Giants' Struggles Against the Rams

0:00It's the Mike Francesca podcast on the Bet Rivers Network. Hello, everybody and welcome to the Mike Francesca podcast, part of the Bet Rivers Network. We come to you after a giant game that really, what are you going to say? It's a complete throwout. There's nothing else to be said. Everyone knew going to LA to play the Rams after the Rams. It had such an awful opening week was not going to be easy. We got a couple of advantages getting ready for the week with knowing that Miles Garret's out, knowing that the cool was out. So gave you great optimism. Who knows how this would have turned out. We have no idea. The only thing is you get the feeling now after a one-sided, ram win of which there's nothing to analyze. Okay, I'm not going to draw any conclusions except I thought Winston would throw the ball a lot better if he was given the opportunity to play than he did tonight.

1:00I thought that the giants were so out of sync and he was so out of sync, he was so limited in everything he did, his movements. He looked terrible throwing the football. He didn't step into the football well. I thought it would make me rethink the quarterback position considering how badly he played tonight. I know how much people like him. I know how good a guy he is. I know how much they like him in the room. I know how much thought likes him. All that needs to be taken into consideration. But here's the bottom line. You need to feel that your backup quarterback, especially with someone who gets injured as much as thought does. You need to feel your backup quarterback can at least move the football. Tonight you did not get that feeling at all from Winston who was just awful. The offense, I remember, neighbors was playing in that game except for that crazy time when

2:02he went out with the arm and one catch for one yard. You got to be kidding me. For targets, one catch, one yard, I understand they have deep backs that could take them out of the game. He was not even a factor a little bit this evening. He would have thought sometimes during the game, he would have caught a ball. They couldn't run the ball. Their offensive line looked lasier. And again, they're playing a top team, they're playing a super bowl favorite, which needed to win the game. Look at what the RAM schedule is over the next five weeks and you see why. That's all fine. Now this is an assumption right now. I did not wait for the press conference because I don't expect a hard board of tell us anything today. The actions of thoughts standing on the sideline and standing there, if you have a leg injury, you're not standing on the sideline. You're not on your feet for all that time. The bottom line that they were tells me that without any question, without any question,

3:09that his injury is minimal. You might be talking about a hyper extension. That's possible. You might be talking about a minor injury. I don't know if it's going to be week to week. I don't know if he'll be in the line up next week. I'm not going to make any assumptions this evening. I will say this. I'm going to go into this with the idea that he is not badly hurt. This was more precaution than I did. Is it ruined the game? Yeah, it absolutely ruined the game. It took the life out of the game completely. It took any analysis out of the game. It took any way you're going to look at the giants completely out of the game. They're not the same team without the line up. You would have thought they would have put forth a better offensive effort. They were awful. I mean, they couldn't even scroll when they got the ball on the 11. Got it moved at a five. It got to move to the six after a penalty and still couldn't get me in. My biggest take from the game tonight is they don't have a backup quarterback right now

4:16that you can trust. That's what I take from this evening as game going to assume that the season wasn't ruined this evening. Otherwise I wouldn't have seen dots standing. I know there was a report that he wanted to get back in the game and they took his uniform way. I don't need to hear those dramatic. I don't care about that. He wasn't coming back in the game. We know that. They were going to do that from a precaution because his leg clearly got hit in a way that was not good for the knee. If you hit the knee the wrong way, it does not bend. You know what? It's an injury. That looks like a hyper extension to me from someone who's had to knee replacements. So it looks like a high for extension could be a week. I would doubt it's more than that. They would not have allowed him to come back and street close and stand on the sideline the way he did. They said at the end of the game he wasn't even limping that much. I would think that he's okay and that this is a devastating blow to the team.

5:20It's a failed opportunity. It takes a little, you know, it takes a little wind out of their sales. No question about it. You wanted to dream the dream tonight. I thought they were catching the Rams at the right time, clearly without a Garrett and the court, it was clearly catching him at the right time. You don't want to play the Rams with those two guys. They're two of the best. If not the best offensive and defensive players in the league, they're very close to that. So from that standpoint, this would have been a good, now the Giants were also, which no one spent a lot of time on. The Giants were clearly limited in the secondary and it showed the, you know, Adams had a huge game. He made some nice plays. I thought Stafford had a mediocre game because I thought Stafford who usually is dead on through a lot of balls that weren't great. They also had some drops. I think the Rams were great. I've already threw one up for grabs against the double team, which made no sense.

6:23And then they get to turn over that could have changed things a little bit or made the game a little tighter in the first step, but the Giants weren't able to take advantage of that. Giants did get a break going into the half when they missed the field goal, which they shouldn't have allowed with 20 with 25 seconds left. They did. They gave up the run and then they gave up the pass play. That was terrible defense. Hey, Giants didn't have a good night. Hopefully Burns is not hurt late. The game he limped off with the ankle. Hopefully neighbors is not hurt. Although I didn't like anything about neighbors this evening. If you're a number one receiver. If you're a premium player, this is national TV. You got to give a better effort than that. You got to tell me you can at least get loose and catch a couple of balls here, okay? Especially late in the game. I mean, that to me, you know, that's not how you're supposed to operate if you're a top of the league receiver. As everyone likes to paint neighbors as being, I want to see better than that, okay? I want to see more effort.

7:24I want to see more try than that in that game. I didn't like that at all. But the thing I would say was the offensive line didn't have a good night. They didn't give Scataboo a chance to run the ball. I think Scataboo was upset that he wasn't in on the goal line, but hey, that's tough luck. The bottom line is the thing I would take from this evening, this evening, more than anything else is number one. We again have to deal with the fact that dot and neighbors and maybe Scataboo are guys who are very injury prone. That's something that you hope does not follow these young players day after day, down after the game after the game because it's a pain in the neck. Part of being great is being healthy enough to play.

