The New York Giants have fully embraced a love for gritty finishes under head coach John Harbaugh.
For the fifth straight week, the Giants’ game came down to the final minutes of the fourth quarter or overtime. It didn’t go the way Big Blue envisioned last Sunday at home against the Saints, but they flipped the script on the road with a big 27-21 overtime win over the Houston Texans to improve to 4-2-1 heading into their bye.
Against another tough team with a relentlessly aggressive defense, it certainly wasn’t easy for new starting quarterback J.J. McCarthy and the Giants to pull off the big plays that decided the game.
Still, Harbaugh’s group stayed composed under another week of late pressure, thanks to these four storylines, which authored the defining moments.
First Down: Malik Nabers Sets the Tone
J.J. McCarthy stepped into a tough spot last Sunday with the Giants trailing big, but his first real reps under center helped him form instant connections with Malik Nabers and Isaiah Likely as the trio tried to mount a comeback.
Heading into this week’s matchup with the Texans, Nabers knew he had to get open for his new starting quarterback and help him make plays. He wasted no time, hauling in a huge grab on the Giants’ first offensive possession.
On the eighth play of the drive, with McCarthy moving the huddle efficiently through Houston’s defense, the pair connected for the second time on a gorgeous 42-yard shot that Nabers brought down to the Texans’ 2-yard line before getting forced out of bounds.
Nabers, an LSU product, has been on a tear since Week 4, posting four consecutive games with over 100 receiving yards, the longest active streak in the NFL. He also tied the streak Odell Beckham Jr. posted in 2014.
He faced a tough matchup, with another Tiger product, Derek Stingley Jr., guarding him for most of the contest. Even so, he met his self-proclaimed mission early and helped McCarthy find the confidence to keep slinging it all day against a Texans defense that wasn’t laying down.
Second Down: The Running Game Comes Alive
After several weeks of lackluster showings by the running game, Harbaugh challenged his running backs to step up and take the RB1 job.
They answered the bell, finishing with 180 of the team’s 188 rushing yards on the day, an average of just over 6.2 yards per carry by the running backs alone.
Cam Skattebo, who was quasi-benched last week, rewarded his head coach’s faith by recording a career-best 124 yards on 17 carries and a touchdown.
That’s a 7.3 yards per carry average for those keeping score at home, and while a long of 42 accounted for a big chunk of those yards, it was still good to see the Giants running game, which had again fallen into a rut, come out and have such a big impact on the outcome.
And how about Devin Singletary? After being banished to the inactive list for three weeks earlier in the season, Singletary delivered the winning score in overtime with a beautifully executed 30-yard touchdown run in which he showed patience and vision as a runner.
It’s probably safe to say that the man nicknamed “Motor” won’t be seeing the inactive list again this year so long as he’s healthy.
Third Down: Giants' Short Yardage Trickery
As impressive as Matt Nagy’s offense has looked with three different quarterbacks under center, the Giants hadn’t shown much creativity with trick plays until the third quarter of Sunday’s game.
One of the Giants’ smartest gambles came in the final minute of the third quarter, with the offense stuck at 3rd-and-1 at their own 29-yard line. New York ran Jameis Winston a few times to handle the short-yardage attempts and was pretty successful, thanks to his size and some extra push from the backfield.
The Texans defense sensed a trend in the Giants’ approach, which forced Nagy and company to switch things up and catch the opponent off guard. On the fourth play of the drive, Winston took the handoff as if he was going to charge forward, then quickly shifted it to Cam Skattebo behind him.
Houston crashed down expecting another quarterback sneak, but instead watched Skattebo bounce to the outside and scamper 19 yards downfield for the first down.
A stop by the Texans could have pinned the Giants deep in their own territory and likely forced them to punt back to the home team, whose offense was finding a groove.
Instead, the Giants’ run game took over the drive, and Skattebo capped it 10 plays later with a 16-yard scamper to take a 21-14 lead with just under nine minutes in regulation.
Fourth Down: Deonte Banks Silences Nico Collins
Deonte Banks had one job as he lined up in front of Texans receiver Nico Collins: shut Houston’s best weapon down and force quarterback C.J. Stroud to attack the Giants’ defense with his other pass catchers.
Collins came into Week 7 averaging 80.8 yards per game, but with the rejuvenated Banks in his way, the All-Pro receiver was nearly held to a goose egg. Banks allowed just two catches for 6 yards to Collins, one of the lowest numbers in an individual matchup this season.
Stroud certainly tried to get his veteran involved as a sparkplug for the Texans’ struggling offense, targeting him five times, the second-most among Houston’s pass catchers. Still, Collins wouldn’t secure his first catch until the 9:30 mark of the third quarter, followed by his second and final grab on the next play.
Collins’s slim effort wasn’t even enough to secure a first-down conversion on that drive, and the Texans were forced to punt in three plays and nine yards. It might have been one of the best displays of man-coverage football from a Giants defender all season.
In total, Banks finished as New York’s fourth-highest-graded defender, allowing three catches on six targets for 10 yards in all while deflecting two passes.
The Texans finished with their lowest total passing yards (153). Without a healthy running back room to try to attack the Giants’ weaker run defense and without their top target contributing chunk plays, they were largely sitting ducks as Dennard Wilson ratcheted up the pressure down the stretch.
Banks is quickly earning a new contract with his play in 2026, and it’s a great sign for a secondary marred by injuries and poor coverage metrics in recent seasons.
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