Sometimes, the most painful brand of heartbreak is the disruption of new love; young love, the kind of feelings you aren’t familiar enough with to make sense of. Deep down, you know they are irrational and shortsighted and fleeting and misguided and you don’t care because the alternative is a return to cynicism and nothingness. That doesn’t make it any easier when the euphoria turns like a spear to the heart and knocks you back into the dump, flat on your backside.
If you haven’t already guessed, of course we’re talking about the New York Giants. And if you’ve driven around a leaf-strewn New Jersey suburb over the past month, you’d get it. You’d see massive, 10-foot-tall skeletons wearing Cam Skattebo jerseys and kids at trunk-or-treat wearing Jaxson Dart Braveheart facepaint (and that’s just my street). This has cropped up after a thumping, ass-kicking win over the defending champion Eagles. A home game where you could beat your chest and act like an irrational, entitled jerk again.
The Giants, over this time span, developed an identity. A young core. A future. Blind optimism, for once, in lieu of available tickets in November cheaper than a MetLife Stadium Shock Top.
While all of that can still exist, we have to hope it survives Sunday. We have to hope the youth, the energy, the vibe, the attitude, the talent and what’s left of the optimism makes it through easily the most stunning and unfathomable Giants loss since DeSean Jackson returned a punt that should have never landed in his arms 15 years ago.
The CliffsNotes, if you can bear it: A dominant 19–0 lead going into the fourth quarter. A 30–7 Broncos run. A miraculous Giants drive to take the lead with less than a minute remaining. Then, of course, a missed extra point. An offside penalty. A clinical offensive Broncos possession that had them right in kicker Wil Lutz’s sweet spot with time expiring. Brian Daboll smashing a headset like it’s a guitar at the Monterey Pop Festival.
This identity of futility that the Giants managed to dispose of with a month of Skattebo and Dart roared back to life like a migraine. Slow at first, like when Dart threw an interception while up by 10 points deep in his own territory. Faster when Kayvon Thibodeaux jumped offside on a third-and-5 a few plays later. And then, the whirlwind.
There were 46 points scored in just the fourth quarter of this game—33 of them by Denver. In three other games so far this week, the teams did not combine to hit 39 points. The last 1,602 teams that were up by 18 or more points with six minutes remaining in the fourth quarter in NFL history did not lose. One thousand. Six hundred. Two.
While it will take days to sort out, that’s what hurts the most. When you’re blinded by young love, the past doesn’t exist. The old narratives die for a little while. This is a world where the defense starts hitting and pressuring the quarterback late in the game. This is a world where the kicker is an afterthought. Who needs a kicker? This is a world where a Skattebo toss has the absolutism of the Lombardi sweep in slow motion set to Sam Spence’s “Championship Chase Overture.” For a second—a split second—you could crane your neck and look over at the banged-up Commanders getting blown out by a Cowboys team the Giants could take on a second crack. You could dream about a season sweep of the Eagles. You could start laughing about the Vegas odds that made 5.5 wins feel like a trek up Makalu in the Himalayas.
The people who care will say that it’s proof we need to enjoy every minute because you never know. And they’re right. Before Dart and Skattebo, this Broncos game would have been flexed off every television in America. There is a world where Jameis Winston is quarterbacking this team and rifling fastballs that, with the right amount of airlift in those MetLife wind tunnels, would crash into the third row of friends and family seats.
Of course it’s better to have loved than to not experience this, even though this kind of pain is theatrical. Comical. Historical. According to Next Gen Stats, this is the eighth-most improbable comeback since the NFL’s statistical service started tracking data roughly a decade ago. The Giants’ win probability chart took a nosedive sharper than the stock market in 1929.
What’s next—Philadalphia on the road, literally, but anything, figuratively—is up to the cosmos. Giants fans are still here after all these years. They will survive this like they survived the last heartbreak. But in a perfect world, this game wasn’t the end of the halcyon days with Dart and Skattebo. It’s just a part of the story.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as The Giants’ Loss Is a Modern-Day Tragedy.