8:27If you can't play, you're not going to be great. You can't be great from the sideline. These guys have already shown in their brief careers. They've shown ability. They've shown a lot of good qualities, but they've also shown quite a tendency to get knocked around and get hurt. That's something you hope does not continue to follow them. The other thing clearly is I would have to, and I'm not saying that they have to get rid of Winston, but I would have to reassess. The Giants only dressed to quarterbacks. The not the only team that did that, I think there's 12 teams in the league that did the same thing. It's just a matter of preference. The bottom line is you have to have a backup that you at least feel confident. It can step in, get a first down when he's needed. If somebody just gets their bell wrong, get a drive, get a key drive, maybe come in and

9:28win a game if a guy gets his bell wrong, or if he has to play for a week or two. Nobody expects to back up quarterback in his league to play all season and do great. Those are rare circumstances. You want your backup to at least be able to move the football, and I'm sorry. What we saw from Winston this evening was non-competitive. It was extremely, extremely poor. It was alarmingly poor. That's more than I take than anything else. Obviously, the news going forward as you get ready for week number three and for the Giants, you know, an omen to opponent in Tennessee coming into their building. A game that if you're the Giants, you expect to win a game. You're going to be favored by somewhere around the touchdown, depending on the daughter's status.

10:29We'll wait to see what daughter's status is. I would say from what I saw this evening, it's 50-50 that he plays next week. I don't know that. I'm not making any statements because I don't know any information yet. But I do not think the way they acted and he acted, I don't think we're looking at any serious injury here, thankfully. I think that's the best thing you can take out of what was a game that for all intents and purposes was over at seven, nothing. I mean, let's be honest. It was just the Giants were not going to do anything offensively all night against this RAM team, which could have done a lot more in the second half if they wanted to. And you're dealing with again, a top of the line team that's not at 100 percent. It's not a full throttle right now. We know that. There'll be a lot better team in November, December than they are now. There'll be a championship caliber team at that time. There you got a tough division and we know that. This was a game they needed to win and they wanted going away.

11:33So from that standpoint, they did what they needed to do this evening. And the best thing I can say about a game that doesn't need any more analysis than that is that I would think seriously about the back of quarterback position. And it looks like the Giants were able to dodge a bullet tonight with their quarterback because luckily the word wasn't, you know, he's gone for 10 weeks or he's gone for the season or he tore an ACL or he tore an MCL or he tore, you know, so luckily it does not seem to be that kind of injury that he sustained. Nothing more, I would say than a hyper extension. That's at least what it looks like from what we've seen so far. One thing I wanted to get into before I say goodbye is you know how big a opponent I have been of these international games from the outset.

12:36I think that they are nothing more than a greedy reach. They don't need them. This sport in this country is so successful. It's more successful than just about any other product fed to the American public in the entire country. And rather than caring about making the game affordable, at least on television where you're trying to gouge people now with these streaming nonsense, at least from that standpoint, take care of your art and fans of which you have more of than any other sport or any other entity in this country. Instead, it playing games all over the world in this week, this is a false. The fact that the Ravens and the Cowboys are not playing in Dallas and the fact that they're going to play in Brazil. And the fact that they are hearing, you are hearing alarming things from medical people, from soccer players who are telling you that field is a disaster. They're trying to talk about replacing that field after the football game. They're going to play another soccer game they are right before the football game.

13:39The bottom line is taking them to Brazil for no reason. In week three of the NFL season, rather than playing in front of a fall house in Dallas where they'll sell every single ticket, just shows you the greedy reach and how this league will just not stop at anything when it comes to making another buck, churning another buck, trying to market the sport and some other way to make another buck, sell another jersey. It's just obnoxious. I mean, we're going to get to the point where we're going to be talking about the NFL trying to want to play a game in out of space. I mean, you know what? I'll open them around for that just so I can scream about it because it'll happen. Oh, we'll take the shuttle here. We'll get off at the space station and we'll play here. And we're going to build a field up there. That's what's next. Any greedy reach, you know the Rams, treated their trip to Australia. Here's a team that is a super bowl favorite, the heaviest super bowl favorite in the last 20 years,

14:40who treated their trip to Australia like they were being sent to reform school. We wanted no part of it. Their coaches still screaming about it. They went a day before the game. That's how little they prepared for what they treated like a sentence. And the NFL doesn't hear them, doesn't hear the players, doesn't hear the coaches. If I was an owner, if I was the Raven owner or I was Jerry Jones, I would absolutely be. I rate about my team going to Brazil to play this game. And the idea of playing it, you're putting some of the biggest stars in the league out on that field. Now, it doesn't matter what NFL team, there's stars on every team. But the bottom line is you imagine if one of the stars on the Ravens or one of the stars on the Cowboys gets hurt because of that field condition. I mean, if I'm Jerry Jones, if I'm anybody with the Ravens, I am furious about the idea of

15:42having the Trapes to Brazil to play this game. When this NFL stopped with these greedy reaches, instead worry about taking care of your fan base here in America, who supports you and puts so much money in your pocket that it's almost obscene. And all you do is give them the back of your hand and charge them for playoff games and charge them now to buy streaming systems and make sure that other games aren't available. It's obnoxious. The NFL has no shame when it comes to getting into your pocket every possible way it can. It has to stop. You would think the players would feel abused. The fans clearly feel abused and it is obscene to me that they would travel, Trapes, that far to a bad field to play that kind of game when it should be played in Dallas this weekend

16:44at 425 on Sunday afternoon. The NFL just never stops pushing for every buck. They have the greediest SOBs in the world. Have a good night. Thanks for listening to the Mike Francesco podcast on the Bet Rivers Network.