It's been an ugly year for the NFC East:
We imagine Rapoport slept more soundly than the New York Giants, who were manhandled in Sunday's 38-0 loss to the Carolina Panthers.
Asked to pinpoint the problem on offense after Eli Manning failed to generate points and was sacked seven times, receiver Victor Cruz said it best:
"Everything. We couldn't get anything going. We had no rhythm," Cruz said, per The Star-Ledger (Newark, N.J.). "We couldn't put no points on the board. Everything went wrong."
On defense, pass rusher Justin Tuck pointed to a unit that allowed 402 yards to a Cam Newton-led offense that had sputtered until the Giants came to town.
"We still gave up 17 points in the first half and weren't able to stop any of the bleeding in the second half," Tuck said, per the New York Daily News. "I've always been taught on defense it doesn't really matter what the offense does. If you have yardage to stand by, you've got to stand. The years we had success as a team are the years when the offense is not playing their best, the defense picks them up and makes a play, gets the momentum swung."
Under coach Tom Coughlin, the Giants have been one of the league's most resilient teams, turning ugly starts into Super Bowl campaigns. That won't happen this season.
This squad is incapable of stopping opponents from rolling up yardage and points. The once fearsome pass rush is a ghost. Teams are feasting on Big Blue, which now saddles up for the Kansas City Chiefs in Week 4. We wouldn't have blinked if the Chiefs were 0-3 and the Giants 3-0 in late September, but it's the other way 'round.
And that's one of the early surprises of this young season.
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