The New York Giants defense certainly did their job on Sunday against the San Francisco 49ers. Time after time, they bailed the offense out after bad turnovers. But Eli Manning just kept giving the ball back to the Niners, culminating in a 16-10 Niners win.
49ers vs. Giants 2014 final score: 3 things we learned from San Francisco’s 16-10 win
Eli Manning threw five picks and undid a brilliant performance by the Giants defense.
Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports
The five picks thrown by Manning should have put the Giants away much earlier in the game, but a resilient Giants D kept getting off of short fields. They held Colin Kaepernick for just 193 passing yards and kept the Niners powerful running game in check drive after drive.
Here’s what learned from the game.
1) Eli is back to throwing awful interceptions.
Eli gets a bad rep. He plays behind a bad line, has a receiving corps that consistently runs the wrong routes and has to be close to the all-time leader in bad luck, tipped interceptions.
But there’s no excusing the five picks he threw against the Niners. One was the result of blatantly staring down his receiver, one was a back-footed prayer that sailed about 7 yards over his target’s head, one was an off-target throw that ended a promising late drive and one was whatever the hell this is.
But it was the fifth and final pick that was the most damning. Despite the previous turnovers, the Giants were somehow down just 16-10 and driving downfield late in the fourth quarter. Odell Beckham Jr. had just hauled in a juggling, 37-yard circus catch to set the Giants up with first-and-goal, but three consecutive fade plays left them facing a must-convert fourth down. Manning tried to force a pass into tight coverage, the ball was tipped and intercepted by linebacker Chris Borland and New York's last real scoring threat of the game ended.
2) Rashad Jennings is not the savior.
The Giants’ three-game win streak earlier this season coincided with Jennings beginning to hit his stride as the primary ball-carrier. The Giants’ subsequent four-game losing streak coincided with Jennings’s knee injury. It’s no surprise, therefore, that folks in New York were hoping the running back’s return meant a re-balancing of the Giants’ offense and a turnaround to the season.
Nope. Jennings had just 18 carries for 59 yards as the rushing attack continued to falter.
Jennings's struggles came to a head when he was stopped short on a critical fourth-and-inches try late in the third quarter, ending one of the Giants' most promising chances to retake the lead. Not that he ever really had a chance on the play -- the struggling Giants' line allowed a penetrating Ray McDonald to cut Jennings down in the background before he could muster a head of steam.
Simply put, their ground woes are more than one man can fix.
3) The Giants actually started out well.
The last time the Giants found the end zone on their opening possession, Gravity was on top of the box office charts and Jason Derulo's "Talk Dirty to Me" was the No. 1 single. It had been 20 games since since they'd scored a touchdown on their first drive of the game, a streak that snapped as Larry Donnell reeled in a 19-yard score against the Niners.
The lead would last roughly a quarter. Turnovers kept handing the 49ers short fields, and although the Giants defense valiantly prevented them from cashing into the end zone, three field goals sent San Francisco into halftime with a 9-7 lead. A touchdown on the 49ers’ opening drive of the third quarter pushed the lead to 16-7 and threatened to put the game away.
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