As Jets Fall Flat, Giants Finally Catch a Break
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The Giants played ugly but won pretty in yesterday’s game against the Carolina Panthers. New York gained just 15 first downs to the Panthers’ 22, converted just 5 of 20 on third and fourth down, fumbled three times, couldn’t mount a pass rush against a second-string quarterback, got outgained by 156 yards, and threw 27 passes which either went incomplete or failed to gain so much as a mere five yards. Normally, those are the numbers of a team that not only gets beat but clobbered.
On Sunday, the luck went all the Giants’ way. All three of their fumbles bounced back into their own hands, and despite Eli Manning’s throws that were so far behind his receivers they seemed to be in different time zones, he managed to connect on two long passes, key plays in the game. Both of Carolina’s excellent starting cornerbacks, Chris Gamble and Ken Lucas, left the game early with hamstring injuries. In the second quarter, Plaxico Burress beat both their replacements — first, rookie Richard Marshall, in for Lucas, on a sensational 45-yard grab, and then, on another fine catch, whipping Gamble’s fill-in, Dion Byrum, another rookie, 28 yards for a touchdown.
Those two plays — they look great when you watch the highlights — made Manning’s performance seem much better than it really was. Let’s put this in perspective: for the game, Manning was 17 of 33 for 172 yards and three touchdowns. Seventy-three of those 172 yards came on those two completions to Burress. Subtract them from the total, and Manning was 15 of 31 for 99 yards, which is absolutely atrocious, particularly considering that he was working the entire afternoon against two rookie cornerbacks. (One of whom, Byrum, was undrafted and signed by Carolina in November off Tampa Bay’s practice squad.) Let’s put it in even more vivid perspective: Subtract a 25-yard completion to Jeremy Shockey, and Manning completed 14 of 30 passes for just 74 yards. That’s slightly less than two yards a throw, or considerably less than half of what Tiki Barber averaged per run (20 carries for 112 yards).
Why, one wonders, were the Giants bothering to pass at all once they got the lead? It’s the kind of mystifying question observers have been asking all season about the Giants, but yesterday it was merely rhetorical, since Carolina could mount no consistent offense of their own with quarterback Jake Delhomme sidelined with a thumb injury — yet another lucky break for the Giants. Delhomme’s replacement, 34 year-old Heisman Trophy winner Chris Wenke, wasn’t really all that bad. It’s just that he had to throw so often. He was 34 of 61 and riddled the Giants secondary for 423 yards. When you come off the bench to throw 61 passes, you’re going to get some intercepted, and the Giants picked off three, with strong side safety Gibril Wilson getting two of them.
Still, that a second-string passer could get 423 yards against the Giants is unsettling. The Panthers allowed just two sacks on Wenke in 61 attempts, a fact which escaped observation by the TV commentators.
It’s true that winning covers up a multitude of sins, but it doesn’t make them go away. I have a strong feeling that these sins will be back to haunt the Giants over the next two weeks when they play the suddenly revived Philadelphia Eagles followed by the New Orleans Saints, both at the Meadowlands. If the Giants lose either of those two games, their playoff chances will probably be gone.
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The Jets never really had any playoff chances, but it’s been fun over the last couple of weeks to think that they did. Any illusions to the contrary were shattered by the thoroughness of their 31–13 loss to the mediocre Buffalo Bills at the Meadowlands yesterday. Coming off back-to-back wins against Houston and Green Bay and playing against their old upstate division foe, the Jets, in front of a hometown crowd, should have been riding an emotional high. Instead, they were bafflingly flat and impotent.
Like the Giants’ victory, the Jets’ loss revolved around a few big plays, but unlike the Giants’ game, luck didn’t appear to be a factor in any of the plays that sunk the Jets. In the first quarter, Bills running back Willis McGahee found a hole at left tackle and simply outran the Jets secondary for a 57-yard touchdown. You could hardly call that lucky: McGahee has now run for more than 100 yards in five straight games against the Jets. In the second quarter, Bills wideout Lee Evans, timing a move to coincide with a double-pump from quarterback J.P. Losman, faked Jets cornerback David Barrett out of his thigh pads and hauled in a 77-yard touchdown pass down the left sidelines to give Buffalo a 14–10 lead they never relinquished.
All this might not have mattered if Chad Pennington had been playing at the same level of efficiency he had shown in the previous two Jets wins. But Pennington, for reasons not readily apparent, played his worst game of the season. He threw two unforced interceptions, one to linebacker London Fletcher-Baker — the NFL player who gets my nomination as the NFL player whose name sounds the most like a member of the House of Lords — and the other to cornerback Nate Clements whose 58-yard return in the second quarter, coming right after Evans’s TD catch, proved to be the knockout punch.
Pennington has had some bad games this year, but usually it was because the opposing defense simply overpowered the Jets offense. Yesterday, though, he was just awful. The problem, as it was before his last shoulder surgery seems to be lack of arm strength. He had just one completion for more than 15 yards (to Laveranues Coles for 23) and just four of 10 or longer all afternoon. In all, he completed 22 of 35 passes, but for just 182 yards for a miserable 3.7 average, or 0.6 less than the Jets’ average when they ran the ball. After last week’s impressive performance against Green Bay, it seemed likely that the Jets could storm through Buffalo, Minnesota, Miami, and Oakland to finish 11-5 or at least 10–6. Now, all of a sudden, road victories over the Vikings and Dolphins don’t seem so likely, and the Jets, like the Giants, seem destined to finish 8–8.
Mr. Barra is the author, most recently, of “The Last Coach: A Life of Paul ‘Bear’ Bryant.”