Forgive Kenny Golladay. He’s relatively new in the New York area. He doesn’t know how this works.
The Giants lost their first game of the season and struggled on offense Sunday and so of course everyone is supposed to be despondent over the prospects for the entire season. This is a team where 0-1s have too often led to 0-5s and 0-6s in recent years, and the 60 minutes of suboptimal football the Giants showed in their 2021 debut offered very few hints that this season will be any different than those other agonizing campaigns. It’s not so much a knee-jerk reaction as occurs after Week 1 in half the markets around the league. With the Giants this is more like a conditioned response.
But Golladay doesn’t see it that way.
“I think we can be explosive,” he said of the offense on Monday, despite evidence to the contrary that included just two plays of more than 20 yards and no running plays longer than 8 yards in a 27-13 loss to the Broncos.
What’s more, he thinks the Giants can reach that level of production in just three days, in time for their Week 2 game in Washington on Thursday night.
“I’m sure I speak for everyone, we try to go into every game trying to be explosive, we want to make those explosive plays,” he said. “Of course I’m going to say I want myself and the rest of the guys on offense to come in with that mindset and dominate.”
It would certainly be a much needed about face for the offense if they can.
And yes, there were some signs of optimism on the field even if you had to pan through a lot of silt to find those nuggets. The offensive line was not awful, which, for them, is progress. Saquon Barkley came through the game without any apparent setbacks regarding his knee, and he should only get more comfortable and more confident the more time he spends on the field. And then there was Golladay himself, the gem of the team’s free agency, who seemed to have planted the seeds of a productive relationship with Daniel Jones. It took until the second quarter for him to catch his first pass on his first target and he finished with just four receptions for 64 yards, but considering it was their first time on the field together in a competitive environment, he and Jones looked good together.
“We have to build from here and I feel like we’ll do that,” Golladay said. “Just being able to get those balls from him in the game, that was good because then he could see a little bit of what I can do to help him and to help the team.”
Golladay made his catches in traffic, some on passes contested by the Broncos’ defenders who were draped on his back. His long arms gave Jones a wide target and an expansive catch radius to throw at.
“In this league there is going to be tight coverage,” he said. “I’m glad I was able to make those plays because everything isn’t going to be just wide open. I do want him to have that trust in me. I know that’s going to take time.”
It was Golladay who warned in the days and weeks leading up to the opener that it might take a while for the offense to click. He had missed nearly all of training camp and the preseason with a hamstring injury and other players were sidelined through most of the summer, too: Kyle Rudolph coming back from foot surgery, Kadarius Toney dealing with COVID-19 and his hamstring, and Barkley’s knee.
He turned out to be prescient about those struggles.
Now the Giants hope he is equally clairvoyant about their emergence from them this Thursday.
“When you look at it, you have a lot of guys who are on this offense who have made a lot of big plays,” he said. “At the same time we have to put the work in. [Sunday] was a day for us to continue to grow. The sky is the limit for us as long as we put the work in.”
It’s not very New York to see things that way. The sky should be falling, not the limit, after Sunday’s performance.
Maybe Golladay can help change that attitude. He’ll have to hurry, though, before it changes him.
