The old Giants Stadium gave us one of the darkest days in Giants history, a play forever remembered both here and in Philadelphia as The Fumble.
And yesterday, the new stadium the Giants share with the Jets gave us The Crumble, an epic collapse, or meltdown, or disintegration that was not simply about one ill-fated brainlock for the ages by one quarterback.
Because this one was about one quarter, and one team. One team that cracked in every imaginable, unthinkable way.
PHOTOS: GIANTS LOSE TO EAGLES, 38-31
From joking on the sidelines to choking on the field. From first place to disgrace, in a matter of eight fourth-quarter minutes they will remember for the rest of their lives.
And after 31-10 for the Giants had become 31-31, after Michael Vick had changed in a telephone booth somewhere and made a mockery of Big Blue, after Eli Manning (four TD passes) had stopped throwing touchdown passes, here came Matt Dodge punting a line drive that was supposed to go out of bounds but wasn’t anywhere close.
On the sidelines, the Giants steeled themselves for overtime. The punt was supposed to go out of bounds because you don’t ever give DeSean Jackson the chance to return a 65-yard touchdown. The snap was high and Dodge panicked, and then everyone on the special teams panicked right along with him, and Jackson was gone, streaking past Tom Coughlin, running laterally at the end zone before crossing it and firing the ball into the stands. Eagles 38, Giants 31.
New Miracle at New Meadowlands Stadium.
Coughlin hurled his play chart to the ground and confronted his rookie punter on the field as euphoric Eagles yelped over the deafening silence.
“It’s a team game,” Coughlin said afterward. “There isn’t any one guy — it should have never come down to that.”
If his shell-shocked, demoralized team blows the playoffs, of course, if he cannot find a way to close this open wound and stop the bleeding, there is no guarantee that this will be his team next season.
“I’ve never been around anything like this in my life,” Coughlin said. “It’s about as empty as you get to feel in this business right there.”
And they all felt it, from the ones who wouldn’t talk, to the ones who couldn’t, to the ones who tried to comprehend it all.
“Disgusted and devastated,” Barry Cofield said. “Right now, I don’t have a blueprint as to what we’re gonna do to get over this.”
The Giants had savaged Vick in the first half, nearly KO’d him. Then Vick rifled a pass over Justin Tuck for a 65-yard TD to tight end Brent Celek. But the unraveling of the Giants truly began when Riley Cooper recovered an onside kick.
The sideline had alerted the players to the possibility of the onside kick, but with 7:28 left, Coughlin did not summon his hands team.
“The upside is to try to get field position for your offensive team,” Coughlin said. Apparently Gerris Wilkinson and Duke Calhoun never got the memo.
Vick immediately began tormenting the Giants with his wondrous feet. Up the middle for 35 yards. Around left tackle for a 4-yard touchdown. Over those last eight minutes, Vick ran for 94 of his 130 total yards and threw for 121 of his 242.
“He has my vote for MVP,” Tuck said.
It was time for Manning & Co. to answer the bell. Manning, his 200-yard Ground & Pound sliced in half on this day, marched to the Eagles’ 38, where David Diehl was flagged for a false start. Kurt Coleman came through untouched on an all-out blitz on third down that forced a throw-away. Punt.
On third-and-10 from his 12, Vick scrambled for 33 yards. Then 22 more. Finally, Vick to Jeremy Maclin, tie game.
Manning started at his 36, 1:10 left.
“We have to go get a field goal at the end of the fourth quarter and we go three-and-out with nothing,” Manning said. “That is on us.”
At the bitter end, it was on Dodge. No one chose to kick him while he was down.
“I had a shot at [Jackson] and missed,” Bear Pascoe said.
Dodge was kicking himself anyway.
“Sometimes you try so hard to do something — and you just lose your head,” he said.
Manning
summed it up best
when he said: “We played a good 52 minutes, and the eight other minutes we gave it to them.”
Gave them first place. Maybe so much more.