At the end of regulation Thursday night, Washington kicker Dustin Hopkins missed a 48-yard field goal, pushing the would-be game-winner right. However, refs flagged New York Giants defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence for being a fraction early on the snap, giving Hopkins another shot from five yards closer.
The Washington kicker made the 43-yard mulligan, sealing the Football Team's 30-29 victory in a wild edition of Thursday Night Football.
Despite the offsides leading directly to the second-chance win for Washington, New York Giants coach Joe Judge -- a former special teams coordinator in New England -- said he doesn't put the loss on Lawrence's shoulders.
"Obviously something we don't want to have, something that it's not acceptable," Judge said of the penalty, via the team's official transcript. "But look, we're not going to turn around and put this game on any one player and one play. There's enough things we can clean up as a team and we can play better going forward. We're not going to go ahead and isolate one incident and say that's the difference in the game right there. We got to make sure that we do a lot of things better for 60 minutes."
Judge added that it will be a "tough lesson" for Lawrence and the rest of the Big Blue squad.
"I'm not going to put this on Dex," he said. "I don't put this on Dex. Dex is a good player, is a strong piece of our locker room. He's a good teammate, he's fun to coach, he's a productive force as a player, I'm not gonna put this on Dexter Lawrence. There's things we all have to do better as professionals. I'm not gonna put this on any one player or one situation."
No, there were several situations in which New York came up shy.
A holding penalty negated a Daniel Jones TD run in the second quarter. Receiver Darius Slayton dropped a wide-open TD on a blown coverage. The Giants were called for 11 penalties for 81 yards. And the conservative coaching throughout ended up hurting Big Blue in the end.
The blunders helped scuttle perhaps the best performance of Jones' career.
Judge is a noted disciplinarian, famous for making players run a lap for mistakes during training camp this summer.
Clearly, all those laps didn't work, as mental mistakes helped the Giants to an 0-2 start.
