EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- The New York Giants offense flopped in the season-opening loss to the Washington Commanders. There was no hiding the disappointment.
Wide receiver Malik Nabers said the tape made him "sick to my stomach." He had to turn it off. The coaches seemed equally perplexed with what they saw on the field.
"Offensively where we're at isn't where we want to be," coach Brian Daboll said afterward.
The Giants didn't produce a single touchdown and managed only 231 total yards of offense in the 21-6 loss. They were also stuffed twice from reaching the end zone despite driving inside the 10-yard line.
Now they move forward with a Week 2 matchup against the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday (1 p.m. ET, Fox) and plenty to fix. The clock is ticking after Game 1 looked like an extension of last year's offensive struggles.
"We have to focus on the little things," said Nabers, whose frustration boiled to the surface one quarter into the season. "I feel like penalties also caused a lot of our plays to get [called] back. We had a lot of explosive plays that just got flags, false starts, stuff like that. So, we have to be on the same page more. We were late getting out of the huddle a couple times, so we have to be on pace to get on the ball, put some pressure on the defense, so we can get what we want.
"And I'd probably say just spread the ball around to every guy. We all got talent on the football field. In this offense, we got a lot of talent. We have to spread the ball, give a couple guys the targets, the ball, and see what they do with the ball in their hands."
That is a long list of corrections needed from the offense in the span of a week. Some, like getting out of the huddle quicker, can be cured simply by time on task. The more they play together, the more seamless the operation will become.
But perhaps the most interesting admission Nabers made is that for the Giants offense to become more efficient the team needs to spread the ball, get everyone involved. Darius Slayton signed a $12 million-per-year deal this offseason and was targeted once in the loss to the Commanders.
Nabers' sentiments date to last season. Multiple players, including one on the defensive side of the ball, told ESPN unprompted last year that an offense where the ball was force-fed to Nabers was unsustainable. It needed to be addressed and be more of a team approach.
But even with a new starting quarterback in Russell Wilson the offense looked quite similar Sunday in the 2025 season opener. It was Nabers' eighth game with at least 12 targets since the start of last season, the most in the NFL. The Giants are 1-7 in those contests.
Spreading the ball around more is hardly the only thing that needs fixing. The Giants, again, need better quarterback play to succeed offensively. If not, the calls for rookie Jaxson Dart will only get stronger.
Wilson admittedly did not play up to his standards in the opener. He was just 2-of-12 for 26 yards under pressure and finished with an ugly 25.5 QBR, the fifth-worst total of the opening weekend.
"I didn't play good enough," Wilson said. "I think you always want to play better. Obviously, whenever you don't win, you always feel like there's more to do. I think that's the biggest thing. And just focus on playing great this week."
Wilson wasn't alone in his subpar performance. That list is long. The Giants didn't run the ball well and the offensive line struggled badly. They averaged 2.5 yards on six first-down rushes and Wilson was pressured on 36% of his dropbacks.
The line needs to play better -- a sentence that seems way too common over the past 13 years. Yet it still seems to be a problem.
The Giants are hoping to get left tackle Andrew Thomas back from a foot injury, but that alone can't be looked at as the ultimate solution. The interior of their offensive line (center John Michael Schmitz Jr., guards Jon Runyan and Greg Van Roten) had run block win rates in the 50% range for Week 1. That placed them in the 20th percentile or lower among linemen. Fill-in left tackle James Hudson III also allowed nine pressures, according to NFL Next Gen stats.
That's not going to get it done, even against a Dallas defensive front without Micah Parsons. The Cowboys still pressured Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts on 42% of his dropbacks in their opener.
As if that laundry list of problems wasn't enough, there is another concern that carried over from last year that bothered the Giants the most from Sunday. They failed to score on their two red zone trips, despite 12 plays inside the Commanders' 20-yard line.
"I'd say early down production, and that's everybody, and then red zone," Daboll said about what they must fix with the offense this week.
What Daboll and many of the offensive players pinpointed was the attention to detail. It wasn't good enough.
It's the little things that they believe they must fix to finally produce points. The Giants scored six points in the opener after finishing 31st last year averaging 16.1 points per game.
"Details in those moments," Slayton said. "Whether it's a guy split too wide here, a route that was maybe not precise enough there, a ball that might've been a little too high or hot, whatever. It's not like the big picture. It's the little things.
"And so those types of things are in the details and that's definitely what I think has been a focus of ours at practice."
A lot is at stake -- for the coach, for the quarterback, for the team -- to get it right quickly. The Giants face the possibility of starting 0-2 for the seventh time in nine years and missed the playoffs each time they lost their first two games.