Arizona Cardinals vs. NY Giants: Twitter Reaction and Full Post Game Quotes
With a straight face, the Giants swear they’re making progress in their quest to become a competitive team once again.
"I don’t think it went wrong,” said defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul, with that straight face. “I just feel like we kind of slacked off with what we were doing and they came back and won the game.”
Lovely, right?
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“We’re in the right position; we’re in the position to make plays and we’re just not converting some of them and doing certain things to shoot ourselves in the foot,” added receiver Victor Cruz.
Gee, ya think?
As their head coach Tom Coughlin, who with each week and each loss looks wearier and much older than his 68 years, always says: “Talk is cheap; play the game.”
His Giants players did just that, or at least they tried to.
Coming off a short work week, they took the field at MetLife Stadium, their home turf, to kick off their 90th season in existence in front of their loyal fans, in front of franchise legends, and in front of military VIPs who gathered as part of a special salute to Francis Scott Key’s Star Spangled Banner, the National Anthem, beautifully performed by the West Point Army band.
What did the Giants do?
They tanked.
There were so many breakdowns all over the place that it’s almost impossible to know where to start.
So let’s look at some of the key storylines to emerge from the rubble and try to make some sort of sense out of everything.
Carson Palmer Out, Drew Stanton In at Quarterback
The Cardinals, who had hoped to have quarterback Carson Palmer (shoulder) available for this game, deactivated the 12-year veteran.
Palmer, who was limited in practice last week, tested his injured throwing shoulder prior to the game, only to determine that he wouldn’t be able to go, according to NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport.
The news of Palmer’s deactivation no doubt caused the Giants to breathe a collective sigh of relief for two reasons. One, Palmer is a scrappy veteran who last week led the Cardinals back from a 17-6 deficit against the San Diego Chargers in Week 1 to an 18-17 win. In that game, Palmer went 24 of 37 for 304 yards, and two touchdowns.
More importantly, the Giants have enjoyed success of late against backup quarterbacks, as Ralph Vacchiano of the New York Daily News noted.
Those backups quarterbacks that the Giants had success against last year include Josh Freeman (Minnesota Vikings), Matt Barkley (Philadelphia), Terrelle Pryor (Raiders) and Scott Tolzien (Green Bay).
Stanton, in case you were wondering, hadn’t appeared in an NFL regular season game since 2010. Cardinals beat writer Kent Somers of The Arizona Republic, noted that, including this game, Stanton has only started five regular season games.
Not that it mattered, as Stanton looked like he has been starting all his life, especially after getting his team up 10-0 so early on.
"Everybody talks about starting fast, especially on the road. It’s hard to win in the National Football League on the road, everybody’s aware of that," he told reporters after the game.
"But to come out here and try to take the crowd a little bit out of it—it was loud and noisy on that first drive—to come out here and kind of throw the first punch was very important for us to get a little bit of a lead."
Eli Manning: The Beat Goes On
New offense, same results for Giants quarterback Eli Manning, who threw his third interception of the young season, in the first quarter, and his third in as many quarters of regular-season play.
On this one, Manning, who was trying to go to receiver Victor Cruz, was pressured after running back Rashad Jennings missed a blitz pickup.
Still, Manning has to be smarter with the ball and not just put it up there for grabs. The ball, which hit defensive tackle Tommy Kelly’s shoulder pads, was picked off by linebacker Sam Acho.
Art Stapleton of The Record has more bad news about Manning’s turnover streak.
"Eli Manning has thrown at least one interception in seven consecutive games + nine of his last 10. #NYG
— Art Stapleton (@art_stapleton) September 14, 2014"
Manning finished the game with two interceptions.
Not good. Not good at all.
Receiver Victor Cruz
Earlier this week, Cruz, who caught two out of six passes for 24 yards in Week 1 against the Lions, was asked on a conference call with Giants reporters if he thought it would help the offense if he was given more targets in the passing game.
“I think in order for us to be successful, there needs to be an increased number of targets in my direction,” Cruz told reporters.
“And in other playmakers’ directions. Just like Rueben Randle as well, in my opinion. But that all comes with the continuity, that comes with getting the running game going, that comes with building what we want to build as the game continues.”
Well, be careful what you wish for there, Victor.
That’s right, Cruz was thrown the ball 10 times this week, catching five for 60 yards. Of those five he didn’t catch, he had a couple of significant drops, including a huge on a 3rd-and-6 which brought up Steve Weatherford’s ill-fated punt that was returned 71 yards by Arizona’s Ted Ginn for the go-ahead score.
