t expecting to run so much, but we did really well and moved the ball effectively,” Jones said.

Jones' sack-fumble in the first quarter took Daniels to the Giants 31 and helped set up his 1-yard touchdown pass to Terry McLaurin against the beleaguered Deonte Banks, who scored on a 22-yard pass interference against Cor' Dale Flott had followed.

Nabers (9-59) finished the game with 11 scores after Daboll was forced to miss the insane Jones (16-20, 174 yards, 1 TD, 1 TD rushing in the second half).

A second half that saw the following:

A 3-yard touchdown pass to Wan'Dale Robinson was negated by a suspicious pick-play pass interference on Darius Slayton, forcing a field goal.

Two analytics-driven two-point conversions failed at 10:24 and 22:27 when Jones was stopped on the rush and then didn't bother to throw the ball for a sack.

“I felt good about what we had,” Daboll said.

A 42-yard bomb from Daniels to a wide-open Olamide Zaccheaus before the two-minute warning iced the game.

Remember the good old days when LT or Michael Strahan would stand up in the fourth quarter and the Giants fans would chant “Dee-Fense, Dee-Fense?” The Giants were unable to release Daniels (ribs).

“They had a lot of chippers,” Lawrence said.

The Giants have no chance without a pass rush as their secondary is vulnerable and under construction.

“We need to be more precise,” Lawrence said. “I think as a team and as individuals we need to understand the game a little better, understand why certain things are called, understand the meaning of situations in the game and momentum shifts in the game. We weren’t good at that, and that’s the thing.”

They weren't good at a lot of things and that's the thing. Your New York Football Giants 2024: The biggest suffering on the pitch.