The Giants suffered a tough loss to the Redskins on Monday night.
It left them one game up on the Cowboys and the Redskins in the race for the NFC East division and guaranteed that they won’t win more than three games in the division this season. They split with both teams and the winner of the Cowboys-Redskins game later this season will have at least four divisional wins, which doesn’t bode well for their chances of winning a tiebreak.
There’s always the Wild Card race, where the Giants do own a tiebreak on the Seahawks, but they might not control their own fate in that race after another loss. That’s why coach Tom Coughlin didn’t pull any punches on Tuesday when discussing what his team needs to do now.
“We have to win literally every one of our games. That’s how I look at it,” Coughlin said, via Jenny Vrentas of the Newark Star-Ledger.
Coughlin also said he wanted the team to “pay specific attention” to how teams lose games around the league. Presumably, he’d like them to pay special attention to how penalties can undermine a team’s chances of winning.
The nine penalties committed by the Giants were a major reason why they lost. They had penalties on each of their first two offensive drives that forced the team to settle for field goals, they had penalties on several kick returns to cost them field position and they had a penalty on a late third down pass to Martellus Bennett that wiped out a first down. Maybe the Giants still don’t win if they eliminate those errors, but it’s a lot easier to like their chances if they do.