BROWN AND OUT: Stevie Brown comes up empty as the Ravens’ Ray Rice runs for a touchdown during the Giants’ devastating 33-14 loss last night in Baltimore. (AP)
BALTIMORE — The end doesn’t always come in a spectacular blaze of heartache and anguish. Sometimes it sneaks up on you. Sometimes it bleeds you by the drop and not by the pint, until you’re left puzzled more than pained.
The Giants?
They seemed plainly puzzled last night after they’d walked off the turf at M&T Bank Stadium soundly, thoroughly hammered by the Ravens. The final was 33-14, and that makes 67-14 over the last two weeks, and while they officially remain alive for the playoffs, their title defense not yet complete …
Well, they’ve ended plenty of other teams’ seasons the last few years. They know what a dead team walking looks like.
“If we get into the playoffs, we will deserve to make it,” coach Tom Coughlin said, maybe 20 minutes after the final gun. “But that’s very remote right now.”
The Giants need too many things to go right for them next Sunday — starting with a victory over the Eagles, and the way the Giants have tanked the last two weeks, even Andy Reid’s farewell is no sure thing. Not when you’ve been eviscerated two weeks in a row.
“You can see the score,” Eli Manning said. “It wasn’t too pretty out there.”
This wasn’t just ugly, though. It was repulsive. It was revolting. The Ravens outgained the Giants by almost 3-to-1 (533 yards to 186) and had a nearly 2-to-1 edge in time of possession (39:21 to 20:30) … but even those horrific numbers don’t really emphasize how awful it all was, the same way the story of a really good horror flick is better told by what happens between the slashings and the gore.
Start with this, from Ahmad Bradshaw: “We didn’t come to play today.”
Add this, from Jason Pierre-Paul: “We went out there and pissed down our legs.”
And this, from Coughlin: “We’re flat-lining right now.”
Then remember that when they walked onto the field at M&T, the Giants still controlled their own destiny, bad as they’ve looked across the past two months. The game only meant everything to them, it meant not having to rely on the kindness of strangers next week, it meant trying to regain the late-season magic that carried them all the way to Valhalla last year.
And instead …
“We don’t have the momentum going this time,” Coughlin conceded, his face flushed with sadness instead of anger, regret instead of rage. “When it happened for us last year, this particular game, the 15th game, we had a spark, a great spark, whether it was Victor Cruz’s 99-yarder [against the Jets], whatever it was …”
You could almost see the replay of that seminal play rewinding in Coughlin’s mind; you could almost hear his heart start to race a little faster just thinking of how well the Giants started to play at this precise moment a year ago. And could almost sense it all crash in a heap in the reality of the moment.
“The answers,” the coach said, “are not easy ones.”
And if things don’t break perfectly next week, if the Vikings don’t lose and the Bears don’t lose and the Cowboys don’t lose, if Reid comes in and takes one final piece of the Giants’ hide (and he has won 17 out of 25 against them, after starting 0-4), then the off-season will be filled with precisely that level of uneasiness. And then some.
Especially if they’re forced to ponder this especially damning quote from Ray Rice, the running back who makes the Ravens’ motor purr:
“I just think we had a little bit more sense of urgency, because we knew what was at stake. This was a championship game for us.”
Now, it’s true, the Ravens wrapped up a division title with the win but they were already in the playoffs, regardless of what happened yesterday. The already had the “x” next to their names in the standings. More urgency? The Giants were the ones who should have been playing like they were about to lock all the footballs away in the supply closet.
And now they just might. The math says anything remains possible. The eyes?
Those tell a much different story.