Giants-Chargers: New York Knows Losing These Days

When an opposing team leaves the home team's turf as victors after almost losing the game with a couple of minutes remaining, it's not a good thing.

That was the case with the Giants yesterday evening. They outplayed the Chargers for most of the game, but in the end, they lost when Philip Rivers engineered a game winning drive to propel the Chargers to a thrilling a 21-20 victory.

There's no way to sugarcoat this. This was a disappointing loss for  Big Blue and it's representative of the downward spiral this team finds itself in heading into their bye-week.

How can a team recover from what took place at Giants Stadium yesterday?

Great teams don't lose games like this, but this year's Giants can. It makes me wonder about this team's toughness and intelligence. 

After watching this contest, the Giants lack both attributes. How do they let the Chargers go out of  their way to move the ball around against an allegedly tough defense?

The Giants defense played physical by sacking Rivers twice and shadowing the Chargers running back duo of LaDainian Tomlinson and Darren Sporles. Yet when it mattered in the end, they were missing in action.

Rivers was untouched on the game-winning play while Jackson showed he had no trouble getting into the end zone. That is called a lapse.

That wasn't the only bad play from the Giants. They botched a field goal and a game-winning touchdown attempt down the stretch.

It's a recipe of knowing how to lose, and it takes place only for losing teams. Maybe that's what the Giants are this season.

So now what? At least the Giants won't lose next week since they enter the bye week.

With that said, how are things going to get better? This defense looks awful, and the quarterback continues to overthrow the ball.

The running game played well today, and it's about time, but let's not say everything is back on track with the running backs until they can perform consistently.

The coaching staff looks lost too. Kevin Gilbride has not gotten much out of his offensive unit all season, and Bill Sheridan fails to come up with plays that put his defensive unit in a position to be successful.

Coughlin was a highly scrutinized coach until his team won the Super Bowl. But at some point, he needs to be held accountable for the team's play this season. This team makes too many mental mistakes to be considered one of the league's better teams, and it's a reflection on the Giants head coach.

The players question whether or not they know how to win and play the game.

It was easy to shrug off that loss to the Saints few weeks ago since every team plays a bad game during the course of the season. But they've failed to bounce back since.

They've lost four in a row, and they've played awful during the stretch. When we see this consistently, it's a trend.

Whatever they did in the first two months mean nothing anymore since they beat up on horrible teams that continues to get worse.

Before anyone can talk about the Giants as a playoff team, it would be nice to see them know how to play football.