3 Takeaways from Giants' Week 11 Loss

The New York Giants' loss on Monday night was the team's seventh of the season, and it may have ended the team's dwindling playoff hopes.

A year ago, the Giants came close to making the postseason. The NFC East was a struggling division, and the Washington Football Team won it with a 7-9 record—while the Giants fell a game short at 6-10. Washington went on to play a tight game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the postseason but lost. A week ago, the Football Team beat the Buccaneers.

The Giants visited Tampa Bay on Monday and came away with a 30-10 defeat. It was a humbling experience for a team that once hoped to build on last year's promising campaign. At 3-7, New York is now going to struggle to finish with a winning record. A losing one isn't going to win the division this year.

The Giants have beaten a few good teams this season, but they appeared wildly outclassed against the defending Super Bowl champions. The Giants had a chance to make a statement, but Monday showed that New York is simply looking at another lost season.

Here's what else we learned during the Giants' Week 11 loss.

Running back Saquon Barkley made his return on Monday night after missing more than a month with an ankle sprain. The former Penn State star had been out since Week 5 after yet another fluke injury, but his return did little to spark the Giants offense.

Barkley caught six passes and rushed six times for a total of 56 yards. The big plays Barkley once provided were nowhere to be found. The biggest positive was that he was finally back on the field.

"Obviously, upset with the outcome," Barkley said, per Ryan Dunleavy of the New York Post, "but it feels good to get back out there. Just got to come back to work and get better each week."

The problem is that being on the field has often been Barkley's biggest positive this season. He missed the bulk of 2020 with a torn ACL and hasn't appeared like his pre-injury self at all in 2021. For the season, he's averaged 3.7 yards per carry.

When the Giants took Barkley second overall in 2018, they did so hoping to have an offensive centerpiece for the foreseeable future. Barkley was indeed special as a rookie, racking up more than 2,000 scrimmage yards and making the Pro Bowl. Since then, though, he's been very good (2019), injured (2020) and underwhelming (2021), but not great.

New York is staring down a tough decision with Barkley, who will enter the final year of his rookie deal in 2022. He'll be due a contract extension, but the Giants have to think long and hard about not giving him one. This version of Barkley isn't capable of carrying the offense as he once did.

A year ago, defense was the one thing on which the Giants could really hang their proverbial hat. With Barkley sidelined and few weapons in the receiving corps, New York won with defense when it won, and the team finished ranked ninth in points allowed.

Defensive coordinator Patrick Graham looked to be a rising star and even a potential head-coaching candidate.

However, the aggressive and mostly efficient defense we saw a year ago has completely disappeared. Monday's performance was further proof of that. The defense did a few good things—it held the Buccaneers below 100 rushing yards and picked off Tom Brady once—but it didn't do nearly enough.

Brady wasn't sacked, and he rarely faced pressure from New York's defensive front. He passed for 307 yards and a pair of touchdowns, while Tampa amassed 402 yards of total offense. The Buccaneers amassed 28 first downs and held the ball for more than 35 minutes of game time.

For the season, New York now ranks 26th in total defense and 24th in points allowed. It's a far cry from where the defense was a year ago, and New York needs to make personnel or schematic changes if it hopes to get back there.

The Giants lacked receiving weapons a year ago. This was a problem both as it related to the offense and to Daniel Jones' development as a quarterback. To help remedy the issue, New York went out and signed former Detroit Lion Kenny Golladay to a four-year, $72 million deal in free agency.

That move continues to look like a bad investment.

Like Barkley, Golladay has missed time with injuries this season. However, he's also disappointed when healthy. He has exactly one 100-yard game this season and was remarkably quiet on Monday night.

Despite playing 44 offensive snaps (76 percent), Golladay finished with just one reception for 12 yards. It was the latest in an underwhelming string of performances for the former Pro Bowler.

Again, Golladay hasn't been at 100 percent often this season, and he got off to a slow start to his inaugural Giants campaign. A hamstring injury in training camp hindered his development in the offense and hurt his chemistry with Jones. The reality, though, is that Golladay simply isn't performing like the No. 1 receiver New York paid him to be.

In seven games, Golladay has provided a mere 322 receiving yards and zero touchdowns. He has a passer rating of just 90.6 when targeted. On Monday, he did nothing to threaten a Buccaneers defense that ranks a mediocre 17th in passing yards allowed.

*Advanced statistics from Pro Football Reference.