Giants could be out of it Sunday

The Giants can be eliminated from the playoffs officially this Sunday with a road loss to the Bears and a Cowboys victory over the host Patriots, per Elias Sports Bureau.

This assumes no ties around the NFL in Week 12.

It is a foregone conclusion, of course, that the Giants (2-8) are going to miss the playoffs for a third straight season and for the seventh time in the last eight years. They have below a one percent chance of qualifying entering the weekend, per FiveThirtyEight.

But in this scenario, they could be officially ruled out in Week 12 for the first time since 2017, when the Giants went 3-13.

That was Ben McAdoo’s second and final season as head coach. The Giants were eliminated on Thanksgiving weekend with a 2-9 record. Ownership, GM Jerry Reese and McAdoo then decided to take a look at other quarterbacks.

Eli Manning refused to play just the first half Week 13 in Oakland, however. Geno Smith started and played the whole game, snapping Manning’s consecutive games streak. And McAdoo and Reese were fired the next day, leaving Steve Spagnuolo as interim coach for the final four games.

Pat Shurmur’s 2018 Giants were officially eliminated by a Week 15 home shutout loss to the Titans and finished 5-11.

This year’s Giants emerge from their Week 11 bye on a six-game losing streak, desperate for a victory over the Bears (4-6) to validate some sort of progress, even if it would only delay the inevitable.

The Giants play in Sunday’s 1 p.m. window, and the Cowboys and Patriots face off at 4:25 p.m., so if the Giants lose, they could be eliminated on their flight home.