Eli Manning had a fairly good game for the New York Giants in their week one loss against the Dallas Cowboys – unfortunately, playcalling and poor defense led to the team having little chance of pulling a win out regardless, as the Cowboys receivers had a field day against an inexperienced Giants secondary and managed to put up 35 points compared to only 17 for the Giants.
So what does Manning think about the performance, where he largely wasn’t the problem after throwing for 30 completions on 44 attempts as well as one touchdown? According to Manning’s statements on Monday, the day after the game, there’s still some spots where the team is doing well. Notably, one of those spots is the offensive line.
“I think the offensive line did a great job. They did a great job in the run game and the pass game. They protected well all game against a good defensive line, a lot of movement, some blitzes, so I thought the offensive line did a great job,” Manning said about the line. “They gave me time to get through my progressions and gave us a chance to be successful.”
But without the suspended Golden Tate and the traded Odell Beckham Jr., the Giants’ receivers couldn’t make enough chances to fully take advantage of the offensive line’s play. As far as missed chances go, Manning had some further things to say.
“When you have some new guys and some young guys, you have to learn. You have to learn what teams are going to do, you have to come along and make plays. I don’t know exactly what happened, it’s not about the defense, it’s both sides doing their job. Sometimes you have those high scoring games, we have to do our part to match,” Manning said.
“We had the opportunities, that’s the unfortunate part. We went down and scored, had opportunities to score a few more times in the first half, two more times early in the second half where we needed those opportunities to get points and get scores to keep it a close game. Unfortunately, the first two drives of the second half, we had two good drives, but only ended up with three points and they ended up with 14 points and stretched the lead,” Manning continued.
The Giants offense may have to do less work on Sunday against the Bills, a team that scored 17 points in their week one win against the Jets – however, the Bills defense did hold firm and only allowed 16 points from the opposing offense, which means that an offensively challenged performance from the Giants isn’t exactly out of the range of possibility if the team doesn’t take a big step forward in that department.
Either way, we’ll find out when the Giants take a shot at going 1-1 rather than going 0-2 in their first home game of the season, which seems to be a rather important game due to this situation and the chance for the team to fall into an early hole with their record.