Giants Escape a Dreary London With a Victory
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 National Football League failed in its attempt to export an exciting product to Europe yesterday, as the only thing sloppier than the quality of play in the Giants’ 13–10 victory over the Miami Dolphins was the grass at Wembley Stadium.
But while the NFL would have preferred a more action-packed game, the Giants accomplished what they set out to do with a businesslike victory on a rainy Sunday in London. The Giants now get a week off to recuperate before starting the second half of the season, and they will gladly take a 6–2 record at the season’s midpoint.
Eli Manning had one of the worst passing games of his career, completing just eight of 22 passes for 59 yards. In a decidedly un-Manning-like game, he actually did his greatest damage with his feet, running for the Giants’ only touchdown, a 10-yard score late in the second quarter, and picking up 18 yards on his only other run, late in the third quarter.
The playing conditions forced the Giants to rely on the run. Soccer players don’t tear up a field the way 300-pound linemen do, and the grass at Wembley Stadium wasn’t quite up to the task of hosting an American football game. The rain-soaked field was a sloppy, muddy mess, and the Giants’ receivers struggled with their cuts all day.
But those conditions were perfectly suited to the straight-ahead style of running back Brandon Jacobs, and he responded with a career-high 131 yards on 23 carries. Reuben Droughns, another tough, straight-ahead runner, added 27 yards on eight carries, and the Giants hardly seemed to miss injured running back Derrick Ward, who was inactive with a sprained ankle.
Although a three-point margin of victory over the woeful 0–8 Dolphins doesn’t inspire much confidence, the Giants took control of the game early and never looked back. The Giants’ first possession was an 11-play, 59-yard drive that ended with a 20-yard Lawrence Tynes field goal, and they never relinquished that lead.
The Giants’ defense has hung its hat this year on rushing opposing quarterbacks, but yesterday they played well despite recording just one sack, courtesy of defensive tackle Fred Robbins in the fourth quarter. It’s harder to get traction – and therefore harder to generate a pass rush from the outside – on a slippery field, but what the Giants lacked in pressure they more than made up for with solid play in the secondary. Safety Gibril Wilson had a particularly good game, with five tackles (all on plays that were stopped short of a first down) and a fumble recovery.
Running back Ronnie Brown, the Dolphins’ best player, was out after suffering a season-ending knee injury last week, but backup Jesse Chatman played well against the Giants. Just as Jacobs showed the ability to run on a sloppy field, Chatman gave the Giants fits by running directly at them.
Special teams continues to be the Giants’ greatest weakness. Tynes missed a 29-yard field goal, showing that the Giants should make finding a new kicker their top bye week priority. An illegal formation penalty negated Jeff Feagles’ best punt.
Penalties were one of the big stories of the day, and the Giants had seven of them, for 60 yards. Particularly troubling from the Giants’ perspective is that linebacker Antonio Pierce had a personal foul for roughing the passer, a week after getting two such penalties in the Giants’ win over the San Francisco 49ers. NFL referees always protect the quarterback, and Pierce, a seven-year veteran, should have figured that out by now.
Although the weather helps to explain the Giants’ bad numbers through the air, Manning has to pass better the next time the Giants play in the slop. He overthrew a wide-open Amani Toomer on a second-and-goal in the first quarter, a throw that NFL quarterbacks have to make, no matter how wet the ball or their hands are.
It says a lot about Manning’s day that that incompletion was the most noteworthy pass he threw. And aside from his touchdown run, the biggest response he got from the British fans came after another incomplete pass, a throw to Plaxico Burress that traveled 50 yards in the air and seemed to excite the crowd, even though Burress couldn’t come up with it in the end zone.
Although it was technically a home game for the Dolphins, the fans mostly just seemed to cheer big plays for either team. Plenty of fans wore Giants or Dolphins jerseys, but there were also many jerseys from other NFL teams on display. Some will see that as evidence that the Giants and Dolphins failed to catch on in London; others will say it’s proof that the league has generated broad support there.
The sellout crowd never roared the way American crowds do for NFL games, but neither did they seem to mind that they were watching a low-scoring game with few highlights. During stops in play (which are much more plentiful in American football than they are in the game the rest of the world calls football) the fans eschewed the usual European soccer chants and instead did the wave, a decidedly North American phenomenon. The only time the crowd booed loudly was at the very end of the game, when Manning kneeled on the ball three times to run out the clock. Those boos turned to cheers as the players walked off the field.
We won’t know for years whether this game was the first step in making the NFL a popular league overseas, but Commissioner Roger Goodell appeared on the Fox TV broadcast during the game and said the NFL will be back. The Giants won’t be back on the field until November 11, when they host the Dallas Cowboys in the Meadowlands. The winner of that game will be in first place in the NFC East. The Giants can fly home from London knowing this, which makes their trip a success.
Mr. Smith is a writer for FootballOutsiders.com.