The New York Giants would have defeated the Washington Football Team on Thursday night if 2019 first-round pick Dexter Lawrence didn't jump offsides on Dustin Hopkins' first game-winning field goal attempt in the final seconds. Hopkins missed that initial kick but got another chance because of Lawrence's gaffe, and the Washington kicker cashed in to give his team a 30-29 victory.
While Lawrence directly caused the loss and made a lot of fans extremely upset, Giants head coach Joe Judge didn't want to single his young player out. Instead, he wanted to make it known that it was a team loss.
Via PFT's Michael David Smith:
“I’m not gonna put this on Dexter Lawrence,” Judge said. “There’s things we all have to do better as professionals, but I’m not gonna put this on any one player.”
While Judge easily could have reamed his player in public, he decided not to throw him under the bus and made sure to note that Lawrence wasn't alone in losing the game. Lawrence knows he screwed up bad, and Judge noted that it's a “tough lesson” to learn for him and the team.
Judge certainly isn't wrong that Lawrence wasn't alone in failing. New York's defense got roasted for much of the night by Taylor Heinicke and the Washington offense, giving up 336 yards of passing to Heinicke and 407 yards overall.
There were also some key missed opportunities on offense. Daniel Jones' slight overthrow to a wide-open Darius Slayton resulted in a dropped touchdown, and the Giants were only able to muster a field goal after Heinicke's awful late-game interception put them in position to go in for the kill.
While Dexter Lawrence deserves a lot of blame for his boneheaded mistake, there's plenty of blame to go around. Now, the Giants are sitting in an 0-2 hole.
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