What happened?
“Just concentration, myself included,” Cruz said. “I own up to all of my mistakes and all of the things that I’ve done wrong so, myself included, we’ve got to focus in on the football and focus in on… a lot of them, or a majority of them, were on third down, so that’s something that we have to keep our concentration in order to move the chains and convert.”
Speaking of Cruz, I noted on Twitter that he’s now gone 12 games without catching a touchdown pass, his last one coming in Week 4 against Kansas City last year.
Even worse, I also noted that Cruz hasn’t caught a touchdown pass at home since Dec. 29, 2012 (week 17) of the 2012 NFL season.
Cardinals’ cornerback Patrick Peterson shook his head when asked if he was surprised by Cruz’s drops.
“He is normally sure-handed but at the end of the day, fatigue plays a big part of that,” Peterson said.
Fatigue from what exactly? That's the million-dollar question.
Lack of Resiliency
Remember this video the 2007 made prior to the Giants’ team introduction at Super Bowl XLII?
Boy, have times changed.
One of the benefits of being at the game is that I can put the binoculars on the sideline after a big play is made to watch the reaction of players and coaches. Lately, it’s become a trend to where when something goes wrong, the players have that “Oh no, here we go again!” look of disbelief on their faces.
There’s not enough anger, and there’s not enough passion being shown. Opponents are starting to see this, and it’s disturbing. Just take a look at some of what the Cardinals players had to say about the Giants.
Linebacker Larry Foote: “You want to hold the team down. We do not want to be kicking ourselves or having self-inflicted wounds with some of the plays that they had… mentally.”
Return specialist Ted Ginn, on if he saw the Giants’ body language change after he scored the go-ahead score: “I mean, yeah. You can tell that on their side of the ball, on the New York side, it kind of went down.”
When the opponent sees the air go out of the bubble, that's not a very good sign for a team moving forward.
The Injuries
No Giants loss would be complete without a concerning injury. This week, the focus is yet again on linebacker Jon Beason, who appears to have re-injured the toe on his right foot.
Beason, remember, was a surprise scratch from Thursday’s practice after experiencing some soreness in that right toe, the same one he injured June 12. The occurrence raised a little concern, given how far Beason had come in his rehab, and given that the Giants were already missing rookie Devon Kennard due to a lingering hamstring ailment.
So when Beason left the stadium with his right foot in a walking boot, as Jordan Raanan of NJ.com noted, and head coach Tom Coughlin told reporters that the 29-year-old defensive co-captain will undergo X-rays and an MRI on Monday to determine the extent of his issue, it doesn't look good at all.
Besides Beason, cornerback Walter Thurmond was the only other Giants player announced to have suffered an injury. Thurmond’s diagnosis was a pectoral muscle, though the good news is that he was not sporting any kind of wrap in the locker room. He told reporters that his chest was “tender,” but it doesn’t sound as though his injury was serious.
So Where is the Progress Being Made?
This week, Manning completed 26 of 39 passes (66.6 completion percentage) for 277 yards, two touchdowns and two interceptions for an 83.0 passer rating.
Well, that’s better than last week’s effort of 18 of 33 for 163 yards, one touchdown and two interception affair resulting in a 53.0 passer rating.
But those interceptions! At this rate Manning is on pace to throw 32 interceptions this season if he doesn’t get this under control in a hurry.
What about tight end Larry Donnell? No, he’s not a complete tight end. He really doesn’t block all that well, but he’s caught 12 of 17 passes thrown his way for 137 yards and one touchdown, which is not too shabby considering that the tight end position had everyone wringing their hands over the summer.
Defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul seems to look closer to being the 2011 version than that of the 2013 edition, at least based on the last two games. This week, Pierre-Paul finished with a team-leading 1.5 sacks for minus-8.5 yards. He also had two tackles-for-loss, two pass breakups and two hits on the quarterback.
So yeah, there’s a some progress—a very little bit, but some.
However, there needs to be more—a lot more—because, as the Giants noted in their postgame notes, this is the first time the team has started 0-2 in back-to-back seasons since 1995-1996, and this ship is fast sinking.
Patricia Traina is the senior editor for Inside Football and a credentialed New York Giants beat writer. All quotes and information obtained firsthand, unless otherwise noted. Follow me on Twitter, @Patricia_Traina.
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