LANDOVER, Md. — It’s not how you start; it’s how you finish. Given that adage, the Washington Redskins’ finish on Monday night might lead them to a division title.
Robert Griffin III completed an 86-yard touchdown drive early in the fourth quarter with an eight-yard pass to Pierre Garcon and the Redskins defense held the defending champions to 11 total yards in the final stanza as Washington (6-6) defeated the New York Giants 17-16 to move within a game of first place in the NFC East.
Despite possessing the ball for only 9:28 of the first half, the Redskins were able to come from behind to win, with their league-leading rushing attack producing to the count of 207 yards and salting the game away when the offense finally saw action on the field.
“They held the ball for a long time, so every time we got the ball we had to make the most of it,” Griffin III said. “It didn’t matter what the situation was, we had to go score and the guys took it to heart.”
New York (7-5) began its dominant first 30 minutes with an 11-play drive, taking over six minutes on its first possession of the game after a Redskins punt. Eli Manning completed four of five passes on the drive, including two big plays to his tight ends – a 16-yarder to Bear Pascoe on their first play from scrimmage and 22 yards to Martellus Bennett. A false start penalty on a first down in Washington territory stalled momentum, and the Giants settled for a 39-yard Lawrence Tynes field goal to open the scoring.
Each of the Giants’ four drives in the first half entered Washington territory, but penalties haunted them on each drive — either temporarily stalling momentum or costing them points.
New York committed nine penalties in the game.
“Penalties [and] sloppy football. It seemed like every time we had a special teams play, we had a penalty,” Giants head coach Tom Coughlin said.
The Redskins took only four plays after the Tynes kick to take the lead, with the scoring play coming in bizarre fashion.
The drive began with a 25-yard completion to the right sideline to Pierre Garcon and two Alfred Morris runs combining for 27, on his way to a career-high 124 yards on the ground. On a second down, Griffin III ran left for 12 yards to the Giants 16, but fumbled as he was touched down to the ground by safety Stevie Brown. The ball popped in the air going forward, off of Griffin’s prone body and into the arms of wide receiver Joshua Morgan, who weaved his way the final 13 yards into the end zone.
“It was an option play, so I just stayed and kept my pitch relationship on the option,” Morgan said. “It just so happened that the ball came out there. That’s just the way the ball bounces. Bounced our way today.”
Griffin III had a different, albeit facetious take on the play.
“It was totally by design. I knew Josh was going to be there ready for that touchdown, so that’s what we did.”
By almost all measures, the Giants domination of the first half left the Redskins fortunate that they were in the game at intermission. New York held possession of the ball for over two-thirds of the half, converted eight of 10 third downs and outgained Washington 273-156. The Giants ran 40 plays in the half, doubling Washington’s total. Running back Ahmad Bradshaw ran for 103 yards on the night, 77 of those in the first half.
After a missed field goal by Tynes in the second quarter which would have cut Washington’s lead to one, the Giants scored 10 points on its final two drives of the first half, showing both the ability to chew clock as well as strike quickly in a two-minute situation.
Victor Cruz caught a deep pass over the middle from Manning for 30 yards on a third-and-10, one of three third-down conversions for the Giants on the go-ahead scoring drive. Manning zipped a passed to Bennett over the middle from four yards out to give New York a 10-7 lead with 2:32 remaining in the half, capping a 13-play, 84-yard drive.
That was Manning’s only touchdown pass of the game, one of his 20 completions (on 33 attempts) for 280 yards.
It took the Redskins just 1:51 to go down the field and tie the game on a Kai Forbath 33-yard field goal, but New York ended the half on a 54-yard drive to eat up the final 41 seconds. Tynes made his second field goal, a 40-yarder at the first half gun to give the Giants a 13-10 lead at the half.
The lead should have given the Giants great cause for optimism going into the intermission. New York had won 26 consecutive road games in which they held a halftime lead, dating back to a 24-21 loss to the Tennessee Titans on Nov. 26, 2006.
Fitting of these long-time division rivals, a skirmish broke out as Washington was driving on its first possession of the second half to try and retake the lead. Morris fumbled the football along the left sideline on a hit by Chase Blackburn inside the Giants 20, with the ball being recovered by Giant linebacker Keith Rivers.
Trying to separate players from the pile, Giants defensive tackle Linval Joseph began to pull the leg of Redskins offensive lineman Will Montgomery as Montgomery was on the ground. Both players began kicking at each other, drawing offsetting personal-foul penalties.
Washington went scoreless in the third quarter, with the Giants extending the lead on a Tynes 35-yard field goal with 3:09 in the third to extend New York’s lead to 16-10.
Despite the score, it was another drive that deep into Washington territory, only to settle for a field goal for the Giants – a trend that caught up with them tonight.
“We’ve been going through it all year,” Bradshaw said. “It’s just something we’ve got to work on and go back to the books. We’ve just got to finish every play and we didn’t.”
From then on, it was all Washington.
Washington started to wear down the Giants defensive line, punishing them with runs up the middle and catching their super-quick defensive ends off-balance and put of position on zone-read option plays. Although Griffin III threw for just 163 yards – a season-low in games that he has started and finished – Griffin III added 72 yards on the ground. The rookie running back Morris finished with 124 yards on 24 carries, including 41 yards on that ensuing game-winning scoring drive. Morris went over 1,000 yards on the season in tonight’s game, and set the Redskins record for most rushing yards in a rookie season, breaking Reggie Brooks total of 1,063 yards in 1993.
Starting from its own 14, Morris had runs of 10 and 16 to turn field position before the start of the fourth, while Griffin completed two passes to cap off the drive in the fourth. From the 22, Griffin found Leonard Hankerson for 14 yards to set up a first-and-goal at the 8. One play later, Griffin faked a handoff, rolled to the right, and found Garcon in the endzone to give Washington the lead.
“I think everybody knows how important winning is and we’ve lost a number of games in the fourth quarter, games that we had a chance to put away and didn’t do it,” Redskins head coach Mike Shanahan said. “We put this game away and it took a lot of people working extremely hard to do it. Hopefully we can just keep this going. There’s only one team that’s happy at the end of the year.”
Not only did the Redskins finish on offense, it’s defense finally slowed down Manning and the Giants on offense when it mattered, forcing a three-and-out right after taking the lead. On the Giants’ last possession, Manning completed a third-and-10 to Bennett for 11 yards, only for the play to be called back on a holding penalty on tackle Will Beatty. New York could not convert the subsequent third-and-20, and Coughlin decided to punt the ball away from his own 37 with 4:03 remaining, hoping his defense could stop Washington in the final 3:51.
The Giants offense never saw the ball again.
“I don’t know what happened in the second half,” Coughlin said. “They certainly didn’t come out and play. Just very disappointed that our second half wasn’t better. We aren’t going to beat anybody with 16 points.”
As for Coughlin’s decision to punt with under four minutes remaining and with the Redskins clicking on offense:
“We talk about finish, finish, finish, finish, finish. I thought we could punt it down there. I had two timeouts.”
In the end, it was Washington that finished, and the division crown may be awaiting the Redskins at the finish line this season.
PHOTOS: Evan Vucci/AP Photo (Morris, Coughlin), Nick Wass/AP Photo (Garcon)
