The Sports Xchange

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.Y. — The Fumble, a notorious play in which the New York Giants lost a division game to the Eagles because they didn’t fall on the ball to run out the clock, has some new competition.

Meet “The Decision,” a curious set of events that saw quarterback Eli Manning, whose team was nursing a slim 23-20 lead, inexplicably throw the ball out of the back of the end zone on a third-and-1 play.

That decision stopped the clock and left the Cowboys with 1:34 to mount a fourth-quarter comeback after kicker Josh Brown’s 19-yard field goal with 1:37 left on the clock increased the Giants’ lead to six.

To fully understand the madness of that play, it’s necessary to go back to the one prior when running back Rashad Jennings, with second-and-goal from the Cowboys’ 2-yard line and 1:50 left on the clock, made a rather outrageous claim.

“On the first-down play, I was told, ‘Rashad, don’t score,'” Jennings said according to ESPN. “On second down, ‘Rashad, don’t score.’ I was tempted to say, ‘Forget it,’ and go score because I could. But I didn’t want to be that guy. But definitely, I was asked not to score.”

It turns out that the instructions Jennings received didn’t come from the coaches on the sideline; instead, they came from Manning, who admitted that he lost track of how many timeouts the Cowboys had remaining in the game after the Giants declined an offside penalty called against the Cowboys.

“I thought they only had one timeout left and that they would have had to take their timeout because there was a defensive penalty, even though we declined that,” Manning said.

“I thought they might let us score to get the ball back, so I informed Rashad, ‘Hey, if they let you score, just go down at the one-inch line; don’t score.’ That is my mistake; that did not come from the sideline.”

That all led to yet another curious decision, and that was Manning chucking the ball out of the back of the end zone instead of either buying time by moving around the pocket or simply taking a sack to keep the clock moving.

“I had an option – just take the sack and run those 40 seconds off the clock – give them less time,” Manning said. “That’s 100 percent on me and that can’t happen. I gotta do a better job managing the game, managing the clock and making better decisions.”

Manning said he and head coach Tom Coughlin spoke about the incident and that Coughlin’s message was loud and clear: don’t tell teammates not to score unless instructed to do so by the coaches.

“I can’t be the one to inform a back (not to score); that’s not my decision to do that in that scenario,” Manning said.

“So that’s where if that’s the case, it’s coming from the sideline and I can relay the message. It wasn’t the right thing to do so I made that mistake.”

Despite Manning’s grave error that sent the Giants to their fifth straight loss in regular-season openers and that also put them in an 0-1 hole against NFC East opponents, Coughlin has not lost faith in the 12-year veteran, who on Friday inked a four-year contract extension.

“To be honest with you, nothing like that has ever happened,” Coughlin said. “His mind was in the right place; he just didn’t have all the facts right, and unfortunately we didn’t get it corrected.”

“I completely trust Eli; I always have,” Coughlin said.

–As if things weren’t bad enough for the Giants in Dallas, their chartered plane experienced some mechanical issues that necessitated the team being grounded an additional 2.5 hours before being cleared to take off.

Head coach Tom Coughlin said the players, who were drained after the disappointing loss to the Cowboys, were especially tired after the long flight delay in which they sat on the tarmac awaiting clearance to depart.

“Nobody got any sleep. The guys were tired, and they were sad, they were disappointed,” Coughlin said.

The lack of sleep certainly didn’t help matters when the team met on Monday to try to find answers to their devastating loss the night prior.

“It was a different kind of day, let’s put it that way. And again as I said, we talked about yesterday’s game and about going forward and how I urged them to get to bed early tonight and again tomorrow night.”

New York left Dallas shortly after 4 a.m. central time and arrived at Newark/Liberty International Airport shortly after 7:30 a.m. Monday morning.

Coughlin is hoping that his players follow his advice so that come Wednesday when they begin preparing for their home opener against the Falcons, they are as fresh as daisies.

“Come to work Wednesday morning excited about looking forward not backward,” Coughlin said.

REPORT CARD VS. COWBOYS

PASSING OFFENSE: C – Eli Manning was victimized by three key third-down drops by slot receiver Preston Parker, playing for the injured Victor Cruz. It also didn’t help matters that Rueben Randle, who got the start in Cruz’s absence, had trouble separating down the field. This allowed Dallas to load up their coverage on Odell Beckham Jr.; in doing so, the Cowboys held the dangerous Beckham to 44 yards on five receptions.

RUSHING OFFENSE: C-minus – On the whole, the Giants finished with a 4.1 average, which isn’t bad. The problem though was in the distribution of the carries. Rashad Jennings received the lion’s share, finishing with 52 yards on 13 carries, and very narrowly got away with a ball security issue when he was ruled down by contact once the ball popped out of his grasp. He was followed by the ineffective Andre Williams, who finished with 14 yards on six carries. Shane Vereen received three carries which he turned into 14 yards. With the Giants having trouble running up the giut, Vereen’s quickness and outside speed should have been used more, yet that adjustment wasn’t made.

PASS DEFENSE: C – It doesn’t matter who the defensive coordinator is or who the Giants put back there at linebacker or safety; this team cannot seem to cover the middle of the field. Add to that a non-existent pass rush in which the defensive front didn’t even bother to get their hands up in the air to at least knock down passes, and it made for a rather ugly showing resulting in 356 passing yards allowed.

RUSH DEFENSE: B – The run defense wasn’t bad — the only big-play run allowed was a 15-yard scramble by Joseph Randle. The Giants did do a better job with setting the edge and playing assignment-true football regarding their gaps, the result of which was 80 yards in 15 carries.

SPECIAL TEAMS: B – The Giants got some fine kicking out of Josh Brown and new punter Brad Wing, but the return game of former Cowboy Dwayne Harris left a lot to be desired. Harris made a couple of poor decisions, including running east and west instead of north and south and was not much of a factor. On the plus side, the Giants special teams did win the overall starting field position by a large margin, with the Giants’ average starting field opposition being their 31 and the Cowboys’ being their 20.

COACHING: D – From the decision to not run the ball on the final play prior to Cowboys’ game-winning drive, to the defense’s decision to not deploy nickel coverage on that same game-winning Cowboys drive, the coaching staff, which is supposed to put players in the best position to win games, came up woefully short on a night where they could ill afford to take foolish risks.