The New York Giants had a win over the Washington Redskins on Sunday that could be considered bittersweet. It was an overtime win. Daniel Jones threw five touchdowns, adding another multi-touchdown game to his record as a rookie. Saquon Barkley looked like his old self once again, helping to ensure fans that his sophomore slump won’t be a permanent one.
The Giants haven’t been this exciting in very many games this season and as shown by their record, they haven’t been able to come away with wins nearly as much as anyone in the fanbase or even the organization itself would hope for and expect. On Sunday, they did that.
At the same time, there were negatives. The Giants blew their chance at Chase Young and they did it against a terrible Redskins team. Winning against one of the only teams in the league capable of competing with the Giants for one of the worst records in the league isn’t that much of an accomplishment. You could even make the argument that the game was more like a preseason outing – one with an excellent performance from several players, but it doesn’t mean much in the end.
Just like the game last year where Kyle Lauletta led the team on a winning drive against the Patriots in the preseason, ultimately not resulting in much improvement for the Giants when the regular season came around.
Running back Saquon Barkley, however, took positives from the result.
“I think that’s kind of what they envisioned when they drafted DJ and they drafted me.  think we both the potential and the talent to play well together, and open stuff up for each other, and I think we showed that [Sunday], with the help of everyone else,” Barkley said after the game.
“I think it just shows that we’ve got grit, we’ve got heart. A lot of people probably wanted us to just lay down and lose for draft picks, but we had the mindset of a team that we want to finish the season off strong, and we have the opportunity to do that next week,” he added, speaking on what the game proves to the team’s owners.
Does the Giants’ win on Sunday have merit? That’s something that we’ll have to wait to see – the draft won’t come until the spring and next season is a long way away. But when it does come, we may just see the echoes of this game still having an effect. Either a positive one, after the Giants picked up a hard win to build momentum going into next season, or a negative one due to the player that the Giants are missing on because of the result.