Hear Giants LB Brian Burns on not giving up after Giants fall to Bears
“We’ve got to stick together,” says Giants linebacker Brian Burns in this video clip after New York falls to the Bears on Sunday.
The New York Giants lost to the Chicago Bears 24-20, extending their losing streak to four games.Rookie quarterback Jaxson Dart left the game late with a concussion after another strong performance.The Giants have now lost four games this season after holding double-digit leads.
CHICAGO – The New York Giants felt broken as players and coaches scrambled Sunday night inside the visitor’s locker room at Soldier Field to get out of there and onto the charter flight home.
Broken dreams that were alive and well last month after that massive upset of the Super Bowl champion Eagles, the Giants’ last victory prior to their current four-game losing streak.Broken hearts following that fourth-quarter collapse in Denver, one that in a way foreshadowed much if not all of this.The broken plays that have inexplicably crushed these Giants time and again with games on the line, four double-digit leads lost in a season that still has seven games remaining.
And this was the embodiment of the broken spirit of a franchise: their ascending star rookie quarterback Jaxson Dart, forced to pack his duffle bag and make sense of everything that had just transpired in forced silence because of the concussion he sustained late in Sunday’s 24-20 loss to the Chicago Bears.
“He’s playing with a lot of swag, a lot of heart, leaving it all out there,” Giants tight end Daniel Bellinger said. “Just want to make a play for him – we had to find a way to win that game.”
And yet, once again, the Giants did not.
In setting what now looms as the longest road losing streak in franchise history – 11 games and counting, including Sunday – the Giants certainly feel like they are the precipice of another overhaul.
The one shining light that this entire organization could point to and move forward with optimism and belief was Dart; now even that confidence and aura the 22-year-old brought to the table could not prevent him from taking that long deliberate walk to the locker room early in the fourth quarter as a game the Giants should have won – one Dart did everything to get them there – started slipping away.
The Giants (2-8) settled for a Younghoe Koo field goal on the opening drive of the fourth quarter with Russell Wilson in for Dart. That extended the lead to 20-10, and even though a penalty by the Bears on the field goal try would have allowed Brian Daboll to take the three points off the board, instead for a chance at a touchdown on fourth and goal inside the 1, he decided against it.
Ultimately, the Bears (6-3) responded by scoring the next 14 points over the next nine-plus minutes to steal a game the Giants had no business giving away.
In the aftermath, Giants right tackle Jermaine Eluemunor had to find space to decompress away from the post-game hustle and bustle. He took a seat on the guard rail just outside the stadium tunnel leading to the Giants’ locker room, shaking his head in disbelief, somehow trying to piece together the final 10:19 of this team’s latest failure to finish in the closing minutes.
“It’s tough to keep losing like this,” Eluemunor said.
Dart’s availability for next Sunday when the Giants play host to the Green Bay Packers at MetLife Stadium is uncertain. His health and recovery as part of the league’s concussion protocol will ultimately be determined by independent third-party neurologists.
He ran for two more touchdowns, giving him one in five straight games, becoming the first quarterback in NFL history to accomplish that feat. He has also thrown for 10 touchdowns with just three interceptions, completing 19-of-29 passes for 242 yards against the Bears, also rushing for 66 yards.
Late in the third quarter, Dart lost a fumble and wound up hitting his head on the ground, seemingly the play on which he sustained the concussion. He was not checked at the time and was on the field for two plays at the end of the third quarter before being looked at by the medical team during the break between the third and fourth quarters.
With yet another defeat that defied the odds – the Giants were in complete control until Dart left the game – Daboll’s coaching fate and that of anyone on his staff will undoubtedly be questioned.
“I don’t care,” Giants captain Dexter Lawrence said in response to a question about Daboll’s job security being perceived as tenuous. “It don’t matter. It never has – it never will matter what anybody outside the facility has to say. I think we’ve just to keep coming back every week and keep going.”
Asked who is responsible for giving the Giants solutions for how not to let this keep happening, Lawrence responded: “Players.”
At this point, the Giants continue to show an inability to find those answers across the board.
And until this gets fixed – especially with so much on Dart’s shoulders already, seeing as how even his invincibility was tested here Sunday – no one is safe from the Giants’ broken reality that continues to reveal itself every week.