At this point in the 2025 NFL season, there really isn’t much left to learn about this New York Giants team. They’re bad. As a former scientist, I do appreciate that ownership has tried to apply the scientific method to understand why.

Two hypotheses were offered by fans and the Giants beat writers in mid-season. The Giants are bad because (a) the coaches are bad, or (b) the players (and hence the general manager) are bad. They couldn’t realistically fire the entire coaching staff in mid-season, but they did fire the two most frequent targets of fans’ and writers’ wrath, head coach Brian Daboll and defensive coordinator Shane Bowen. They’ve now run the experiment for five weeks, taken the Petri dish out, and the results are in: The Giants still stink. So we now know it wasn’t (just) the coaches, although it’s possible that Mike Kafka and Charlie Bullen are as bad as Daboll and Bowen.

No scientific experiment is perfect, but today we got another data point. What did we learn from the Giants’ 16-13 loss to the Minnesota Vikings?

Is Mike Kafka the second coming of Joe Judge?

When Brian Daboll was still head coach, the Giants had some of their most successful offensive games this season after Jaxson Dart took over as starter. That more or less continued until Dart’s concussion in Chicago, during another blown fourth quarter lead, precipitated Daboll’s dismissal. Kafka, who supposedly had been given back the play calling this year, now had complete charge of the offense, and it looked good, even great at times, in his first two games as head coach with Jameis Winston at the helm.

Since Dart returned, though, things haven’t been the same…except for the losing. Dart has played some of his worst ball since returning to the lineup against New England. Today was clearly the worst game of his Giants career, with only 33 yards passing on the day. Maybe the absence of designed runs has taken something important from his arsenal.

Or maybe Kafka is coaching scared. Last week I was upset at how often he called running plays on 2nd and 10 after incomplete passes. Today Kafka just bypassed first down passes completely for a while. Kafka called runs on the Giants’ first four offensive plays. The first two worked for big gains, but the next two didn’t. Kafka finally called passes on two consecutive plays, neither of which worked, but both of which were canceled by Minnesota penalties. Given new life at the Vikings’ 16 yard line, Kafka called three consecutive runs that only got them to 4th and goal at the 5 yard line. THEN, rather than kick the field goal to get back to a 3-3 tie, he decided to have Dart pass…which resulted in a sack and change of possession.

This is terrible play calling. You’re telling your QB that you have no faith in him. It brought back memories of the final two games of the Joe Judge Experience, when he refused to let Mike Glennon pass at all after the first quarter in Chicago, and then had Jake Fromm not even attempt to get first downs deep in his own territory. I get it – Brian Flores runs a difficult defense to diagnose, and you’re risking disastrous turnovers if he’s confusing your rookie QB. But Flores was blitzing Dart about 70% of the time, and play callers are supposed to have hot reads for the QB to throw to in order to blunt the effect of the pressure. If you don’t let your QB experience that, you’re stifling his development. If you’re using 12 personnel and then almost always running out of it rather than passing, you’re tying your QB’s hands.

You’re not in good hands with the Giants’ receiving corps

The counter to my point above is that minus Malik Nabers, the Giants’ receivers are a really unreliable group. On the rare occasions that Dart did try to pass, he was undercut by his receivers’ inability to corral the ball. Darius Slayton bobbled and lost another pass that would have been a first down. Wan’DaleRobinson, among the more sure-handed of the Giants’ receivers, let a pass hit him in the face mask and be bobbled before he got hit and it fell incomplete. Admittedly it was a pass that Dart floated rather than putting velocity on so Robinson could gather it in well before contact, but it was still a drop. Finally, Theo Johnson once again could not bring in a pass that he should have been able to go get, letting it bounce off his hands for an interception.

The pass rush is looking up

Granted, the Vikings’ OL is not the best, but the Giants got good pressure on J.J. McCarthy and Max Brosmer today. The beneath-the-surface story of today’s game was that the QB the Giants chose not to draft last year faced the QB they chose to trade up for this year. McCarthy, after a rough start to his career, had played great the previous two games, making the Viking offense suddenly look like a juggernaut. Today, The Giants sacked McCarthy three times and Brosmer once and held the two of them together to 160 yards passing. Brian Burns had two more sacks, continuing his excellent season, and Abdul Carter was active again, with another sack on a beautiful inside spin, his signature move, plus several other pressures. In addition, Chauncey Golston, who has been injured for much of his first Giants season and invisible when he’s been out there, got his first sack and was generally active when he was in the game.

Maybe it was the pass rush, maybe it was the inexperienced QBs, but today was the first day that I thought the Giants’ secondary played well this season. Paulson Adebo had his first interception as a Giant. Jevon Holland had what should have been a pick-6, but it was called back because Abdul Carter lined up in the neutral zone. Oof. Tyler Nubin finally made a positive play this season, recovering McCarthy’s fumble and returning it 27 yards for a TD.

I also thought the Giants’ linebackers had one of their best games of the season, especially Bobby Okereke, who has been MIA since Wink Martindale stormed out the door. Okereke even broke up a pass to Justin Jefferson.

After a 3-year odyssey, the Giants today looked like they actually have a kicker who can make field goals in Ben Sauls. Granted, they were only 27 and 39 yards, but we’ll take what we can get as Giants fans. Besides,he was kicking in what looked like a decent wind today and it looked like he placed them perfectly to compensate for the wind. He also made his only extra point, which would not be a big deal on any other team, but as Giants fans we count our blessings, however small.

Speaking of blessings, the dream of the No. 1 pick remains alive, with unexpected help from the Titans, who handily defeated the cratering Chiefs.