The Commanders did not throw a touchdown. The Giants threw three. It finished level. The Giants and the Commanders played 70 minutes at Northwest Stadium on Sunday and settled nothing, a 27-27 tie that is the rarest result in football and the first of this NFL season.
How it got there
The Commanders led 27-13 in the fourth quarter. The Giants scored twice in the closing ten minutes, Jameis Winston finding Isaiah Likely from 17 yards and then Malik Nabers from 17 more with 1:43 on the clock, and the extra point levelled it. Overtime produced nothing at all from either side.
The numbers that explain it
The Giants held the ball for 39:25 and could not win. That is the whole game in one line. They ran 84 plays to 60, went three from three in the red zone, and still only drew, because the Commanders were not playing the same game: 202 rushing yards at nearly seven a carry, three rushing touchdowns, and a red-zone record of none from one, which tells you their scores came from distance rather than from grinding.
Jayden Daniels was the difference and he did it with his legs, 103 yards on nine carries with two touchdowns, both of them scrambles that started as pass plays. He threw for 199 and no scores. The Giants sacked him five times and it barely mattered.
Who did what
- Jameis Winston (QB, New York Giants): 33 of 54, 326 yards, 3 TD, no interceptions
- Malik Nabers (WR, New York Giants): 11 catches on 20 targets, 121 yards, 1 TD
- Isaiah Likely (TE, New York Giants): 11 catches on 13 targets, 94 yards, 2 TD
- Jayden Daniels (QB, Washington Commanders): 17 of 25 for 199 yards, plus 103 rushing on 9 carries, 2 TD
- Jacory Croskey-Merritt (RB, Washington Commanders): 11 carries, 82 yards, 1 TD
Nabers seeing 20 targets is the number that stands out. Winston threw 54 passes, which is what happens when a team has the ball for nearly forty minutes and cannot run it: 28 carries produced 103 yards at 3.7 each.
What our model called
The Squawka Signal had the Giants by 1.4 points, at 55%. That is one of the least confident calls it made all week, and the result was neither right nor wrong, because nobody won.
A tie is the one outcome a straight-up record cannot absorb. Counted as a loss it would understate the week, counted as a win it would overstate it, so from this week our picks record carries it as a push and leaves it out of the hit rate, which is how an NFL record is written anyway. This is the first one of the season.
The honest read is that a 55% call on a game that finished level is the model doing roughly what it said it would do. It is the confident calls that are worth judging, and those are in the power rankings and the weekly predictions.
Where it leaves them
The Giants are 3-1-1. The Commanders are 1-3-1. Both now carry a tie in the standings, which matters more than it looks: a tie counts as half a win in the percentage that decides playoff seeding, and in a division race decided by a single game it is the kind of afternoon that gets re-examined in January.
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