The Fateful 4th-and-1 Play That Ended the Giants' 2008 Season

There are a lot of moments in New York Giants history that the team would no doubt like to have a mulligan for. However, among the numerous instances where a do-over would be preferred, there is one in particular that, according to Bryan DeArdo of CBS Sports , takes the cake.

The instance came in the 2008 divisional round against the Philadelphia Eagles. The Giants, then the defending Super Bowl champions and owners of a 12-win season, trailed 20–11 in the fourth quarter. On 4th-and-1, the Giants, from their 44-yard line, needed just a single yard to stay in the game and stay on track for a return to the Super Bowl.

They had Brandon Jacobs (92 yards) and Derrick Ward (46 yards), a duo that had combined for 138 rushing yards on the day. However, on that play, instead of going with either Jacobs or Ward, the Giants called a quarterback sneak, and quarterback Eli Manning was stopped cold in his tracks, resulting in a turnover on downs.

The Eagles meanwhile added a field goal to extend their lead, eventually defeating the Giants 23-11 to cap a heartbreaking season that earlier in the year had seen receiver Plaxico Burress accidentally shot himself in a Manhattan club.

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A costly call that altered the NY Giants' path

The 2008 Giants weren’t a Cinderella story as they were the year prior when they pulled off the improbable upset of the then-undefeated New England Patriots. No, the 2008 team was dominant in every way.

They led the NFL in rushing yards (2,518) and ranked top-five in points allowed. They controlled both sides of the ball and played with the confidence of a team that had already won a championship.

And yet that fourth-down call coming against one of their most heated rivals still doesn’t sit right, even 17 years later. It wasn’t just that it failed; it was the fact that the Giants, on that one play, abandoned everything that had worked all game and all season.

How much better off would the Giants have been had they called for Jacobs, who had been pounding the Eagles’ front seven for three quarters, or Ward, a reliable change of pace back, to carry the rock?

The odds were high that either of them could’ve been trusted to get a yard. Instead, Manning, who had zero rushing yards that game, was asked to go through the talons of a defense that had just pinned the Giants’ ears back.

Had New York converted, it’s not hard to imagine the game ending differently. The Eagles went on to face the Cardinals in the NFC Championship, a team the Giants had already beaten. A return to the Super Bowl wasn’t farfetched, even with the Burress issue hanging over their heads.

Instead, the loss marked the start of a three-year playoff drought. The team wouldn’t win another postseason game until its improbable Super Bowl run in 2011.

The selection of that play as the Giants’ biggest “do-over” in franchise history feels justified. It wasn’t a bad bounce or an unforced error; it was a choice that ignored what had worked all game, one that took the ball out of the hands of the Giants’ most effective players, and one that closed the door on a potential repeat.

For a team that had spent the season controlling games with their physicality, the decision to go in another direction came at the worst possible time. The result is a moment Giants fans, and the franchise itself, will likely always want back.

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This article was originally published on www.si.com/nfl/giants as The 4th-and-1 Play That Ended the NY Giants' 2008 Season .