The New York Giants have put a lot of bad play on film this season but none of it compared to a third-and-1 flea-flicker that failed spectacularly on Sunday in Germany.
Trailing 10-0 with just under 8:00 remaining in the second quarter, head coach Brian Daboll decided to get cute with an unnecessary play-call. But even more ridiculous and embarrassing than that is what transpired.
After running back Devin Singletary tossed the ball back to quarterback Daniel Jones, he just stood there. Two receivers were running wide open and DJ simply froze before taking a sack and ending the drive.
The @Panthers defense breaks up the trick play 😤
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After the game, Daboll admitted it was a poor play call and shouldered the blame for its failure.
“I wish I had it back. I wish I had it back. Didn’t work,” Daboll told reporters. “I wish I had it back. Bad coaching.”
It was poor coaching. It was also astonishingly poor execution. The call itself made no sense but there was an opportunity for a big play there and Jones simply didn’t make it.
Malik Nabers said he discussed it with Jones after the fact and DJ claimed he couldn’t see the wide-open receivers.
“When you look at it, you can see that we were open, but there’s many things that’s going on in Daniel’s face that us receivers don’t see. We’re just out there running our route. We see that we’re open. But there’s a lot of things going on in the backfield that you don’t know,” Nabers said. “You give the ball to the running back, defense collide down, so they’re all blitzing, you’re flicking it back and it’s just us in coverage. But there’s a lot of things going on back there with Daniel.
“I asked him about it. He said he couldn’t see us. So that’s the play.”
Jones is not someone who generally makes excuses, so everyone should be inclined to take his word for it. However, when you watch the play over, it’s difficult to understand how that could be the case.
Either way, it was a play-call that shouldn’t have been made and Daboll certainly deserves his half of the blame for it.
