Two hundred and seven passes. That was how far Jayden Daniels had gone this season without an interception when he took a MetLife Stadium field still soaked by the torrential rain and lightning that had disrupted warm-ups on Thursday night, November 12. Then, with 8:13 left, J.J. McCarthy hit Isaiah Likely for a 66-yard touchdown and a 21-17 Giants lead, and Daniels threw his first two interceptions of the year on back-to-back drives.
Washington had arrived at 2-5-1, one defeat from falling four games behind New York in the NFC East. It left with a 24-21 win, a 3-5-1 record and a 1-0-1 edge in the season series, enough to hold the head-to-head tiebreaker.
The defense did its job. Safeties Jevón Holland and Ar'Darius Washington picked off Jayden Daniels on back-to-back drives, the kind of November turnovers that usually decide close games, and each time the offense went three-and-out and handed Daniels the ball back with a clock that helped him far more than it pressured him.
The Giants' own punter gave him his next opening.
Jordan Stout's 12-yard punt went out of bounds with under two minutes remaining and gave Washington the ball at its own 29, according to Giants.com. Three plays and 49 seconds later, with a contested pass interference flag drawn by Treylon Burks along the way, the game had turned.
With 57 seconds left, Daniels found Stefon Diggs over the middle from 32 yards out. Diggs slipped two tackles, raced to the goal line and fell backward into the end zone to finish a six-catch, 83-yard night. NFL.com noted that it was the second game-winning touchdown of his career caught in the final minute, after the "Minneapolis Miracle" in the 2017 playoffs.
"Poised. He didn't flinch," Diggs said of his quarterback, according to AFP. New York needed only a field goal to force overtime. Instead, on third down with 25 seconds left, Rasul Douglas intercepted a deep J.J. McCarthy throw and ended it.
The best night of McCarthy's career, wasted
The cruelty is in McCarthy's stat line. He set personal highs with 23 completions and 293 passing yards, and his 66-yard touchdown pass had turned a 10-7 halftime deficit into a four-point Giants lead, so that for long stretches of the second half this looked like the night the division would start to break open in New York's favor.
McCarthy had no interest in the numbers afterward. "We didn't make enough plays to win it," he said, according to the Associated Press. John Harbaugh, in his first season as head coach in East Rutherford, went straight to the calls on the snaps that decided it: "Zero blitzes, and those are the routes getting run," he said.
The other argument, about the officials, played out in the stands and online, where a late defensive pass interference flag against the Giants angered the fan base enough that, as Yahoo collected, many supporters asked the league to "change the rules" and even to fine the officials.
The anger is understandable. It explains very little, since a team that intercepts the opposing quarterback twice in the fourth quarter and turns neither turnover into a single point does not need the referees to account for the scoreboard.
The Giants didn't lose the division on Thursday, but they lost the margin that let them stop worrying about it.
"It's a missed opportunity," Harbaugh said, according to Giants.com, and the standings show why. New York fell to 5-3-1 and still leads the NFC East, ahead of a Dallas team at 4-5 that hosts the 49ers next. Washington sits third at 3-5-1, two games back, with eight weeks of the regular season left.
The Giants outgained the Commanders 399 yards to 340, according to NFL.com, and still came away with a defeat that could have left Washington four games adrift but instead pulled it closer.
A tiebreaker already slipping away
The detail that should trouble the Giants most never shows up in the table: they haven't beaten Washington this season. On October 11 the two teams tied 27-27 in the rain, in a game rookie kicker Dominic Zvada could have won with a 46-yard field goal in overtime, a kick he missed after having already missed from 50 and 57 yards in regulation.
A tie and a loss against the Commanders make for a poor head-to-head record, and head-to-head is the first tiebreaker if the race finishes close, so if Washington closes the gap it already holds the edge where it counts.
Week 9 ended with the Giants in control. Week 10, which started on a Thursday, ended with them merely ahead.
The NFC playoff picture
Across the conference the picture is clearer. San Francisco, 7-1 in the NFC West, sets the pace and marks the level any East champion would have to face in January, while the NFC East has no team above .500 except the one that just dropped a game it was well placed to win.
Hosting a first-round game as division winner remains very possible, but a bye looks out of reach for anyone in the East if the conference leaders keep this pace.
The next chance to rebuild the cushion comes after ten days off. Jacksonville, a 2025 playoff team, visits MetLife on November 22; Cleveland follows on December 20, with a trip to Indianapolis, a home game against San Francisco and a trip to Seattle in between. "New York should've put the game away sooner after Daniels' initial two interceptions," NBC Washington wrote, and that is the lesson the Giants carry into that stretch.
McCarthy set career highs, and the defense created the chances. The trouble starts after the defense makes a play, with an offense unable to pick up a first down at the very moment when one first down would have kept the clock running and Washington's best players on the bench, and in a fourth quarter that is the difference between closing out a game and waiting for the opponent to win it.
The NFC East had looked like a one-team race. For now, it is a race again.
