Giants Edge Bengals as Eli Manning Passes for Three Touchdowns
By ZACH SCHONBRUNNOV. 15, 2016
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Instead of cheers, a nervous ripple coursed through the crowd at MetLife Stadium. The kicker had not left the sideline. Yes, the Giants were going for it. From the 3-yard line.
It was a brazen gamble, the Giants facing fourth down, trailing the Cincinnati Bengals by 6 points early in the fourth quarter, with momentum having slipped away in the third. But the Giants players were not surprised: Coach Ben McAdoo had told them they were likely to use all four downs on the drive.
“We kind of expected it,” running back Rashad Jennings said.
The instinctive faith in quarterback Eli Manning could easily have backfired, since the target on the play, Sterling Shepard, had just dropped a pass on a key third-down conversion attempt a few minutes earlier.
But Shepard held onto this one, a 3-yard touchdown reception on a shallow crossing route that ultimately represented the difference Monday night in a 21-20 win.
“Coach just has a lot of trust in the offense,” Shepard said. “He trusts us to execute, and that’s what we did.”
After four consecutive wins, the trust would seem warranted. The Giants (6-3) did not always click, suffering offensive slumps in the first and third quarters, but they finished strong in both halves. And the defense was lively, holding Bengals quarterback Andy Dalton to 204 yards with one touchdown and an interception and sacking him three times, including twice consecutively late in the fourth.
The final one, by Olivier Vernon, with about three and a half minutes remaining, ended Cincinnati’s final drive.
“We have guys on this defense that can do special things,” Vernon said. “It was a great performance.”
With this recent string of gutsy performances — all four wins have been by seven points or less — the Giants have planted themselves firmly as contenders. Their potential can be scary: case in point, the game’s opening drive. The Giants ran eight plays covering 80 yards in a little less than four minutes, featuring six completions by Manning (in six attempts), and ending with a 10-yard touchdown catch by Jerell Adams.
But whatever message the Giants were trying to send was quickly volleyed back by the Bengals. Cincinnati (3-5-1) answered with a touchdown in just three plays, highlighted by a 71-yard catch and run by the tight end, Tyler Eifert.
Both teams, though, eventually settled into a pattern of offensive malaise. The Giants, as has often been the case, struggled to establish anything with their running game. The Bengals failed to convert on their first seven third-down opportunities.
Manning (28 of 44 for 240 yards, three touchdowns and two interceptions) also had his struggles. He was intercepted at the 28-yard-line by Dre Kirkpatrick, who returned the ball all the way to the 7. But the Giants’ defense held firm, and Cincinnati settled for a field goal.
Invigorated, the Giants turned, as usual, to the electrifying Beckham. On second down from the Bengals’ 10-yard-line, Beckham ran about 4 yards and paused. It was a short pause, but long enough to stop the legs of his defender, Adam Jones. Then, in an eye blink, Beckham spun to his right, gathering the separation for Manning to find him wide open in the end zone.
Beckham said the Giants had practiced the same play on Sunday, and he had dropped the pass.
“I let them know, ‘Don’t take it out,’” Beckham said, implying that the coaches might take the play out of the playbook.
Instead, McAdoo trusted Beckham to make the play in a game. He delivered.
“It was a great play-call,” Beckham said.
The score, with 1 minute 17 seconds left in the second period, gave the Giants a halftime lead. Then it was halftime, and as the crowd was energized by a speech by the former coach Tom Coughlin, who was inducted into the Giants’ Ring of Honor, the players idled around the field, waiting as Coughlin went long. They seemed distracted as play restarted. The Bengals’ Alex Erickson returned the opening kickoff of the second half for 84 yards, setting up a 9-yard touchdown run by Jeremy Hill to put Cincinnati back ahead.
The Giants looked lethargic. They dropped passes and misran routes. They failed to convert on third-and-four from the Bengals’ 45. They punted on all three third-quarter possessions. Cincinnati scored 10 unanswered points.
“I thought we stayed the course through all the ups and downs in the ballgame,” McAdoo said. “There were quite a few.”
With the Giants trailing, 20-14, McAdoo was not satisfied with his team’s offensive mediocrity. When a pass to Tavarres King came up 3 yards short of the end zone, most of the crowd expected a short kick to narrow the deficit. But Manning and the offense lingered on the field.
“We knew it was going to take touchdowns to beat this team,” McAdoo said. “It’s a good football team, and we felt like we needed to score touchdowns.”
McAdoo had trusted the Giants to finish their drive, finish the game, and they did.
