When this Giants season comes to an end (counting the days, hours and minutes won’t make it get here any sooner, sadly) there’s going to have to be long and complicated discussions about what the hell happened on offense. More to the point, what the hell did not happen on offense.

There will be newcomers tasked with putting together a far better scheme and playbook. This is a given, even if Joe Judge is brought back for a third season as head coach. He fired Marc Colombo, his offensive line coach, during Year 1 and fired Jason Garrett, his offensive coordinator, during Year 2. Nothing has helped. Nothing has worked. If Judge returns in 2022, he will have hired a new offensive coordinator and, perhaps, several new assistants on that side of the ball.

Then comes the hard part: Determining if the key players involved in this woeful product are part of the problem or were dragged down by the dysfunction around them.

We are looking at you, Kenny Golladay. And you, Kadarius Toney. And you, Saquon Barkley. And you, to a lesser extent, Sterling Shepard.

These were supposed to be four playmakers to get the Giants down the field and into the end zone. The two tight ends, Evan Engram and newcomer Kyle Rudolph, were also expected to very much be in the mix but we can discount them for now, as Engram is an impending free agent and it is unlikely Rudolph will be asked back after a no-impact season.

Golladay is signed for three more years. Toney is coming off a dismal rookie season.  Barkley is entering the final year of his contract. Shepard has two more years to go, at big bucks.

The Giants have to figure out if these four players were sucked under the riptide and drowned in all the terribleness around them. Forget about this five-game losing streak — with a total of four touchdowns — as this current skid came with Mike Glennon (four games) and Jake Fromm (one game) starting at quarterback.  More to the point, there was not much doing when Daniel Jones was healthy and in the pocket.  

Golladay (34 catches for 499 yards) has no touchdown receptions, which remains the single most incriminating statistic of this Giants offensive malaise. He was on the field for 45 snaps on offense in the 29-3 loss in Chicago and the only pass that came his way ended up getting intercepted. He is a much more accomplished player than this and will benefit from an upgrade in the entire operation. The Giants are stuck with Golladay, financially, and so there is no discussion here.

Toney has also failed to hit the end zone with the ball in his hands, no touchdowns included in his 39 receptions for 420 yards. His flashes of brilliance were overshadowed by all the ailments and injuries that kept him off the field and Toney heads into his second NFL season as a well-earned question mark.

Barkley’s first 100-yard rushing game of the season in Chicago in Week 17 was a pick-me-up for a player that needed it. One more year removed from reconstructive knee surgery and the odd ankle sprain that short-circuited his comeback should allow Barkley to approach the form he showed as a rookie. How close he ever gets to finding that form should determine if he gets a new deal from the Giants.

Shepard is facing surgery to repair a torn Achilles and his Giants career could be over.

Golladay, Toney, Barkley and Shepard. Barkley has a total of four touchdowns this season. There is one for Shepard and none from Golladay and Toney.  There are reasons for this pathetic output (terrible offensive line, ineffective coaching) that have nothing to do with these four players. There is also culpability within every one of these four players. The Giants have to weigh this all as they move forward.

More that came out of the Giants latest loss:

Not throwing the ball and not completing passes does not always put a team on the road to ruin. The 11 pass attempts in this debacle were the fewest by a Giants quarterback since Oct. 25, 1992, when Jeff Hostetler went 5 for 9 and the Giants actually won the game, beating the Seahawks 23-10. The last time the Giants completed fewer than the four passes Mike Glennon connected on was more than 44 years ago, when on Oct. 22, 1978, Joe Pisarcik (who would go onto greater infamy with “The Fumble’’ a month later) completed 3 of 10 passes in 17-6 victory over Washington.

And wait, there’s more.

The Giants’ not-grand total of 24 passing yards were their fewest since Dec. 10, 1978, when they also had 24 passing yards — in a 17-0 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals.

Much closer to the present, the Patriots own the lowest passing total in this NFL this season, with only 19 yards on Dec. 9 in Buffalo. Of course, the Patriots won, 14-10.

Are the Giants going to get fooled by what Lorenzo Carter is doing down the stretch of this season?  In his first 10 games, Carter had zero sacks and only two quarterback hits. In his last three games, he has four sacks and five quarterback hits. Carter’s contract is up after this season and he is making a strong closing push. Will this be enough for the Giants to re-sign their 2018 third-round draft pick, a player who has not developed into the edge rusher they need him to be?

Gumption. The Giants last season showed gumption. They were not a good team by any stretch but they fought until the end most games. And they went 3-5 on the road, not easy for a below-average team. This season? Not so much. That impressive victory in New Orleans in Week 4 was their lone road win. They finished 1-8 on the road. One step up and more than two steps back.

Leonard Williams is remarkable when it comes to durability and dependability. Dexter Lawrence is on the reserve/COVID-19 list and missed the first game of his NFL career — he played in 47 straight games before this.  Lawrence’s absence on the defensive line meant more time on the field for Williams. He played 61 of the 66 defensive snaps and led the team with eight tackles.  Williams did not miss any starts despite a triceps injury that has him wearing a bulky brace on his elbow. Wind him up and watch him go.

The Bears, like the Giants, have not had much fun this season. This victory was so easy for Chicago that it was yukking it up late in the game, when on fourth down from the Giants’ nine-yard line, leading by 26 points, head coach Matt Nagy decided some trickery was in order. He put two extra offensive linemen on the field and made it look as if the Bears were going to run the ball, with running back David Montgomery lined up at quarterback. Montgomery took the direct snap, made a move as if he was going to run up the middle, stopped and unloaded a jump-pass into the end zone to tight end Cole Kmet, who was not open. Linebacker Tae Crowder was not fooled at all and intercepted the pass on the goal line. If the play had resulted in a touchdown, the Giants might have been slightly peeved that Nagy called for a gimmick play with 1:55 remaining in a game already decided.

“Oh man. So that’s been in the incubator for a few weeks, that play, practicing it,” Nagy said. “The guys are razzing [Montgomery], all the running backs. Cole came over and he was razzing him. That’s one of those plays that can be really good or it can be really bad. It happened to be really bad but, again, in that situation, when it hits, it’s fun.’’