00:05the Giants they started week six with a starting quarterback but they may have ended it with a
00:10quarterback decision Jameis Winston he got the start against New Orleans but by the fourth
00:14quarter he was on the sideline and J.J. McCarthy was leading a furious comeback that almost turned
00:20a 24 point deficit into one of the wildest wins of the season so now John Harbaugh has a question
00:26to answer and that question is did J.J. McCarthy do enough to become the Giants starting quarterback
00:31now let's start with Jameis because for a while the Giants actually had control of this game against
00:37the Saints they led 10 to nothing but it was all downhill after that the offense stalled New Orleans
00:43took control and the Jameis Winston experience started leaning a bit too heavily toward the part
00:49Giants fans don't enjoy Winston finished 14 of 26 for 152 yards one touchdown and two interceptions
00:55but this pass chart tells an even more interesting story according to next gen stats this was the
01:01first game of Winston's career with at least 30 drop backs where he didn't attempt a single pass
01:0620 plus yards downfield and on throws of at least 10 air yards Winston went two for 10 yikes for
01:13a
01:14quarterback whose game has always been associated with pushing the ball downfield that's a very
01:18different version of Jameis Winston then came the mistakes his first interception came in the third
01:24quarter with the G-men already chasing the game and another possession vanishes then early in the
01:30fourth there's another one Winston's second pick comes with the Giants down 27 to 10 New Orleans they
01:36turned that interception into another touchdown and now it's 34 to 10 at that point John Harbaugh had
01:42seen enough so in came J.J. McCarthy and look if you were expecting him to walk into a normal
01:48football
01:48game well this wasn't it Big Blue was facing a big time deficit down 24 points in the fourth quarter
01:55so the job for McCarthy was to throw the ball play fast and try to create some chaos and you
02:00know what
02:01the QB2 absolutely created some chaos now the first drive wasn't perfect McCarthy moved the ball but also
02:08threw an interception and that pick is part of his story in week six but what happened after that pick
02:14was hard to ignore the Giants they started playing with tempo the ball started moving downfield Tyrone
02:20Tracy Jr. finds the end zone they get the two-point conversion suddenly 34-10 becomes 34-18 then we
02:27get
02:27a bit of McCarthy magic as a QB finds Isaiah likely for a 24-yard touchdown now it's 34 to
02:3424 and this is
02:35where the quarterback conversation gets interesting because if we're keeping it a buck it wasn't just the
02:41points the offense looked different than what we saw when Winston was in the game McCarthy he was
02:46attacking downfield he was also using his legs to pick up yards late in the game this 28-yard
02:52scramble turns what could have been a dead play into another chance for the Giants the third-year
02:56quarterback finished the contest with 243 passing yards in the fourth quarter alone to go along with
03:02a touchdown and an interception and the Giants they scored 17 points after he entered the game
03:08and in week six he almost finished the job McCarthy moves New York all the way down to the New
03:14Orleans
03:1414 to give the G-men one last shot fourth and one ball goes to the end zone for likely
03:20he's unable to
03:21haul it in comeback is over Saints win 34 to 27 so now comes the important part and as I
03:28always caution
03:29let's not do too much here one fourth quarter does not automatically make J.J. McCarthy the answer for
03:34big blue this season we saw him throw a pick and John Harbaugh made an important point after the game
03:39this was as he said quote desperation time the context matters here and coming off the sidelines
03:45in desperate times is very different from operating an offense for four quarters but you know what else
03:51matters here all the other stuff that we saw Winston McCarthy they played in the same game against the
03:58same defense and one of them gave this offense a jolt that it desperately needed Winston's numbers on the
04:04day 152 yards in the air two picks zero attempts 20 plus yards downfield while McCarthy produced the
04:12numbers that I mentioned earlier and gave his team a chance to tie the game on the final snap after
04:16helping to produce 17 fourth quarter points now that doesn't automatically mean that McCarthy is the
04:22better quarterback but it absolutely makes the question worth asking and apparently John Harbaugh agrees
04:28when he was asked after the game when the process of deciding his next starting quarterback begins
04:33he straight up says quote starts now so did J.J. McCarthy win the job on Sunday I don't know
04:40I'm not
04:40ready to go that far off of one quarter of desperation football but I will say this he damn sure
04:46made it a
04:47real competition and after further review and what we saw against the New Orleans Saints the question
04:52isn't just whether J.J. McCarthy could be part of the Giants future it's whether the future should start
04:58right now
