http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/04/sports/football/new-york-giants-minnesota-vikings.html 2016-10-04 06:50:08 Odell Beckham Jr.? Steamed. The Giants’ Defense? Rolled. Too many penalties, too few takeaways, mounting injuries and Beckham’s inability to control his temper all contributed to a loss to the Vikings. === MINNEAPOLIS — Four games into Ben McAdoo’s tenure as head coach, the Giants face a number of troubling problems, all of which contributed to a 24-10 loss to the The gist: too many penalties, too few takeaways, mounting injuries (tight end Larry Donnell’s first-half concussion the latest) and wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr.’s inability to control his temper. For the fourth consecutive week, the Giants’ defense failed to force a turnover. The depleted secondary, with safeties Darian Thompson (foot) and Nat Berhe (concussion) and cornerback Eli Apple (hamstring) all inactive, allowed Vikings quarterback Sam Bradford — who did not join the Vikings until the week before the season opener — to complete 26 of 36 passes for 262 yards and one touchdown. The Giants’ offense, missing running back Rashad Jennings (thumb) for the second consecutive week, struggled in the deafening cacophony of U.S. Bank Stadium until early in the fourth quarter, when the rookie Paul Perkins turned a swing pass from quarterback Eli Manning into a twisting 67-yard gain. Orleans Darkwa’s 1-yard touchdown run cut Minnesota’s lead to 17-10 with plenty of time left. But Bradford directed the Vikings (4-0) right down the field. He found wide receiver Charles Johnson for a 40-yard gain to the Giants’ 4, where Jerick McKinnon ran it in with 9 minutes 20 seconds to play. Nine Vikings caught passes from Bradford, who has not thrown an interception since joining the team in a trade from Philadelphia. The Giants (2-2) trailed by 14-0 in the second quarter before Beckham caught his first pass and lost his cool, jawing with the physical Vikings cornerback Xavier Rhodes and drawing an unsportsmanlike-conduct penalty. The Giants were flagged eight times for 69 yards. Manning had a tough night. He was 25 of 45 for 261 yards. He and Beckham appeared to miscommunicate on Rhodes’s interception in the third quarter, with Manning throwing to the outside while Beckham, following contact with Rhodes, cut inside. This was Minnesota’s second regular-season game in cavernous U.S. Bank Stadium, a $1.1 billion fixed-roof stadium with a glass wall facing the downtown skyline, built on the former site of the Metrodome. Four times in the last eight seasons, the Giants faced the Vikings on the road, each in a different stadium: the Metrodome in 2009; Detroit’s Ford Field in 2010, after the Metrodome roof collapsed under heavy snow; last year at the University of Minnesota’s TCF Bank Stadium, the Vikings’ temporary home; and the new stadium Monday night. The Metrodome used to be one of the N.F.L.’s loudest buildings, and the noise level in the new stadium matched it. Early on, the Giants strained to hear Manning call signals. On one first-quarter play, with a full-house backfield, two running backs walked up to Manning before the snap because they could not hear him. A sluggish start by the Giants, featuring a special-teams turnover and three penalties in the first nine minutes, helped the Vikings score first. Dwayne Harris dropped a punt with the Vikings gunner Cordarrelle Patterson bearing down on him, and Marcus Sherels recovered for Minnesota on the Giants’ 41. A pass-interference penalty on Janoris Jenkins, who shoved Patterson from behind, gave Minnesota first-and-goal at the 1, and Matt Asiata barreled over for the score — the first rushing touchdown of the season for the Vikings, the league’s worst rushing team. Bradford, acquired for two draft choices to replace the injured Teddy Bridgewater (dislocated knee), threw a 7-yard touchdown pass to tight end Kyle Rudolph to make it 14-0. Beckham and Rhodes went at it on the next series. Beckham objected to Rhodes’s drilling him along the sideline after a catch and demanded a late-hit penalty from the line judge Tom Symonette. Beckham was flagged instead for unsportsmanlike conduct. Beckham jawed again with Rhodes on his next catch, briefly. Vikings coaches and players grabbed Rhodes and led him away. The last of the six penalties by the Giants in the first half, for delay of game, lengthened Josh Brown’s field-goal attempt just before halftime, but he converted from 40 yards. Minnesota’s struggling kicker, Blair Walsh, connected from 44 yards in the third quarter after having pulled a 46-yard attempt wide left on the previous series. The game would have matched two undefeated teams had the Giants not blown a 21-9 lead last week in a 29-27 loss to Washington, done in by too many penalties (11 for 128 yards) and a severe shortage of takeaways. Through three games, the Giants’ defense was the only one in the N.F.L. that had not forced a turnover; one fumble recovery came on special teams. The last time the Giants went three games into the season without intercepting a pass was 1934, when the team played at the Polo Grounds. Minnesota’s emerging defense, meanwhile, entered Week 4 leading the league with 15 sacks, eight of them last week against Carolina’s Cam Newton. Vikings Coach Mike Zimmer made the team’s seven-game losing streak on “Monday Night Football” a point of emphasis this week. The streak began in 2009, and the Giants delivered two of those losses — 21-3 at Ford Field in 2010 and 23-7 at MetLife Stadium in 2013. “We talked about winning prime-time games,” said Vikings nose tackle Linval Joseph, a former Giant. “It’s a prime-time game. We haven’t won a Monday night game in quite a while.” No longer.