DETROIT – Giants tight end Theo Johnson fired his helmet 20 yards across the turf, dropped to his knees and pounded the Ford Field turf with his fist as the Lions celebrated winning this Motor City Shootout.
Center John Michael Schmitz and the offensive line gathered and stood still, frozen and devastated, as the final score read 34-27 Lions in overtime and players poured off the sidelines to shake hands.
“I want to win,” a gutted Johnson said shortly after at his locker. “I care a lot. I work really hard. I give a lot to this game and this team. So it’s frustrating when you don’t get the results you want and you work for it.”
“We played well enough to win,” he said. “And we didn’t win. That hurts.”
One would think a 2-10 team that just lost their sixth straight, dropped to 0-7 on the road and lost a 10-point lead for a fifth time this season would no longer be hurt as badly by the disappointment. Maybe they’d go numb to it all.
But here it was the opposite. This loss felt especially cruel and pained the players deeply because of how much production and fun they’d had nearly earning a win.
Sunday’s Jameis Winston experience, in all its glory, was electric and unforgettable in leading the Giants to 517 yards of total offense, the most by a Giants team since 2019 when Saquon Barkley wore blue.
But interim coach Mike Kafka’s decision to go instead of kicking a field goal with 2:59 remaining, and the Giants leading 27-24, left the door open for a game-tying, 59-yard Jake Bates field goal with 28 seconds to play in regulation.
Lions running back Jahmyr Gibbs, who went off for 264 yards and three touchdowns, exploded through a gaping hole in Andre Patterson’s Giants defensive line for a 69-yard touchdown on the first play from scrimmage in overtime.
And Winston was sacked on fourth down at the Lions’ 31-yard line by Detroit edge rusher Aidan Hutchinson to end the game with 4:19 remaining in OT.
Malik Nabers lashed out on social media with an ‘X’ post questioning everything.
“Sometimes I think they b makin us lose on purpose!” Nabers wrote in his since-deleted post on his account. “Cause it’s no way, bro you throw the ball instead of runnin it to make em burn 2 timeouts?? then you dnt kick the field goal.??? Then they have to go down and score!!! Football common sense!!!! Am I missing something?”
And wide receiver Gunner Olszewski, who threw a 33-yard touchdown pass to Winston in one of the NFL’s plays of the year, described the Giants’ up and down vibes perfectly.
“It sure is [high vibes], then they sink all the way back to the bottom when we get to the locker room,” Olszewski said. “It feels like we’re winning on the sideline, and we are winning. And then we don’t.”
Winston said the team has to believe first in order to finish, beyond their lack of execution.
“Honestly, I think it’s more of a spiritual thing than an X’s and O’s thing,” Winston said of the Giants’ inability to finish. “We have to dig deep and continue to exhibit unwavering faith and not get into an energy of denial or doubt.
“I love Coach Kafka’s message, ‘Leave no doubt,’ and today we left some doubt out there,” he added. “We were on the three-yard line with a chance to put the freakin’ nail in the coffin, and I missed Theo Johnson on the quick flat. That is the details. That is the execution that is required to win tough NFL games.”
It’s fine for Winston, 31, to put the blame on himself as the team’s leader for this day. But his 366 yards passing and two touchdowns reaffirmed that he is light years better than Russell Wilson, the quarterback the Giants started in Week 1.
In that context, it’s difficult to watch a game as exciting as Sunday’s and not wonder what might have been if the organization had given him a chance to compete for the job in the summer.
Winston threw a 39-yard flea-flicker touchdown pass to Wan’Dale Robinson off a toss from running back Devin Singletary in the first quarter.
Then Winston caught his 33-yard touchdown pass from Olszewski in the third quarter and threw a Heisman-pose stiff arm onto Lions linebacker Derrick Barnes to gallop into the end zone.
“Russell Wilson sent me a picture of doing the Heisman, in like a little GIF. I think it’s called a GIF,” Winston said. “And I did the Heisman, and we got in the end zone. We just didn’t win. We gotta win.”
Winston, true to form, threw a fourth quarter interception to Lions safety Thomas Harper while trying to make another play. But then he escaped a sack by Lions edge Al-Quadin Muhammad to complete a 39-yard pass to Johnson on 3rd and 17 in crunch time.
The quarterback did all of that only two days after finding out he was going to be the Giants’ starting quarterback, when rookie Jaxson Dart (concussion) failed to clear the protocol late in the week.
The only thing Winston couldn’t do was finish the game. And his turnover on downs at the goal line with 2:54 remaining in the fourth quarter bothered Winston most, especially that missed 2nd and goal pass from the two that he sailed wide of Johnson’s outstretched hands.
“So many if, ands and buts,” Winston said. “My pass to the right to Theo Johnson, if it is four inches to the left, that’s a touchdown and we finish the game.”
Kafka defended his decision to go for the touchdown and the two-score lead late in the fourth quarter.
“I stand by it,” he said. “We did want to be aggressive. We were in a good flow and wanted to go up two scores.”
Winston supported it, too.
“I am with it,” he said. “We are desperate for a win.”
The hard truth about that decision, though, is that Kafka couldn’t trust a field goal and a six-point lead because he cannot trust this Giants defense.
Top defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence wasn’t on the field for the first play of overtime due to an undisclosed injury that “flared up a little bit more in the quarter,” according to Kafka.
And the lightning-fast Gibbs went the distance untouched.
Safety Jevon Holland — whose delay of game penalty cost the Giants important yards before Bates’ 59-yard field goal — was one of many Giants defenders on the second level who didn’t look great as Gibbs sped past them to the end zone.
But Holland was asked a direct question to provide context about why Gibbs was getting to the second level of the defense at top speed so often in this game. Here is what he said:
“He’s getting a handoff and he’s running straight and he’s not being touched, and then he gets to the second level and he’s got a full head of steam,” Holland said. “Because if we hit him at the first level, he’s not gonna be untouched. So if he’s untouched, that means he’s not being hit at the first levels. He’s just running straight.”
The Lions were just running straight. Straight at the Giants. And there is nothing this defense could do about it.
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