Maybe it was a week full of NFL upsets, but very little went right for the New York Giants against a team that was determined to improve its image while building on the league’s best record.

The New England Patriots (11-2) dominated the game across all three phases, walking off with a 33-15 victory that left their weary opponents heading home with a seventh consecutive loss. The Giants fell to 2-11 and extended their road skid to 13 games, dating to last season.

No, the return of rookie starting quarterback Jaxson Dart to the lineup didn’t provide a spark for the offense. Outside linebackers coach Charlie Bullen’s tenure as defensive coordinator failed to turn the tide for his unit. And the special teams suffered through their worst performance of the season.

“It just wasn’t a great team effort,” interim head coach Mike Kafka said. “All three phases, everyone’s got to step up. Everyone’s got to clean up their part of the game. It’s never just one phase. It’s never just one player, so we’re all good at doing a better job.

“I thought our guys competed. There are some plays we didn’t make that we can continue to look at and evaluate, whether from the coaching staff’s side or the players’ side,to see where we can get better.

“The good thing is, we have a bye coming up, so we can go evaluate all that stuff and really have a great plan coming back after the bye. Today wasn’t our best effort, wasn’t our best game here in a minute, so we’ll go back and look at it and get it cleaned up.”

Dart got rocked by a Christian Ellis hit along the Giants’ sideline in the first quarter, but came through the game fine in his return from a two-game absence in the league’s concussion protocol.

“We got beat in all three phases of the game, so when you get down like that, it’s not ideal, and I felt like we had a little bit of a spark,” Dart said. “We got the two-point conversion [in the fourth quarter], we’re down two scores, and defense got us the ball back, and then we didn’t capitalize on it, so as you said, we were just scratching and clawing.”

Check out the latest edition of the Big Blue Breakdown podcast for this week’s “Game Balls and Gassers” in the video above.

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