So here’s how the 2020 NFC East’s wretched story ends:
Taking it to one of their two fiercest rivals, the Giants take a 23-19 victory over the hated cowboys. To every fiber of their being, to every grain of their blue-hued soul, they touted their football season to the Eagles, who, if not 1A on the list of most wanted Giants fans, are definitely 1B.
But they needed the Eagles to upset 1C – the Washington Football Team.
“I’m not going to be caught dead wearing an Eagles hat,” Giants receiver Sterling Shepard had said around 5pm, “but I’ll root for them.”
And yet, who could know with confidence that 6½ hours later, the Eagles – who, let’s face it, have probably inspired more Giants fan outbursts over the years than the Cowboys and WFT put together – yet more loathed, more reviled, more loathed, more despised than ever.
First, three points behind in the third quarter, Eagles coach Doug Pederson avoided a chip-shot game-tying field goal for fourth-and-goal out of four.
Then he punted.
Not literally. But instead of looking at how his intriguing young quarterback, Jalen Hurts, might react to playing in the fourth quarter of a meaningful game – meaningful for the WFT anyway – he brought in his third series quarterback named Nate Sudfeld.
If you had never heard of Nate Sudfeld, you weren’t alone.
Only for now his name will roll off the tongue here: Nate # @ # $ & # Sudfeld.
Sudfeld did what you thought Sudfeld would do. He threw a pickaxe. He rummaged the ball. He looked like the non-prospect in every way with 26 career tries under his belt. The Eagles took a knee with a full quarter to go. Washington won the game 20-14, and NFC East with a 7-9 record, and hosted Tom Brady the following week.
The giants?
See, they had 16 weeks for this one to make sure they could finish better than 6-10. Outside of New York, few tears will be shed for them. And look, it’s not up to the Eagles to make the Giants feel good about themselves. It just isn’t.
Still …
“Why the hell isn’t Jalen Hurts in the game?” tweeted Darius Slayton.
Tweeted Golden Tate: “I think the Eagles just hate us more than Washington.”
And Blake Martinez: “……”
It was strange enough how the Giants’ own game had ended, with a football on the ground, with a season reduced to the random bounces of an elongated brown rocket. Of course, that game couldn’t end routinely, just as the season would never end routinely, this Giants season that felt like about five different seasons in one.
Wayne Gallman made a brilliant play and passed the first down marker, and that should have been game, set, match, and the Giants all had to slip into their fluffy Eagles socks for a few hours.
That was of course not possible. Of course the ball slipped out of Gallman’s hands and landed on the turf, and while it looked like Gallman had landed on the ball – landed on his butt (OF COURSE!) – there was one particularly nervous moment when there was one. the officer pointed out that it was Giants ‘ball and another said that it was Cowboys’ ball.
“I wanted to slap Wayne in the back for fumbling,” Giants safety Logan Ryan said a little later, “but he got the ball back.”
“I’m sorry I caused so much drama,” Gallman would say.
Drama?
He had no idea what drama was to come.
When these Giants were 0-5 and 1-7, they would all have offered their kingdom for a little good drama, for a seasonal drama, unlike the will-the-darkness-someday-disappear drama that followed them in this season. Drama? After a terrible start, after a sublime centerpiece, after a brutal last few weeks, they could take a little more drama.
And would tolerate the drama that was to come, once they got their end of the Sunday afternoon bargains. They sent the Cowboys away, and while Coach Joe Judge and most of the Giants players haven’t lived in the shadow of the Damned Star for as long as some others in the organization, that made this a little extra sweet.
“There were a lot of smiles and hugs – socially aloof hugs – in the locker room after that,” Judge said, and you have to believe that the loudest and happiest of the greeters was John Mara, the co-owner of the Giants, who lived and died with these Giants-Cowboys games for the better part of 60 years.
“We came in today and we had a meaningful game,” said Judge, “and the guys took care of the business.”
They arranged things, and then they had to wait. And they probably wouldn’t have believed you if you had told them how it would all turn out at the end of that wait. Because how could they? How can anyone?