Everyone Is Angry About Jameis Winston Singing. The Giants Lost to Washington Because They Were Handed the Ball Twice in Three Minutes and Gained Almost Nothing.

With 3:27 left on Thursday night, leading 21-17 and facing fourth-and-1 at their own 11, the New York Giants sent Jameis Winston under centre. He barked a normal count. Washington did not move. Then he chanted the hook of a Baha Men single from 2000. Al Michaels, on Prime Video: "You gotta be kidding me!" The play clock ran out, the Giants took the five yards and punted.

By Friday the clip had its own news cycle and a former safety on ESPN wanted Winston released. This is an argument that the outrage has the wrong target. The singing cost the Giants five yards on a punt they had already decided to kick. The loss came from the six plays around it.

What happened in the last 5:27

Isaiah Likely's 66-yard touchdown put the Giants ahead 21-17 with 8:13 to play. Then Washington tried to give the game away twice.

With 5:27 left, Jevón Holland intercepted Jayden Daniels at the Giants' 2. It was Daniels's first interception of the season and ended a run of 207 attempts without one, the second longest in Washington history by the Giants' count. New York ran three plays. On third-and-1, Winston came in for a sneak and was stopped. That set up the fourth down everyone has seen.

Washington got the ball back and, on fourth-and-2 from its own 45 with 2:15 left, Daniels threw another one, this time to Ar'Darius Washington. The Giants had the ball in Washington territory with a four-point lead and two minutes to kill. They went three-and-out again. Jordan Stout's punt travelled 12 yards and went out of bounds at the Washington 29.

Three plays later it was over. A 33-yard pass interference flag on Deonte Banks, which ProFootballTalk called questionable, did most of the work. Daniels hit Stefon Diggs for 32 yards with 57 seconds left. ESPN timed the drive at 71 yards in 49 seconds. J.J. McCarthy's last throw, for Malik Nabers, was intercepted by Rasul Douglas with 25 seconds on the clock.

Count it up. Two takeaways in a little over three minutes. Six offensive plays, no first downs. One punt of 12 yards.

The fourth down was the easy call

John Harbaugh did not pretend otherwise afterwards. "I wasn't seriously thinking about going for it there," he said, per Athlon's account of the press conference. "I thought maybe we could draw them offsides and try to get them to jump." Winston: "That was a no snap, no play."

The critics are arguing with a decision nobody made. The real choice was between punting from the 11 and punting from the 6 after a failed attempt to steal a first down with a voice. Five yards of field position is a small price, and "teams do jump in those situations sometimes," as Harbaugh put it. Washington did not, and he said so.

There is a harder question underneath, which is whether he should have gone for it in earnest. We do not have a win-probability model's number for that spot and will not invent one. The case for going is that a yard ends the game for practical purposes, and that Washington needed a touchdown wherever it got the ball, so a failure at the 11 changes the distance and not the task. The case against is the one every coach makes: fail there and Daniels needs 11 yards with three and a half minutes left. Harbaugh had just watched his short-yardage sneak get stuffed on the play before. Punting was defensible. What it required was a defence that could get one more stop, which it did, and an offence that could then run two minutes off, which it could not.

What actually beat them

Go back before the fourth quarter and the pattern is the same. The Giants outgained Washington 399 yards to 340 and lost. Dominic Zvada missed a 33-yard field goal in the first quarter, a week after making all four of his kicks. Nabers lost a fumble at the Washington 20 in the third. Zvada then put a kickoff out of bounds after Likely's touchdown. Washington converted seven of 14 third downs, having come in with the league's worst rate at 31.1%.

McCarthy, in his third start for New York, threw for a career-high 293 yards. Likely's nine catches for 127 were a career high too, and the Giants say no tight end of theirs had 125 yards and a touchdown in a game since Jeremy Shockey in November 2007. Cam Skattebo ran for two scores. That is a lot of offence to produce 21 points and no first down when one would have ended it.

Harbaugh's own summary was four words: "It's a missed opportunity."

What the market did

On Thursday morning DraftKings had the Giants as 2.5-point favourites, -142 on the moneyline, having opened them at -1.5 on Sunday night, according to Sports Illustrated's pre-game report. We do not have a closing number. So this was a short favourite losing at home by a field goal, which happens most weeks to somebody.

The division price moved more than that sounds. Per a Friday report that cites DraftKings, the Giants went from -220 to win the NFC East to -130. Dallas shortened from +250 to +175. Washington is +550 and Philadelphia +10000. As implied probabilities, New York dropped from about 69% to about 57% and the Cowboys rose from about 29% to about 36%. The four post-game prices add up to roughly 109%, so the book is holding around nine points across the market and the true numbers are all a little lower.

Twelve points is a lot for one game, and the standings explain it. The Giants are 5-3-1 and Washington 3-5-1, two games back. But the teams tied 27-27 in Week 5, so Washington now owns the head-to-head. Dallas is a game and a half behind and plays San Francisco at home on Sunday. A division lead that was two and a half games on Thursday afternoon could be one by Sunday night.

The best case against this reading

It is that the hard count is the story precisely because it reveals the rest. A head coach who spends fourth-and-1 on a stunt is the same coach whose offence had nothing ready after two sudden-change possessions. A backup quarterback chanting a novelty cadence in a four-point game tells you how seriously the sideline took the moment. A New York Post headline, which we saw linked and did not open, read "Outcoached by Dan Quinn," and Washington did play the fourth quarter with more discipline: no flinch on the count, a stop on third-and-1, 71 yards when it had to have them.

We accept some of that. The three-and-outs are coaching too. But the clip is being used as the explanation, and it explains five yards. Had McCarthy picked up one first down after the second interception, Winston's chorus would be a funny thing that happened in a win, and Harbaugh would be 6-2-1.

What would show we are wrong

The Giants host Jacksonville, 6-2 and leading the AFC South, on November 22, in a game the league has moved to 4:25 p.m. If New York's offence stalls again in a late lead, the problem is structural and the singing was a symptom. If Dallas loses on Sunday and the Giants' division price drifts back toward -200, the market will have said Thursday was one bad night. Washington plays Cincinnati on Monday, November 23. At 3-5-1 and 7-17-1 since the start of last season, the Commanders still have to prove this was more than a rival handing them a game and a penalty flag.

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