A Season-Saving Win: 3 Takeaways From Commanders Dramatic Victory Over Giants

METLIFE STADIUM (East Rutherford, NJ) – The New York Giants haven’t won the NFC East in 15 years, and they had a golden opportunity to take a big step toward ending that drought Thursday night.

But then they blew it up.

Despite leading the game with less than two minutes to go, they fell apart in crunch time as Jayden Daniels led the Washington Commanders on a late touchdown to pull off a dramatic 24-21 victory. They got the game-winning score on a laser pass through traffic from Daniels to Stefon Diggs that turned into a 32-yard touchdown with 57 seconds left.

The Giants had one last chance to pull it back, but JJ McCarthy’s final pass of a strong night was intercepted.

And just like that, the NFC East looks like it could be a race again. The Giants fell to 5-3-1 on the season, closing the gap between them and the second-place Dallas Cowboys (4-5). And the Commanders, at 3-5-1, now hold the tiebreaker advantage over the Giants and are still atop the race.

Here are my takeaways from the match that cemented this division:

Over the past few weeks, Commanders QB Jayden Daniels has started to return to form, looking a little more like he did two years ago when he was a rookie sensation. That year, he carried a flawed team all the way to the NFC Championship Game.

This team, as hard as it is to believe, is even more flawed. But on Thursday night, he showed he’s capable of holding them down, too.

Daniels was a one-man show at times against the Giants, completing 23 of 33 passes for 249 yards, with three touchdowns and two interceptions, and he ran 10 times for 28 yards as well. He kept the Giants’ punchless defense on their toes with his scrambling ability. And when they left him without pressure in the pocket – too often – he split them with his arm.

Yeah, he threw two interceptions in the fourth quarter, and that wasn’t good. It was also a product of the surprising lack of weapons around him. Both passes were forced to TE Chig Okonkwo, who has been a disappointment for most of the season. To that point, it was a sign of how few players he had on the court around him who could make and break big plays.

But in the end, WR Stefon Diggs—the only receiver who can make big plays on the Commanders’ active roster—came out. Diggs darted a pass between several Giants defenders, broke free and ran for the game-winning score. He finished with six catches for 83 yards.

Daniels has no other reliable weapons and no reliable running game and it just doesn’t matter. He is a weapon of his own. He made it impossible for the Giants pass rush to catch him. He found takers even when they weren’t open.

And as he often did as a rookie, Daniels reminded everyone that he has the herd gene and made the big play when it mattered most.

JJ McCarthy has been largely outstanding since the Giants acquired him from the Minnesota Vikings. He was terrific, for the most part, again Thursday night.

But if he wants to make the Giants consider selecting him over Jaxson Dart as their quarterback next season, he can’t afford to miss too many more games like this.

It wasn’t even about his interception late in the game. This was thrown out of desperation. It had more to do with the fact that even though he completed 22 of 36 passes for 294 yards and ran for another 34 yards, the offense shut down under him late in the fourth quarter when they could have put the game away. The Giants sparked the Chiefs with two three-and-outs in the final 5.5 minutes.

That just won’t do.

The Giants are thrilled with McCarthy. They love its mobility. They are enamored with his arm strength, as he showed in the fourth quarter with a bullet through double coverage to TE Isaiah Likely that turned into a 66-yard touchdown pass. He is doing most everything they want.

But he has a great opportunity. The Giants have two 23-year-old quarterback prospects under contract next season. They are committed to Dart, but can just as easily change their commitment to McCarthy.

McCarthy will just have to do a lot more than he did Thursday night to win it.

The Giants’ top priority at the trade deadline was finding a defensive tackle who could not only help their run defense, but also help them do the one thing they haven’t been able to do consistently since losing rusher Brian Burns earlier in the season – pressure the quarterback.

Their inability to do that cost them dearly against Daniels on Thursday night, and it will really hurt them as they play better teams and quarterbacks on the field and possibly in the postseason.

For most of the game, they couldn’t touch Daniels. Granted, he’s as elusive a quarterback as there is in the league, but the Giants made it easy for him. When it was in the pocket, there was plenty of time. When he ran out of the pocket, it wasn’t because he was rushed and there was no one to keep him out.

As a result, he split them with his arm, after splitting them with his legs in a 27-27 draw last month.

The Giants rank near the bottom in the NFL with 17 sacks. They entered this game with a league-worst 18.9% pressure rate. They have Trevor Lawrence (Jacksonville), Brock Purdy (San Francisco), Jared Goff (Detroit) and Dak Prescott (Dallas) coming in their next seven games.

It’s good that they are opportunists. They have a very strong secondary. And they had two more interceptions Thursday night.

But the defense will really have to turn up the pressure against some of the NFL’s best quarterbacks to have a chance to survive.

It’s hard to overstate how much the Giants needed to chip away at their NFC East lead on Thursday night, as this game marked the final stretch of their schedule.

Next up for them is a minefield of the NFL’s elite, starting with the Jacksonville Jaguars in 10 days. And they’ll also face the San Francisco 49ers, Seattle Seahawks, Cleveland Browns and Detroit Lions over the next seven weeks.

They are not in that class yet. And that could be a problem with the Cowboys now snapping at their heels.

As for the Commanders, they already have new life in the division race. They have a tough game against the Cincinnati Bengals when they return, but after that they have a very winnable two-game road trip to Arizona and Tennessee, where they will face two of the worst teams in the league.

This is a great opportunity for them to make up lost ground and maybe really get into the running by the time they get to December.