Giants show they’re up to task in London

LONDON — This should have been too big for these Giants. It certainly looked too big for them in the first 30 minutes on Sunday and that was hardly unexpected. The Packers and Aaron Rodgers had 20 points. The Giants and Daniel Jones had 10. Banged up, depleted and digging deep into their depth chart, a comeback seemed as unlikely as a neighborhood pub around these parts running out of fish and chips, beer on tap, or whatever is actually in those meat pies.

As it turned out, it was not too big for the Giants. They had been one of the NFL’s most delightful surprises in the first four weeks. Coming abroad, facing this opponent, in this unique environment, against this future Hall of Fame quarterback, should have been too much to ask of a team in its developmental stages.

And when they went into halftime down by 10 points, with Rodgers heating up and the decidedly proPackers crowd at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium making it look and sound like Lambeau Field with an English and state-of-the art twist, well, no one would have thought any less of the Giants if they did their best in the second half and boarded their charter flight back home with a loss so many anticipated they would earn.

Not these Giants.

They returned home with a startling 27-22 victory, holding Rodgers scoreless in the second half, making this excursion not only memorable but, maybe, showing how this all might actually be sustainable.

“The flight won’t be shorter, but it will be better,’’ wide receiver David Sills said.

“Whenever you’re flying this long it’s always better when you’re on the winning side,’’ left tackle Andrew Thomas said. “It’s gonna be a good time on the plane.’’

Brian Daboll, the first-year head coach, instructed his team to sleep as much as possible during Thursday night’s cross-Atlantic flight. There is no sleeping on the Giants anymore. They are 4-1 and coming back to beat the Packers means almost anything can happen from here on out. Heck, the Giants are winning and they aren’t even healthy.

If you have never been to one of the NFL international games, it is difficult to explain exactly what goes down. Jet lag is real and difficult to overcome in only a few days. There is a desire to get out and explore — especially for the many Giants players who had never before set foot in Europe. The team was staying in Ware, a town about one hour from downtown London and traffic is real and it is burdensome. Still, Daboll recommended the players get out there and look around, with some free time Friday night.

“He is a great coach because not only were we locked in when it was time to play football, but he let us explore,’’ safety Julian Love said. “He let us enjoy the city, the country. So, it was a good trip and they managed it very well. Just kudos to the staff and everybody involved.’’

On game day in one of these international affairs nothing is the way it usually is. The venue is unfamiliar. The vibe is often neutral, sort of like a Super Bowl on foreign soil or a big college bowl game. The Packers were the last of the 32 NFL teams to participate in one of these games, it was their home game and the Giants were taken aback by how many citizens of Green Bay and Appleton and all of Wisconsin made it here.

“The energy was amazing,’’ Saquon Barkley said. “It felt like a college game, to be completely honest. You have to give credit — Green Bay, they showed out. I don’t know if they came from Green Bay or just over here, it’s a big fan base but they showed out and it felt like for me like college, like we were at Michigan or at Ohio State as an away team. That’s how you want it to be. We said, ‘It’s backs against the wall.’ It’s only us here and the only thing we got is each other and we’ll lean on each other and we were able to get the win.’’

Barkley and Daniel Jones led the way on offense. Dexter Lawrence and Kayvon Thibodeaux and Xavier McKinney and less-heralded defenders such as Oshane Ximines and Nick McCloud and Fabian Moreau and Dane Belton and Justin Layne helped pitch the second-half shutout.

When Jones said the victory was “definitely up there for us’’ there was no argument to be made. The 2022 Giants have won in Nashville, Tenn., twice in East Rutherford, N.J. and now once in London. So far, it is not too big for them.

MAYBE you aren’t sold yet. Maybe you still remember all the times these past few years when you were just about ready to embrace Daniel Jones as the long-term solution as the Giants’ quarterback and then something happened — a brutal interception, an untimely fumble, an unfortunate injury — that would make you back off.

Maybe you still haven’t seen enough.

And — more to the point — maybe Joe

Schoen still hasn’t seen enough, since

Jones’ fate will ultimately be decided by the Giants general manager who, it should always be remembered, inherited Jones.

But Jones is certainly making a hell of a case for himself. Sunday he led the Giants to their most magnificent victory in years, a 27-22 stunner of the Green Bay Packers at London’s Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. The Giants are 4-1. Raise your hand if you saw that coming back in August.

He did this while his ankle barked at him and while blood oozed from his hand. He did it without four of his favorite receivers. He did it with Saquon Barkley spending time in the medical tent before returning to help co-author this seminal win alongside Jones and a gritty Giants defense that kept Aaron Rodgers off the scoreboard in the second half and out of the end zone during a last-minute drive that seemed certain — until it was over — to force overtime.

“We’ve got a tough group, a group that’s going to compete for four quarters and 60 minutes,” Jones said. “And we found a way to fight back at the end.”

Jones’ performance would have been notable even if the result had been different because of the simple fact that he answered the bell Sunday, playing despite a bum ankle, fearlessly toting the ball even if he was clearly slowed by a step or two, slinging it to secondary and tertiary receivers on long, beautiful scoring drives.

Jones’ final numbers were splendid — 21-for-27, 217 yards passing, 10 carries for 37 yards rushing — but the numbers that mattered most were the ones that will ultimately define whether he is the Giants’ quarterback of the future or merely their quarterback of the moment: Giants 27, Packers 22. Consider that a resounding piece of testimony on Jones’ behalf.

And maybe consider this one, too, since Giants coach Brian Daboll will likely also have a say and a sway in determining the Giants’ coming decisions:

“The quarterback,” he said, “had an excellent game. He’s had a few of those.”

He really has. Jones still resides in that murky middle class below the elite roster of quarterbacks and above the pedestrian ones, sandwiched between the Mahones/Brady/Rodgers/Allen/Jackson penthouse and the crowded outhouse of scufflers and scofflaws littering NFL backfields. But if he was a hit song, he would have a red star on his name — definitely on the rise.

From here? That’s anyone’s guess. But it is impossible to watch Jones week after week and not see an intriguing multifaceted weapon forever lurking inside the No. 8 jersey. Maybe in different circumstances, with a different coach, this would be an easier call.

But the Daboll-Jones marriage has already borne fruit and promotes genuine belief. The Giants are not 4-1 by accident, and they didn’t earn any of those wins in a lottery. Maybe you are as reluctant to label this team “legit” so soon as you are to similarly embrace

Jones. That’s fine. There’s plenty of season left, plenty of chances for both team and quarterback to back up their early speed.

“How people view us, I don’t think we’re concerned with that,” Jones said. “We’ll continue to do what we need to do to get better and become a better team.”

Jones downplayed the impact of the ankle injury he sustained last week against the Bears — “It felt good throughout the game and throughout the week,” he insisted — because if there’s one thing we have absolutely learned about him so far it’s that he is a stoic quarterback very much in keeping with the local lineage, very much in the mold of Y.A. Tittle and Phil Simms and Eli Manning.

He may hurt. He may bleed. But he’s not going to be the one to tell you about it.

“He’s tough,” Daboll said. “We have a lot of tough players on this team.”

It has been a joy to watch through five games, and Jones has been an equally enjoyable case study. Schoen and Daboll may not have drafted him. But more games like this, they may well wish to adopt him. It might not be a terrible choice.