The New York Giants defeated the St. Louis Rams on Monday night 28-16, and all of the Giants points resulted from mistakes by the Rams.
“There’s no such thing as an ugly win–a win is a win,” said Giants defensive end Justin Tuck. “With all the parity in this league… We’ll take a win any way they come. Obviously there are things we need to correct and get better at, but we’re still proud with how we played tonight.”
Eli Manning finished the game 18 of 29 for 200 yards with 2 TDs and 1 INT.
The Giants jumped up early on a 3-yard touchdown pass from Manning to Hakeem Nicks to move ahead 7-3 in the first quarter. The first touchdown was set up by a critical pass interference penalty on fourth down two plays earlier that kept the drive alive for the Giants.
The Giants second touchdown was scored by the defense on a dropped lateral pass from Sam Bradford to Cadillac Williams. Williams dropped the ball, apparently not realizing it was a lateral. As the live ball bounced on the turf, Giants linebacker Michael Boley picked up the ball and returned it 65 yards for the touchdown.
“One of our themes this week was red zone defense,” Boley said. “We didn’t do a good job of that last week. So coming into this week that was a big focus for us to get that corrected. We did a lot better job down there.”
The Rams finished the game with four fumbles, losing two, and some key penalties as they were penalized 8 times for 85 yards.
“Just too many mistakes in the red zone. When you get down there you have to come away with touchdowns,” Bradford said after the game. “I said the same thing last week, we just have to find a way to be better once we get the ball down there.”
