The Giants protected their own NFL record for offensive line futility better than they protected Daniel Jones.
The decade-long struggle to build an offensive line might have bottomed out Monday, when the Giants allowed 11 sacks in a 24-3 loss to the Seahawks.
It got so bad that even wide receivers were taking sacks, as Jones was spared one of the 11 when Parris Campbell was dropped for an 8-yard loss before he could cock his arm on a trick play.
“We take responsibility for those 11 sacks,” right tackle Evan Neal said. “There’s no excuse for it.”
Without starting left tackle Andrew Thomas for the full game, rookie John Michael Schmitz for all but their first possession and left guard Shane Lemieux at times, the Giants still put five — and sometimes six or seven — offensive linemen on the field at the same time.
It only looked like they were playing with ghost blockers, including on the healthy right side where Neal’s two-year-long struggles are sounding alarms.
The NFL record for sacks in a game is 14, set by the Eagles against the Giants in 1952. Since the stat became official in 1982, the record is 12, shared three times.
“It just feels terrible,” Neal said. “We couldn’t get things going on offense.”
Left tackle Josh Ezeudu stared off silently into space for about 20 minutes in the postgame locker room as several teammates stopped by to encourage him after what he told teammates was a “bad game.”
Jones, the NFL’s most-pressured quarterback through the first three weeks of the season (nearly 47 percent of his dropbacks), found himself in the uncomfortably familiar spot of running for survival.
In the rare event of a clean pocket, Jones seemed to be feeling phantom pressure and the cumulative toll of a beatdown.
“I gotta do a better job,” head coach Brian Daboll said when asked about the line.
None of the sacks were more devastating than when Matt Peart — as a jumbo tight end — blocked inside and allowed Uchenna Nwosu to come unblocked off the edge as Jones turned his back for a play-action fake.
Jones avoided Nwosu but was hit from behind and stripped by Mario Edwards Jr. to set up the Seahawks for a short touchdown drive.
But that’s not to sell short the 1-yard sack on a drive that ended with a failed fourth-and-1 … or the 6-yard sack that derailed a manageable second-and-5 … or either of the two times that back-to-back sacks preceding a punt … or any of the others.
Neal was beaten so badly by Boye Mafe’s speed on one third down that he nearly fell over chasing empty space after Jones was on the ground.
“I’m confident that we’re going to turn it around, but right now we have to get to the drawing board and figure it out,” Neal said. “We just have to play better ball. We’re a better group of men. We’re a lot better than we’ve been showing.”
The Giants also failed to convert a fourth-and-1 using the near-automatic “tush push” quarterback sneak popularized by the Eagles.
“Why it works so well for the Eagles is their offensive line,” one NFL source told The Post. “Biggest difference between the teams.”
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