At least for one more night, New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning turned back the clock to lead a last-minute, game-winning drive in a 27-23 comeback victory over the San Francisco 49ers on Monday night to close out Week 10.
Trailing 23-20, Manning went 6-for-9 for 69 yards on New York’s final drive, hitting Sterling Shepard from three yards out with 53 seconds remaining for the winning score.
It capped off a night in which the 37-year-old threw a season-high three touchdown passes, two of them to leading receiver Odell Beckham Jr. The pair of touchdowns were half of Beckham’s four receptions on the day for 73 yards.
His second touchdown of the night, a 20-yard connection from Manning with 6:36 remaining in the third quarter, cut the Giants deficit from 10 to just three at 20-17. Both teams traded field goals before Shepard’s game-winning touchdown.
The veteran Manning and Co. were able to outduel 49ers rookie quarterback Nick Mullens, who thrashed the Oakland Raiders last week in his NFL debut. He wasn’t as fortunate against the Giants defense as he was picked off twice by B.J. Goodson on a night he passed for 250 yards and a touchdown.
Mullens’ first interception of the night delivered the Giants’ first points of Week 10 as a pass from his own six-yard-line hit off the hands of Kenrick Bourne before settling into Goodson’s grasp. Manning would hit Beckham from 10 yards out to give the Giants a 7-3 lead.
San Francisco running back Matt Breida would steal the show, accounting for 14 of the game’s next 20 points.
A three-yard touchdown rush early in the second quarter gave the 49ers the lead, preceding a pair of field goals. On the 49ers’ opening drive of the second half, the running back capped off an 11-play, 60-yard drive with an 11-yard reception to give San Francisco the 10-point lead that they would eventually surrender.
The win snaps a five-game losing streak for the Giants, which won’t necessarily help out their draft position. However, the offense showed what it could do when Manning was left relatively unharmed in the pocket. He was sacked just once on the night after being taken down 31 times in the first eight games of the season.
The result was the Giants scoring 27 or more points for just the third time this season.
In the meantime, rookie running back Saquon Barkley recorded 100 yards from scrimmage, including a 23-yard reception which set up the Giants’ game-winner. It was the eighth time in his first nine career NFL games that Barkley has produced 100 or more yards from scrimmage. The output saw him join Herschel Walker as the only running back in NFL history to record 500 rushing yards and 500 receiving yards through nine career games.
