The New York Giants began 2010s as one of the NFL’s most successful teams. They ended the decade as one of the least revered.
The Giants finished the 2010s with three dismal seasons of three, five and four wins and finished the decade with a 70-90 record, their first losing decade since the horrific 1970s, also known as The Wilderness Years.
The 2010s began with the Giants going 10-6 in 2010 followed by a Super Bowl-winning run in 2011. In 2012, Big Blue finished 9-7 and then took a severe nosedive with the exception of the 2016 season when they won 11 games and scored a playoff berth.
The Giants were involved in many famous plays over the decade and have placed two entries in Bleacher Report’s 10 Worst Plays of the Decade, in which they were on different sides of NFL infamy.
Coming in at No. 9 was in overtime at the 2011 NFC Championship Game. You guessed it, Kyle Williams’ fumbled punt that led to the Giants’ winning field goal, sending them to Super Bowl XLVI.
In overtime of the 2011 NFC Championship Game, Williams—who wasn’t the 49ers’ regular punt returner and was only playing that role because Ted Ginn Jr. was injured—became a legendary goat.
The game was probably only in overtime because he muffed a punt with San Francisco leading by four points in the fourth quarter, and he had made a risky, sliding catch on an earlier punt.
And yet not only was he back there again when the Giants were forced to punt in sudden-death overtime with a trip to Super Bowl XLVI on the line, but he fielded Steve Weatherford’s punt with little room to run and was almost immediately stripped by Jacquian Williams of the Giants.
The Giants didn’t have to throw another pass and were NFC champions only a few plays later.
And then No. 5…
On December 19, 2010, Giants punter Matt Dodge, who was instructed by the Giants’ coaches to kick the ball away from Eagles returner Desean Jackson, punted the ball directly to Jackson, who took it to the house to complete an improbable comeback.
With the Giants and Eagles seemingly headed to overtime in a critical late-season divisional matchup at MetLife (which was then known as New Meadowlands Stadium), all Dodge had to do was hammer a punt out of bounds on Philly’s side of the field.
That would have almost certainly caused the Eagles to take a knee with just a few seconds remaining.
Instead, the rookie punter baffled the football world by firing a line drive directly at one of the game’s most dangerous weapons, DeSean Jackson. Eighteen seconds later, Jackson was in the end zone and the Eagles had landed a victory that would ultimately give them the division crown over the Giants, who missed the playoffs by one game.
Ironically, that Matt Dodge punt spurred some much-needed changes in the Giants organization and that helped propel them to the Kyle Williams moment and a Super Bowl title just a year later.
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