Pat Shurmur did not have a good day at the office -- to put it mildly. The first-year Giants head coach wasn't just outcoached by his counterpart with the Saints, Sean Payton, in a 33-18 loss. He also dropped the ball with some sloppy clock management at the end of the first half on Sunday at MetLife Stadium.

At least give Shurmur this -- he owned the mistake. Sort of.

The Saints were driving deep into Giants' territory with less than two minutes to play. It was second and goal at the 8, with 1:05 left in the half, when Saints running back Alvin Kamara was stopped after a 1-yard gain.

Shurmur had three timeouts. Stopping the clock would have given Eli Manning and the Giants offense a chance to get the ball back with plenty of time if the Giants defense held the Saints to a field goal.

Instead, Payton ran the clock all the way down to 21 seconds before calling one of his own timeouts. The Giants defense did its job, forcing an incompletion on third down, and the Saints settled for the field goal ... with just 15 seconds left on the clock.

Manning took a knee, and instead of a chance to steal back momentum, the Giants headed into halftime down 12-7.

"In hindsight, I felt like they were working their way down," Shurmur said. "In hindsight, maybe (we) could have (called time out). We didn't."

The postgame press conference was testy at times with Shurmur, who falls to 1-3 in his first year as head coach. He was hired to fix the Giants offense, and for the third time in four years, that offense was held under 20 points.

"We've got to score more points," Shurmur said. "We've got to score more points throughout the game. We had a good first drive. We've got to do more of that throughout."

He was asked if he needed to make "massive changes."

"No. No. We need to get better," he said. "What does that mean, massive changes? We need to get better. We need to get better."

That includes the head coach.

Steve Politi may be reached at spoliti@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @StevePoliti. Find NJ.com on Facebook.