What if the Eagles - Giants Game Last Night Was... Good?

The pitiful New York Giants blew a fourth-quarter lead to the hapless Philadelphia Eagles in a Thursday Night Football matchup from the putrid NFC East. Sounds pretty bad, right? Well, what this articles surmises is that it actually wasn't bad and maybe even good.

Here, let me describe a game to you. It's a primetime game that features a quarterback with a Super Bowl ring throwing for more than 350 yards and accounting for three touchdowns. He completes an improbable fourth-quarter comeback where his team wins by one point. There is scoring in all four quarters and six different players score touchdowns. The other quarterback does most of his damage on the ground, including an 80-yard run that is unquestionably one of the greatest highlights of the season.

That sounds pretty good, right? If you replaced the Eagles and Giants with the Chiefs and Ravens and gave them the same box scores, this would be considered a really good game. Here, let's revisit that Chiefs - Ravens game earlier this season.

Now here's the box score from last night's Eagles - Giants game. Wentz is Mahomes. Jones is Jackson. The only difference is that the New York-Philly game was closer and Daniel Jones played a better game than the MVP from Baltimore.

But what about the eye test! Surely the New York Giants and Philadelphia Eagles can't play an aestetically pleasing game of football in 2020. No, probably not, but definitely not in a prime time slot. If this game were buried on a Sunday in the 1 p.m. window with eight other games and you really only saw a few highlights and the final drives on the Red Zone channel, Carson Wentz would be getting the "he's back!" treatment this morning. People would wonder why this rivalry game wasn't shifted to Sunday Night Football instead of Seattle - Arizona.

But as it was, this was an game between two of the teams in the absolute worst division in football. And on the night that traditionally gets the worst primetime matchups every week. This game has been destined to be a punchline.