Why no one crushes hope as quickly as the New York Giants

Martin Rogers

FOX Sports Insider

Week 1 isn’t supposed to be the time for dreams to die. The first half of September is usually still that deviously sweet part of the year that springs varying levels of cautious optimism in the NFL.

Sure, 16 teams didn’t win in Week 1, but a solitary defeat isn’t typically enough to erase the initial glass-half-full mentality of most football fans, who need some extra compelling evidence before most realize that, yup, it is going to be another season of misery and emptiness.

Unless, of course, we are talking about the New York Giants, perhaps the only team in the NFL to have crammed enough bad news into the first few days of the campaign to indicate that things are toast once again.

Should we be surprised? Not really. No franchise does a more resolute job of snuffing out preseason optimism than the Giants. They are absolute masters at it. A city and a fan base just waiting to jump on an express line toward hope gets disappointed again and again. There is always room for some cheer. It never lasts long.

Once more, what an opening weekend to be a Giants supporter.

“It starts with me,” head coach Brian Daboll said after Sunday’s demoralizing 28-6 home pummeling at the hands of the Minnesota Vikings. He actually said those same words eight times — with more numbers on Daboll’s habit of incessantly repeating the same thing to follow shortly, to follow shortly, to follow shortly.

In reality, it “started” on Thursday night, a full three days before the Giants got going, amid the mild climes of Sao Paulo, Brazil, when Saquon Barkley provided the ultimate “here’s what you’re missing” message, aimed directly at the Big Apple.

Just in case Giants followers were wondering what it might look like with Barkley having moved down I-95, the former favorite running back lit up the Green Bay Packers for three touchdowns and 109 rushing yards, and, more importantly, what felt like an immediate lifting of the Philadelphia Eagles from the odd malaise that ruined their end to the previous season. Precisely the sort of pit the Giants find themselves in.

Watching Barkley do his thing in a rival’s colors was bad. Sunday was worse.

For that’s when a grand old historic celebration coincided with a whole steaming pile of on-field ineptitude. The weekend featured a series of events to celebrate the Giants’ 100th season, with a 5k run, a fan fest, a commemorative coin, some throwback uniforms that looked borrowed from the Montreal Canadiens, and a ceremony celebrating the best 100 players in franchise history. Among them — you know it — Saquon Barkley.

Followed by a shellacking of the Giants’ supposedly stout defense from none other than Sam Darnold, who looked mightier than he ever did as a Jet, and collected his first Vikings win with such ease that it was borderline rude.

Daniel Jones, who New York effectively chose to pay instead of Barkley, was poor enough to be the target of boos during the game and some unwarranted nastiness as he headed for the parking lot afterward. Fast-forward to this week and the New York media is ablaze with debate about whether Jones should be benched or not, while the decision not to pony up for Barkley already looks painfully misguided.

“Is there a running back in the NFC that Saquon Barkley reminded you of?” FS1’s Chris Broussard asked on “First Things First.” “Christian McCaffrey,” came the answer from co-host Kevin Wildes.

“Saquon Barkley did what I expected him to do,” Broussard continued. “The funk is over.”

Power Rankings: Cowboys rise, Deshaun Watson & Browns fall

As we’re in a statsy kind of mood, here is the final count of Daboll’s analysis. The head coach was very clear that he would take swift action in the form of promising to “go back and watch the tape,” reinforcing the point 11 times, in case anyone was concerned that he’d flip over to Netflix instead.

Daboll admitted that the Giants can either “do everything better,” “must do better,” “must do a better job,” or that they will “see what we can do better,” no fewer than 12 times, impressively sandwiched into little more than six minutes.

Doing better in September isn’t something the Giants have shown themselves to be particularly good at in recent times. Modern starts have clouded to the tune of 1-5 (2021 and 2023), 1-7 (2018 and 2020), 2-11 (2019) and 1-8 (2017). There has been a grand total of one playoff win and zero NFC East titles since the franchise won Super Bowl 46, which feels like forever ago but was actually in Feb. of 2012.

“Obviously not good enough,” Jones added. “Didn’t get in the end zone, scored six points, didn’t create much rhythm and flow for ourselves. I’ve got to be better, play better, and execute more consistently.”

A bunch of tricky fixtures are up next on the schedule, starting with a divisional visit to the Washington Commanders (1 p.m. ET on FOX), then a home clash with the Dallas Cowboys, before an October in which they might be the betting underdog for each of their four games.

It’s already messy, and in such a Giants kind of way, it got there with indecent haste.

The very nature of an NFL season is that, with one singular exception, hope dies for everyone sooner or later. It’s not meant to be a race to get there first. But that’s the one thing, the only thing, in which the Giants are making a habit of leading the field.

Martin Rogers is a columnist for FOX Sports. Follow him on Twitter @MRogersFOX.