Baltimore, MD—The NY Giants pride themselves on playing assignment type football throughout the season. In the last few weeks, gaps were blown, tackles have been missed and games lost.
Baltimore put together four scoring drives in the first half and the surging Ravens beat the NY Giants 27-13 Sunday at M & T Bank Stadium to gain control of their own fate in playoff race.
The G-Men lost three straight games and and walked off the turf contemplating about making the postseason.
“We just have to execute fundamentally better,” Giants head coach Joe Judge said. We’ve got to do some things earlier in the game as coaches and players to start faster.”
NY were down 14-0 before you could blink an eye. The Giants had no answer for Lamar Jackson and the Ravens quick tempo offense attack in the first half.
The G-Men could only muster up 13 points for the contest, gave up six sacks, rushed for 54 yards. They ran only three offensive plays in the first, the fewest by a Giants team in at least the last 40 years, per the Elias Sports Bureau.
“We didn’t start the game like we needed to,” Giant Daniel Jones said. We shot ourselves in the foot. On a couple plays, we weren’t able to convert on third down, and that threw us behind. It dug a little hole for us. It makes it tough when you put yourself in that position.”
Jones and his wide-outs wasn’t on the same page, Sterling Shepard broke off a deep route that could have been a touchdown and Jones missed him. Two plays later, receiver Austin Mack dropped an pass on third down to force another punt.
The Ravens kicked on another field goal to extend the lead 17-0 and would go into the break with a 20-3 advantage. The G-Men never recovered.
“It’s simple things we have to correct,” Shepard said. “When you look at the first drive, little things like jumping offsides put us in a bad position. Those types of things are just mental errors, it’s nothing the opposing team did, it was something we did to ourselves. I look at it like we have to get into the room and correct those things.”
Baltimore amassed 249 rushing yards which were evenly distributed throughout the back field quarterback Lamar Jackson (80 yards) and running backs Gus Edwards (85) and J.K. Dobbins (77). A 155 of those yards came before halftime.
“Yeah, that’s not us,’’ Giants defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence said. Not embarrassed, that’s just what we put on tape in the first half. We don’t accept that.’’
Lamar Jackson completed 17 of 26 passes for 183 yards and two touchdowns. He extended drives with his legs, Ravens rushing attack eclipsed 100 yards for the 38th consecutive game.
Sterling Shepard hauled in nine passes for 77 yards and one touchdown.
“The Ravens deserve the credit,” Jones said. “They were pressuring and found different ways to bring it. I’ve got to do a better job of seeing it and getting the ball out in a lot of those situations whether they’re exposed in the back end and in coverage. We’ll look at that and learn from it. I certainly have to do a better job.”
The Giants playoffs aspirations are still within their grasp, the only thing that stand in the way is the Dallas Cowboys.
