National Football League

Jaguars rally for 32-31 win over Giants

Published Aug. 11, 2012 5:39 a.m. ET

foxsports

Even if it's the preseason, the turnovers still bother New York Giants coach Tom Coughlin.

The Giants had two fumbled punt returns in a 32-31 loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars on Friday.

Both came inside the 10-yard line and led to 10 points by the Jaguars. Jayron Hosley fumbled the first punt, dropping the kick at the 2-yard line with 32 seconds left in the first half.

The Jaguars recovered and two plays later, Chad Henne connected with Brian Robiskie for a 2-yard score to cut the Giants' lead to 24-14 at the half.

Another mistake came in the fourth quarter when New York (No. 3 in the AP Pro32 rankings) was protecting a 31-21 lead. Jerrel Jernigan dropped Bryan Anger's punt at the 9-yard line with Antwon Blake recovering for the Jaguars.

Jacksonville got to the 5, but a 10-yard penalty pushed it back to the 15. The Jaguars had to settle for Josh Scobee's 29-yard field goal to cut the Giants lead to 31-24 with 7:19 left.

The Giants went three and out, had to punt and the Jaguars (No. 31) went 64 yards in five plays and then added a 2-point conversion for the win.

''The No. 1 thing is ball security as a punt returner,'' Coughlin said. ''The first thing you have to do is catch the ball. We also have a lot of people who quite frankly don't know what they're doing.''

''They may have some talent and ability, but they're going to have to spend some more time trying to figure out how to do what we're asking them to do.''

Coughlin said he felt that Jernigan took his eye off the ball which resulted in his botched catch.

''Give credit to the punter. He punts the ball very, very high,'' Coughlin said. ''But all you have to do is signal fair catch and concentrate totally on catching the ball. You don't have to go through all that.''

After Eli Manning's two series, backup quarterback David Carr took over and led the Giants to a pair of scores following Jacksonville's two fumbles.

He connected with tight end Martellus Bennett from 12 yards and late in the first half, teamed with wide receiver Isaiah Stanback for a 5-yard TD completion.

Manning produced three points in his two series in the first quarter. He finished 4 for 8 for 60 yards and a quarterback rating of 75.0.

Carr finished 6 of 10 for 48 yards and a rating of 111.7.

''This is a system that I'm comfortable with and that helps especially since we have a lot of young guys that are learning,'' Carr said. ''For me to go out and do some good things, that way, I can take more of a leadership role. You tend to play better when you've got a lot of young guys around you.''

Both teams special teams fumbled away punts inside the 15-yard line. New York recovered the fumbled catch by Mike Brown at the 12 and after a penalty scored on a 6-yard pass from Ryan Perrilloux to Rueben Randle.

For the Jaguars, Blaine Gabbert was 5 of 10 for 62 yards and a touchdown pass on the opening drive in the first quarter.

''That's the way you want to start football games,'' he said. Not everything was perfect, but the biggest thing that matters is getting a touchdown.''

''I was extremely proud of Blaine tonight,'' said Jaguars coach Mike Mularkey, who was awarded the game ball by the team after his coaching debut in Jacksonville.

''No more pressure on him than anybody in the stadium when he walked into that huddle. And to take a team 90 yards and the things he did on third down. To do it all right and not do anything self-inflicted and move the ball down there against that defense, I was very proud of him.''

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Online: http://bigstory.ap.org/NFL-Pro32 and http://twitter.com/AP-NFL