How injuries ended the Giants' season before it could even get started

In the final few minutes of another meaningless game in another lost season, the Giants were finally getting a little bit of energy. Jake Fromm was making his NFL debut at quarterback and the Giants’ anemic offense was actually driving. There was a buzz in the stadium.

But that never lasts.

With 1:33 to go, Sterling Shepard took a step off the line of scrimmage and immediately reached for his left Achilles. As he fell to the ground, everyone immediately knew the worst had happened. Of course his Achilles was torn. Of course his season was over.

Because the only injury luck the Giants have had this season has been bad – very, very bad.

“That’s part of football, sadly,” Saquon Barkley said when asked if he could explain the Giants’ rash of injuries this season. “Just bad luck, I guess you could say.”

The Giants are a bad football team. There’s no way around that. And it didn’t take a 21-6 loss to the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday for anyone to reach that conclusion. They’ve been bad since the first game of the season. They’ve been bad for the last five years. Everything about them is bad.

But the truth behind their bad play and 4-10 record is that their roster has been absolutely ravaged by injuries that have taken almost all of their best players away for long stretches of the season. That’s not meant as an excuse, because no one wants excuses. It’s not going to be enough to save GM Dave Gettleman’s job. And it’s not enough to keep Joe Judge off a well-deserved hot seat.

But it’s their reality. It is the story of their season. They never once got to see the team they built actually take the field.

Consider this, just from their projected starting lineup: Quarterback Daniel Jones has missed the last three games. Barkley missed four with a sprained ankle, all while he was still slowly working his way back from the torn ACL that cost him most of last year. Kenny Golladay, their $72 million receiver, missed three games and played through injuries in several others. So did Darius Slayton and John Ross. Tight end Evan Engram missed two games. Rookie receiver Kadarius Toney, their No. 1 draft pick, has missed five games. And now Shepard is lost for the season. He’ll have missed 10 games by the end.

And that doesn’t take into account an offensive line that was so battered by injuries that the Giants started five different combinations in the first six games. They lost starting left guard Shane Lemieux in Week 1, starting center Nick Gates in Week 2, and left tackle Andrew Thomas, their best lineman, missed four games and has been playing through an ankle injury most of the season.

The defense hasn’t fared much better, either. They lost their leader, middle linebacker Blake Martinez, in Week 3. Then it was safety Jabrill Peppers gone in Week 6. Veteran corner Adoree’ Jackson has missed three games. Promising rookie cornerback Rodarius Williams was lost in Week 5. Another rookie corner, Aaron Robinson, wasn’t healthy enough to play until Week 8.

There are more, but you get the idea. Every team has injuries. Good teams are deep enough to overcome them. But the Giants weren’t a good team to begin with.

And the wave of injuries they’ve had to endure this season has been insane.

It is hard not to wonder what they could have been this season if Jones had Golladay, Toney, and Shepard to throw to all season long, with Barkley looking like the Saquon of old, running behind what they were so sure was a rebuilt, better offensive line. Again, the signs are clear that this team probably wasn’t good. But would they be, say, 7-7 instead of 4-10?

That would’ve had them sitting in the current NFC playoff field. And if they were, everything about their present and future would have changed.

Instead, they were left limping off the field again, with nothing to celebrate except a rare bit of good injury news. A week ago, Leonard Williams, arguably still their best defensive player, left the game with an injured triceps and the Giants were worried they lost him for the season. But on Sunday, he played the entire game with a huge brace on his right arm, and he didn’t look like he was limited at all.

“I’ll tell you what, Leo really pushed through a lot,” Giants head coach Joe Judge said. “We knew it would be some pain, some limitations. Thought the guy gutted it out, made a lot of big plays for us today.”

He did, but there aren’t enough other playmakers left around him – certainly not enough playing at anything close to full strength. The Giants’ offense, in particular, is barely functional, averaging a ridiculous 11.8 points and 269.4 yards over the past five games. That’s inexcusable. Then again, take a starting quarterback, a couple of receivers and a handful of offensive linemen away from any team in the league and see how they do.

Better? Probably. But this Giants team wasn’t built to withstand this onslaught. They were likely going to be mediocre, or maybe a little better, if everything worked out right.

But it never did. The injuries began mounting in the summer and they never stopped, until the team was a shell of what it was supposed to be. It’s fine if no one uses that as an excuse. No one really cares. Certainly not after all these years filled with nothing but failure.

It still is the reality of the Giants’ season, though. Whatever this team was supposed to be, it never really had a chance.