CHARLOTTE , N.C. — OK. Now what?
What do you take away from 38-0, against a team that was gasping and sputtering and wondering if its coach was going to see Columbus Day? Where is the silver lining from a game in which you lost the coin flip and that, as it turned out, was the best highlight of the day?
Now what?
“It seemed we went backward all day,” Eli Manning said.
He certainly did. He was sacked seven times and clobbered about 20, he looked like Popeye Doyle was chasing him up and down Bank of America Stadium all day. The Giants generated 150 yards of total offense For every yard the Giants picked up, the Panthers picked up 2 ½. There was one more interception (eight now for the year), and this is how bad it was Sunday: it was hard to remember it.
The game was long gone by then.
“Disappointing is not a strong enough word,” said coach Tom Coughlin, already working with a heavy heart knowing he will travel upstate to bury his brother this week. “I expect more.”
The problem now, hard as it is to believe, is we are rapidly approaching a point in the season when we may have to readjust those expectations. The arithmetic confronting them is already staggering: exactly three 0-3 teams since 1990 have made the playoffs, none in the 15 years since the Bills last did it in 1998.
Up next: Kansas City, which has already had a fun time turning half the NFC East to seed, bruising Dallas and battering Philadelphia. The last place on earth you want to try and turn around a season is Arrowhead Stadium in front its 80,000 barbecue-fed zanies, and that’s when the Chiefs are awful, let alone when they’re 3-0 and soaring.
“Every one of us needs to go home,” Giants safety Antrel Rolle said, “and look in a mirror.”
He was just getting started.
“Something,” he said. “Something is definitely going to have to happen because this is intolerable. Under every means. This is intolerable.”
The Panthers were supposed to be completely vulnerable in the secondary, which is the perfect prescription for the Giants, for Eli, for his cavalcade of receiving weapons. And Carolina may well be every bit as susceptible there as advertised. But Manning couldn’t stay upright long enough to find out. From the jump, it looked like the ’85 Bears had decided to have an impromptu reunion — right at Eli’s feet.
“We’ve dug ourselves a little bit of a hole,” Manning said.
No. The little hole was what they’d already dug through two weeks, through a sloppy day in Dallas and an aggravating home opener against the Broncos. Holes you can navigate. Holes you can negotiate.
This crater is something deeper, something darker, and something that already looks almost too steep to climb out of. For three weeks the running joke, the standing assumption, is the NFC East is so bad that 8-8 just might carry the day. But you know something? The Cowboys looked awfully good yesterday against the Rams. Their only loss is at KC, and that suddenly isn’t looking like such a terrible loss.
The Giants? After three weeks, it isn’t enough to wonder if they can string 60 minutes of quality football together. No, this is the more pressing question:
What, exactly, do they do well?
“We are what we are,” Coughlin said and most times, most years, that’s the highest form of self-praise the Giants aspire to: You know us. You know what we do. We’re going to do it anyway, and we’re going to do it well. Try and stop us.
Sunday, the Panthers stopped the Giants. Cold.
And what’s worse: they barely had to try.
“We’ll reload,” Coughlin said. “We’re going to fight every step of the way.”
No one doubts that. Nobody disputes that. The Giants are a team of lionhearts which is why 38-0 is so perplexing, and so unacceptable. Playing hard has never been an issue. And won’t ever be an issue.
Playing well? That’s another matter. At 0-3, you suddenly have to wonder what the ceiling is supposed to be. And if they’ll keep visiting the fallout shelter instead.