John Harbaugh’s Giants Are Contenders, Even With a Tie in Washington

LANDOVER, Md. — The Giants had an overtime fiasco on a rain-soaked Sunday at Northwest Stadium. The Commanders one-upped them with an even more egregious overtime fiasco.

The result was the first tie of this NFL season. The Giants tightened their grip on first place in the NFC East as their investments in coach John Harbaugh and backup quarterback Jameis Winston continue to pay off—just not quite as handsomely as would have been the case with a win.

The outcome—Giants 27, Commanders 27—did not capture the feeble absurdity of a mutual stumble-and-bumble routine in overtime in which the Giants lost a fumble while in position for a winning field goal, then the Commanders allowed the clock to expire while in position for a winning field goal.

“I don’t want any one of you talking like you’ve ever seen a game like that,” Harbaugh said to reporters just before beginning his postgame news conference.

His team, with a record of 3–1–1, has a 1.5-game lead over the Eagles and Cowboys in the division after Dallas lost Thursday night and Philadelphia lost earlier Sunday.

“I told the guys, you know, ‘Was it a win? No. Was it a loss? No. It was a tie. How does that make you feel?’” Harbaugh said in response to a question by Front Office Sports during his postgame news conference. “I’m happy it wasn’t a loss and I’m sad it wasn’t a win. So that’s how I feel. You know, it’s a tie. It’s a heck of a lot better than a loss. It’s not as good as a win. So I know it just sounds like so obvious. But that’s kind of how you feel, you know.”

The Giants ended the 2011 season by winning the Super Bowl, their fourth overall and their second with Tom Coughlin as coach and Eli Manning as quarterback. But since then, they’ve reached the playoffs only twice, and they have only one postseason victory.

They hired Harbaugh in January to change that. He’d been fired by the Ravens after 18 seasons, 12 playoff appearances, 4 trips to AFC Championship Games, and a Super Bowl triumph. The Giants signed him to a five-year contract worth an estimated $100 million, and they agreed to allow him to report directly to ownership rather than to general manager Joe Schoen.

Expectations rose when the Giants beat the Cowboys in the season opener in Harbaugh’s highly promising debut. But they lost Jaxson Dart, their second-year quarterback, to a knee injury suffered on a high-and-low hit by two Rams defenders in Week 2. Dart underwent surgery and is expected to miss at least the rest of the regular season.

A playoff return by Dart initially seemed overly optimistic, given that they would have to actually reach the playoffs without him. But they were coming off two straight wins.

The Giants turned things over to veteran backup Winston, who was in the final season of a two-year, $8 million contract before being signed to a two-year, $13 million extension last month. They also traded for J.J. McCarthy, the No. 10 overall selection in the 2024 NFL Draft, who failed to become a reliable starter for the Vikings.

Winston did his part Sunday, throwing for three touchdowns, and McCarthy got a bit of playing time. But the Giants were left with an odd mixture of emotions.

“We’ll take it,” Harbaugh said. “We’ll take it right now. We were down 14. We came back and we got a tie, all right? It doesn’t really matter. We should have never been down 14. We let the quarterback [Daniels] run too much. We didn’t have our act together like we should have on offense a lot of times. We all know that. It’s a long season. It’s week to week. So now we’ve got to move on, get ready for our next game, and try to go get a win.”

The Giants overcame a 27–13 fourth-quarter deficit, but rookie kicker Dominic Zvada missed a 46-yard field goal on the opening overtime possession, his third miss of the day. The Giants got the ball back via a punt and were in position for a game-ending, game-winning field goal (since each team had already had the ball at least once in overtime, as NFL rules require), with a first down at the Washington 24-yard line. But running back Cam Skattebo lost a fumble on the next play.

“I’ve got to hold on to the ball and make sure that these guys know that when my name’s called that we’re going to be O.K.,” Skattebo said in the postgame locker room.

The Commanders moved to the New York 24-yard line in the closing seconds of overtime. But they had no timeouts and inexplicably let the clock run out when quarterback Jayden Daniels, returning after missing two games with a dislocated left elbow, was sacked on second down.

The Commanders, at 1–3–1, are in last place in the NFC East.

Former NBA great Magic Johnson, a Commanders part-owner, wrote on Twitter/X: “I’m in total disbelief my Commanders had such poor clock management in today’s overtime game against the Giants. All we had to do was kick the field goal and we would have won the game!”