'NFL is crazy town' and John Harbaugh's Giants just passing through

Ingrid Harbaugh was watching what transpired between her husband’s New York Giants and the Washington Commanders from afar in Chicago on Sunday afternoon, and the reaction to the teams’ 27-27 tie heard around the league – and how they got there – fell somewhere between disbelief and a cruel fantasy that somehow was indeed real.

“I was talking to her after the game, she’s watching the games on TV, and she says, ‘The whole NFL is like crazy town right now,'” Giants coach John Harbaugh said during a video call Monday, relaying their phone conversation. “It’s crazy town. It’s like, there’s so much crazy going on in this league right now. That’s what makes it so exciting, I guess. And we were right in the middle of it.”

With wild finishes all over in NFL, Harbaugh is doing his best to keep Giants ahead of curve and just passing through “crazy town,” studying as much as he can what transpires across the league, especially in the fourth quarter with the game on the line.

Sometimes you can’t coach and prepare for crazy, however.

<1 / 43

<2 / 43

<3 / 43

<4 / 43

<5 / 43

<6 / 43

<7 / 43

<8 / 43

<9 / 43

<10 / 43

<11 / 43

<12 / 43

<13 / 43

<14 / 43

<15 / 43

<16 / 43

<17 / 43

<18 / 43

<19 / 43

<20 / 43

<21 / 43

<22 / 43

<23 / 43

<24 / 43

<25 / 43

<26 / 43

<27 / 43

<28 / 43

<29 / 43

<30 / 43

<31 / 43

<32 / 43

<33 / 43

<34 / 43

<35 / 43

<36 / 43

<37 / 43

<38 / 43

<39 / 43

<40 / 43

<41 / 43

<42 / 43

<43 / 43

The Giants (3-1-1) half-celebrated Sunday’s outcome, considering they increased their lead in the NFC East to 1.5 games with the tie. The Commanders (1-3-1) were devastated, given the way they coughed up the opportunity to attempt a game-winning field goal when quarterback Jayden Daniels inexplicably let the clock run out.

The fiasco is just the latest late-game finish that brings to light game management decisions faced by coaches and ultimately carried out by players, sometimes resulting in hot seats and humiliation.

Those who refuse to pay attention and adapt to those circumstances are doomed to repeat them.

Which is why Harbaugh meets with director of football data and innovation Ty Siam every Thursday night to go over trends and happenings around the league. They talk about latest situations – among other things – in the NFL, identifying things they think the players should be coached on going into that week’s game.

“I mean, we have a library and a catalog of plays from years and years that we study in the offseason, and we show our players the best ones,” Harbaugh said. “We roll them all the time. We have slides that we teach off of and then we practice them and we look at them. I look at them every Thursday night with Ty, our guy, and we go through all the plays around the league. We go through not just the time management plays, but all the challenge plays, all the officiating plays, all the officiating points of emphasis for the week and anything else that we can teach our guys or we can learn from ourselves.”

Let’s take a look at the three “crazy town” endings that featured teams from the NFC East:

The Commanders’ offense took its time to run a final play in the closing seconds of overtime with the clock running and no timeouts to stop it. By the time the Commanders snapped the ball, Daniels was tackled after a scramble to nowhere, there were fewer than 10 seconds left. That wasn’t enough time for the Commanders to get lined up and spike the ball to stop the clock before the clock hit zeroes, setting off a mini-celebration for the Giants’ defense that served as more of an exhale for Cam Skattebo whose fumble earlier in OT proved costly at the time.

“We would like to do a lot of things better, we’re so proud of the good things and things we did well. And there’s so many things that we know we can do better,” Harbaugh said. “And we’re going to chase [that], we’re going to chase with everything we’ve got. Because we’ve got next week to try to be a better football team. And our guys are very, very optimistic. They’re very optimistic about that. Very optimistic that they can improve and get better and get ready for the next challenge.”

The Cowboys believed they were headed to overtime with the Ravens on Sept. 27 in Rio when All-Pro kicker Brandon Aubrey booted a 23-yard field goal with seven seconds left to knot the score. The decision was made to have Aubrey send the kickoff into the end zone for a touchback, meaning the clock never started and the Ravens got to start at their own 35.

Lamar Jackson completed a 27-yard pass to Zay Flowers in the middle of the field to the Dallas 38 and called timeout with one second left, sending out kicker Tyler Loop to end the game with a winning field goal.

The Eagles were desperate for a victory Sunday, and had they closed this one out, it would have been one of the best for the franchise in a while. No Saquon Barkley. No DeVonta Smith. Cam Jurgens was traded. Lane Johnson retired.

Yet a Jake Elliott field goal gave the Eagles a one-point lead with eight seconds remaining. Jacksonville had no timeouts, and unlike what the Cowboys did in Rio, the Eagles decided on a short kickoff that would force the Jaguars to return it.

Returner Ameer Abdullah raced 53 yards, across midfield, and he was finally tackled with one second left. The Jaguars sent Cam Little out and he nailed the game-winning field goal from 57 yards out.

“We had the conversations about, do you kick a touchback or do you put it in play, and what the difference was in the two,” Harbaugh said. “I mean, the one team [Dallas] kicked the touchback, pass got hit, field goal got made, got roasted for it. The other team [Philadelphia] put it in play, kickoff return gets returned back into the field goal range, game-winning field goal, gets roasted for it. So, what’s the nuanced difference there in those two plays? We got to dig into that and study and decide really what we’re going to try to do.”

Harbaugh was asked if he believed his team would have an advantage based on his experience in the NFL and the work the Giants put into the anticipation of these situations.

“Wouldn’t we all like to think that? But as soon as you start thinking that, then that’s when something bites you,” Harbaugh said. “So, we just got to really just do the best we can. Because you just can’t predict what’s going to happen. And you’ve got to keep chasing all those things all the time, every week. You got to keep rolling through. You can’t practice them all in one week. So, you got to keep rolling through them as much as you can. Don’t get complacent. Look for new things. If you see something, if you see a hole in what you’re doing, try to plug it up before it comes up.”