Dexter Lawrence didn’t mince words in describing the issues with the Giants’ defense in the 30-7 loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Sunday.
“We played soft and they beat the s— out of us today,” the defensive lineman said.
Brian Daboll was equally succinct with his assessment of what went wrong in a game that saw Baker Mayfield throw for 294 yards while converting on 24-of-30 attempts (9.8 yards per attempt) and the Bucs run for 156 yards and four scores on 32 carries (4.9 per attempt).
“We gotta do a better job of tackling,” the head coach said.
“We were just missing ‘em. We missed a bunch today,” he continued. “It’s something that we focused on, obviously not good enough. At the end of the day, that’s my responsibility.”
Lawrence said he was “extremely” angry about his unit’s performance with his frustration level at “probably a 10.”
“We missed a lot of tackles, we didn’t contain Baker well in the scrambles, we didn’t cover well,” he said. “It’s soft to me.”
The veteran wasn’t the only one to call the performance soft, as rookie wide receiver Malik Nabers described the team’s play as “soft as f–k” and said he is “tired of going out there and losing.”
“I’m with you, I’m tired of losing,” Lawrence said. “This season we have a good team, and this season is not turning out the way it should, and it’s frustrating and I get his frustration. I have it, too.
“But you just got to go out and lead, keep going, keep giving my all, that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to do my best to bring guys along as best as I can.”
Daboll doesn’t think the missed tackles are related to a lack of effort but was down to technique breakdowns and Tampa Bay’s players making defenders miss.
“I’d say we missed some tackles,” he said. “I think guys were giving good effort and we missed some tackles. They made us miss and had some opportunities… certainly not good enough.”
Like the head coach, Lawrence also didn’t place it on effort.
“I don’t think we lack effort,” he said. “I think we’re just not doing well tackling and covering on defense.”
Down 23-0 at the half, Lawrence’s message to the defense: “We practiced too hard, we practiced too good to go out there and play like that.”
They limited the Bucs to just seven points in the second half, but fell to 2-9 on the year, dropping a fifth-straight contest – and one coming off their bye week. How does it get better?
“It’s a process,” Lawrence said. “Right now it’s a long process that I’m here for, I’m going to keep leading, doing all I can on the field to lead. Talking to the guys I need to talk to, the defense, the guys on the offense, whoever, but yeah.”
Despite that, the six-year veteran believes the locker room hasn’t fractured.
“I don’t see lack of effort. I don’t see selfishness, just got to execute better, man,” he said. “We got to tackle better, we got to cover better, we got to be mentally locked in on whatever is being called out there, it’s just the little s–t that keeps popping up from one player after another player after another player.
“…I think our mindset is we want to win, we just got to execute better.”
Lawrence, who made his doubts about switching from Daniel Jones to Tommy DeVito public, didn’t think the change at quarterback – which failed to provide the offense with any spark – had an impact on the team and it is on the defense to help the offense.
“They put 30 on us,” he said. “…We didn’t do our job to create short fields, or create turnovers, and it’s going to be hard. We had a new quarterback in, so they were going to do whatever they did, blitz the s–t out of him every play.
“We got to take it as a defense, we got to understand that, and we got to play harder for the guys across the ball.”
