LANDOVER, Md. — Sick of losing and tired of tying, the Giants tried something different Sunday night in their quest to rejuvenate their playoff drive.
They tried winning.
Locked into a tight, low-scoring and taut affair — what else is new with this team? — the Giants built a 14-3 halftime lead and then held on for dear life. Their offense did just enough — and we mean just enough — to reward a defense that got after it all night, even producing a touchdown from rookie Kayvon Thibodeaux.
In the end, the Giants survived as much as they triumphed but that does not make any difference in the standings. They outlasted the Commanders — the team they tied 20-20 two weeks ago — in an inelegant and wholly needed 20-12 victory at FedEx Field.
“It was good to see smiles on the guys’ faces,” coach Brian Daboll said afterward.
The game ended in a frenzied and frantic final rush.
Of course, nothing is ever easy with the Giants. The Commanders reached the 1-yard line and appeared to score on Brian Robinson’s run but receiver Terry McLaurin was called for an illegal formation penalty. On third down, Azeez Ojulari pressured Taylor Heinicke into an incomplete pass and on fourth down, with 48 seconds remaining, Heinicke threw into the end zone for Curtis Samuel and cornerback Darnay Holmes broke up the pass — and might have interfered with Samuel, as well.
“It was, ‘Don’t foul him, make a play on the ball,’ ” Holmes said.
That ended it, allowing the Giants to end an 11-game losing streak in prime-time games.
“None of us are shocked in this locker room,” Saquon Barkley said after the Giants won for only the second time in their last six games.
Give Daboll credit for a replay challenge with 6:06 remaining, with his team clinging to a 17-12 lead, that yanked the momentum back to the Giants. On third down from the Giants’ 5-yard line, Heinicke was sacked by Dexter Lawrence and Ojulari. The ball came loose when Lawrence swiped at it and Leonard Williams recovered the fumble.
The ruling on the field was that Heinicke was down by contact and the Commanders sent out their field goal team. Daboll challenged the call and replay showed that it indeed was a fumble. The Giants took over and Barkley finally broke loose with runs of 12, 15 and 14 yards to help set up Graham Gano’s 50-yard field goal to extend the lead to eight points.
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Daniel Jones, who was 0-9 as a starter in prime time, completed 21 of 32 passes for 160 yards. Barkley ran it 16 times for 87 yards and one touchdown.
The Giants came in 1-3-1 in their last five games and needed to stop the bleeding. They are now 8-5-1 and in commanding position in the NFC, moving into the No. 6 spot in the conference, pushing ahead of the Commanders (7-6-1) and staying in front of the Seahawks (7-7) and Lions (7-7) — two teams that beat the Giants this season.
“It really pisses me off,” Commanders coach Ron Rivera said. “We had an opportunity to win.”
According to the analytics site FiveThirtyEight, the victory means the Giants have an 87 percent chance to make the playoffs.
This was a breakout performance for Thiobodeaux.
The Giants needed a spark and got one from the No. 5 pick in the 2022 draft Two weeks ago, he leveled Heinicke near the goal line but failed to dislodge the ball. This time, Thibodeaux sacked Heinicke for an 8-yard loss and swiped down at the ball. Thibodeaux scooped the ball up at the 1-yard line and dove into the end zone for his first NFL touchdown to put the Giants up 7-3 early in the second quarter.
“I had a talk with my mom before the game and she said it was in her heart to tell me, ‘You can do anything you put your mind to,’ ” Thibodeaux said. “I had to say and believe it and go do it.”
Lawrence, delighting in the performance of the rookie, said, “It’s gonna be a long ride home,” expecting to hear plenty from Thibodeaux on the train ride back to New Jersey.
This almost seemed like an extension of the 20-20 tie these teams played two weeks earlier.
The Giants in the second quarter put together their most impressive drive of the season. They picked up seven first downs in methodical fashion, eating up 8:35 on the clock. Jones kept things moving, completing 10 of 12 passes — his only incompletion was a throwaway — for 91 yards, with a fourth-and-9 bullet to Richie James, for a pickup of 11 yards, his most impressive throw. The 18-play, 97-yard drive was capped when Barkley took the direct snap out of a wildcat formation and ran untouched for 3 yards for a touchdown to make it 14-3.
The Commanders came out for the second half and suddenly remembered they had Terry McLaurin as their top receiver. He caught three passes on a 91-yard drive capped by Heinicke’s 19-yard scoring pass to Jahan Dotson, who beat cornerback Nick McCloud in the end zone to cut the Giants’ lead to 14-9. The Commanders opted to go for the two-point conversion but were called for offensive pass interference on the attempt. That ended that idea, but Joey Slye then missed on what was a 32-yard extra-point try to keep the Giants lead at five points.
“This game was gritty,” Thibodeaux said. “It was a game we knew we had to dig deep. It was cold, it was freezing, you’re hurting, everything is against you. Us as a team we took it upon ourselves to call our fights.”
