For some, there’s nothing better than a loss that leaves everyone feeling good. We’re all happy about Sunday night’s Colts-Giants matchup, aren’t we?

The Colts are certainly happy: They won. The Giants are happy because they stood up and slugged it out with perhaps the league’s second best team, nearly came up winners, and can hang the loss on an official’s lousy call. The Mannings — Peyton, Eli, and dad Archie — are happy because both brothers looked good. NBC is thrilled because it appears to have gotten the kind of ratings for a Sunday night game that pro football used to get for Sunday night games. And the press is thrilled because it finally had a hyped game that actually fulfilled some expectations.

Myself, I’m not altogether pleased. Are you? I’m not pleased with a loss, and I’m not at all comfortable with a team whose star defensive player, Michael Strahan, writes off an opening game defeat by rationalizing, “We gave them three points four times. That’s better than seven. That’s how you have to look at it.” No, that’s not how I have to look at it.

Here’s how I look at it: The Giants were playing at home, they outgained the Colts by 106 yards, and just like in every key game they played last season, they found a way not to win. They outpassed the Colts, 7.3 yards a throw to 6.7; they outrushed them 186 yards to 55; they outreturned them 140 yards to 116, and they lost the game. There are those who ascribe some of the Giants’ fuzziness to early season rust; I say they were in midseason stride.

Let’s review:

• Third Downs. The Colts could not run the ball with any effectiveness, just 55 yards on 23 carries for a 2.4 average, which means if they had run the ball for four consecutive downs, they would not have averaged a first down.This left them with exactly the kind of thirdand-long situations that are supposed to work to the advantage of a good defense. The percentages are in your favor, right? Sooner or later, if a team can’t run for four or five yards, the other team is going to stop them with a sack, an interception, or a tipped ball, right? Not on Sunday night for the Giants, at least not in the first half.

The Colts were up 13–0 in the second quarter and 16–7 at halftime entirely on the strength of an amazing 9 for 11 streak by Peyton Manning on third and five or longer.On two of those plays, Strahan and Osi Umenyiora had clean shots at Peyton Manning, who isn’t Michael Vick or even Eli Manning when it comes to evading defenders, and missed.Three times the butterfingered secondary had decent chances at interceptions and failed, including safety James Butler’s first quarter oopsie in the end zone that allowed an Indy field goal.

Mostly though, the Giants’ failure to stop Manning on third and long was due to a failure of nerve on the sidelines. The Pittsburgh Steelers flustered the Colts in the playoffs last season with a bewildering series of zone blitzes that basically amounted to guessing where Manning was not throwing the ball and blitzing from that side. If the Giants blitzed more than twice on third down against the Colts, I didn’t see it. Mostly, a team that wants to regard itself as aggressive on defense laid back on third down and let the league’s best passer pick them apart.

• Penalties.Yes, the offensive pass interference call on Tim Carter was horrendous. And I do think that Eli would have pulled the game out if given a fair break. But luck, as Branch Rickey was fond of saying, is the residue of design, and the Giants’ design, as always, was sloppy and unfocused. Once again, in a big game, the refs practically needed rotator cuff surgery from throwing so many flags at the Giants. The bad call on Carter was merely one of 15 the Giants drew in the game, 10 of which were accepted. The Colts held the officials to a pitch count of just 4 called, 3 accepted.

Four of the Giants’ penalties were for what is becoming the Giants’ trademark under Tom Coughlin: the dreaded false start. What is it, one wonders, about the complexity of the Giants offense that causes centers and offensive tackles to jump over the line before the snap? Does Eli Manning stutter? Does he hiccup in tight situations before the snap? Whatever the cause, the Giants offense sees more false starts than a track meet for the hearing impaired.

The Giants can rationalize the loss to the Colts, but the time is quickly approaching when such illusions will cease to be comforting. The next two weeks are going to be brutal. First, a game against what appears to be a rejuvenated Eagles team, led by a born again Donovan McNabb, at Philadelphia. Then, a potential nightmare match against the defending NFC champion Seahawks in Seattle (And will someone please tell me why we must play the Seahawks two years in a row on their home field?) The Giants are still shaking from last season’s penalty-strewn, field goal-shanked 24–21 loss to Seattle in November. If they come back from this road trip 0–3, the entire 2006 season will be looking an awful lot like another false start.

Mr. Barra is the author of “The Last Coach: A Life of Paul ‘Bear’ Bryant.”