And that’s why, in their second season under a head coach who is supposed to be all about discipline, the Giants are fooling themselves if they think they are close to turning any mythical corner. They are a bad team and an undisciplined team, with no sign that things are getting better. The opportunity they wasted in their 20-17 loss to the Chiefs in Kansas City on Monday night was just another example of that.

And all of them really hurt.

“We’ve got to eliminate the mistakes we made down the stretch,” Joe Judge said after the Giants lost on a Harrison Butker field goal with 1:07 remaining. “We can’t allow a team like this to have extra opportunities. We can’t rob opportunities from ourselves with breakdowns of focus.”

Yeah, but that’s what the Giants do. They have spent the entire season robbing themselves of opportunities, losing focus, and finding creative and mind-numbing ways to lose. That’s what they did on Monday night in a game where their defense gave an outstanding effort against the still-potent Chiefs offense. They gave themselves every possible opportunity to win.

And then they pulled the rug out from under their own feet. They actually almost literally had the game in their hands in the fourth quarter. With 4:22 remaining, Giants cornerback Darnay Holmes picked off Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes at the Chiefs' 34 yard line. The game was tied at 17-17. The Giants had the ball and were already in Graham Gano’s field goal range. They were celebrating like they had just sealed an upset nobody thought they could pull off.

Then they saw the flag -- because of course there was a flag. In all, the Giants had 10 penalties for 88 yards. This one was just the most ill-timed -- an offsides penalty by disappointing linebacker Oshane Ximines.

Said Judge: “We can’t have penalties like that.”

No, but again, that’s kind of what they do. One drive earlier, the Giants had the ball in their hands with a chance to drive for a go-ahead score – a drive that eventually stalled at their own 42-yard line. But they had actually gotten to the 43 on the third play of the drive, on a 16-yard pass to fullback Eli Penny. It would’ve been a heck of a play on third down … if he hadn’t gotten up, pointed his arm in the air to signal a first down, yelled something at a Chiefs player and drawn a 15-yard penalty for taunting.

It was just one stupid, undisciplined, sloppy thing after another – like the Darius Slayton drop later in that drive, or Sterling Shepard running a two-yard route on 3^rd and 4 from the Chiefs' 7 in the second quarter forcing the Gi,ants to settle for a field goal.

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