You have to feel every Giants fan, every Giant, maybe no more than Leonard Williams today.
You never want to join the list of players who have never experienced the post-season, a list of Archie Manning and Dick Butkus and Gale Sayers, and of course Ernie Banks, whose Hall of Fame Cubs career spanned 19 seasons.
Leonard Williams was in his second season with the Jets on the last Sunday of the 2016 regular season when Ryan Fitzpatrick, who had extended his own playoff drought to 16 seasons on Sunday, threw away that opportunity at Buffalo.
But Heartbreak Hotel arrived Sunday at 11:30 p.m. for the Giants, and for Leonard Williams, who had done everything he could to get a taste of that elusive first playoff appearance in his six NFL seasons, which had his will on Andy Dalton and the Cowboys, who had refused to let the Giants, 23-19 winners, lose a match they couldn’t dream of losing.
Continue dreaming about a date with Tom Brady on Saturday night at MetLife Stadium.
And then that dream became an unthinkable, unimaginable, unscrupulous, unforgivable nightmare on Sunday night when Doug Pederson, with nothing to play for, failed to play to defeat and eliminate the WFT.
He played to defeat and eliminate the 6-10 Giants.
ROD, EAGLE, HIGHER.
“That’s why we don’t like the Eagles,” tweeted Eli Manning.
This was a coaching move for the birds with the NFC Least title at stake.
Pederson had already passed a chippie field goal that would have made it 17-17, but remained 17-14 for the WFT when Jalen Hurts threw incomplete in the end zone on 4th-and-4th.
Now 12:35 was left and Pederson called on Nate Sudfeld to replace Hurts.
Nate Sudfeld, who had thrown 25 career passes, and none this season.
And of course Sudfeld promptly threw an interception and lost the ball when he couldn’t make a low click from the center.
Williams’ prayers, the prayers of all Giants and Giants fans, were not answered.
WFT 20, Eagles 14.
Wait until next year.
Giants to Doug Pederson: Tanks for nothing.
“I’ve never been in my career and this is my sixth year in the league,” Williams said after the Giants took care of business. “So I mean it has taken a long time, and it will be fun to play in a playoff game, especially with this team that has overcome so much. I feel like we deserve it.”
He certainly earned it with three sacks of Dalton, two in the fourth quarter, dominated with the kind of game Lawrence Taylor and Michael Strahan would have recognized and understood, eventually bringing Dalton to Xavier McKinney’s end-zone interception with 1:15 left. .
And no one should have been surprised if it was Big Cat Williams who would have been the King of Beasts had Wayne Gallman not let hearts beat sooner, after much indecision and consternation, it was judged that he made his own fumble at the bottom of a hectic scrum shortly afterwards.
Leonard Williams kept an unlikely dream alive for about eight hours.
But no more.
Williams earns his big payday after a season – a career-high 11.5 sacks – in which he should have earned a Pro Bowl bid and justified Giants general manager Dave Gettleman’s questionable trade for him with the Jets for a third round pick in 2020 and a fifth-rounder in 2021 mid-2019.
Whether Gettleman remains the GM or not, Joe Judge needs to back up his post-game flattery and find a way to keep Williams, who is working on the $ 16.126 million one-year franchise tag, in the blue.
“We love him in the building, he’s a great teammate, he’s fun to coach,” said Judge. “He makes your job a lot easier by coming to work and enjoying your work, but also by playing on the field, because really, players make coaches good or not. You can’t be a good coach with bad players, that’s actually the reality, and he’s a good player, so he makes us all look a lot better. We had to get plays from him, he definitely took a step and see, he’s been great coaching. “
Gettleman got heat for the deal as the 2019 Giants were in the midst of a rebuilding season and weren’t going anywhere anytime soon, and Williams had underperformed as the sixth overall pick of the 2015 NFL Draft.
“The juice was worth squeezing,” said Gettleman at the end of last season.
There was enough juice from Williams in a day that the Giants had to squeeze every drop out of him.
“I’ve certainly seen a lot of the criticism and the hate and stuff like that in the press, the media and by the fans,” said Williams. “It feels good to prove them wrong, and also to show why Dave Gettleman took a gamble on me. It feels good to show him it was the right choice. “
In the first half, Williams picked up one of his sacks and grabbed Dalton from behind just before the first down on a third and 10 scrambling down the middle.
He saved his best for the fourth quarter, when great players are at their best.
Third-and-8 in midfield, Giants 20, Cowboys 19, Williams fires Dalton.
And then: 1:53 left, Dalton only 7 meters from the Big Blue end zone, 7 meters from the possible destruction of the Giants’ unlikely dream.
And Leonard Williams fired Dalton on the 17th.
As a Jet, Williams registered just 17 sacks in 70 starts. Gettleman saw a strong, enduring then-25-year-old who could be disruptive to defend the run and buzz around the quarterback. Williams could have claimed $ 17.8 million had he been classified as a defensive end rather than a defensive tackle, and his first double-digit sack season will only whet his appetite more.
“I feel like that’s an elite group of guys that have been in that double digit category,” said Williams, “and it feels good.”
He reiterated that the quest for a monster payday has never been his motivation.
“It’s never about the money,” said Williams, “I think I just wanted more respect and show guys the reason I’m in this league.”
He turned 26 in June. The best is yet to come for Leonard Williams. Just not next week against Tom Brady.
Poultry, eagles, poultry.