Shaky Giants still can win NFC Least
The sky is falling on the Giants. They have lost their last three games and four of their last five — the latest Sunday’s galling overtime loss to the Jets in which they blew a 10-point fourth-quarter lead with poor play and questionable coaching decisions.
Satirical, mocking memes of coach Tom Coughlin are littering the Internet. One surfaced Wednesday (from a September story in The Onion) with a picture of a doctor in a white lab coat leading the 69- year-old Giants coach down a hall way with an accompanying headline that read: “Giants Move Tom Coughlin To Assisted-Coaching Facility.’’ Creative? Absolutely. Disrespectful to a coach who has had a strong hand in bringing two Super Bowl titles to Giants fans since 2008? Definitely.
But Coughlin and the Giants are what their record says they are heading into their Monday night matchup with the Dolphins in South Florida — 5-7 and a team in danger of failing to make the playoffs for the fourth consecutive season.
So the natives understandably are unhappy.
But if the Giants take a step away from the negativity, they will find a few reasons for hope — reasons that make them the favorites to win the NFC Least.
That hope begins with the fact that, despite their current free fall, the Giants still have a piece of first place with four games remaining on their schedule.
They also have the best quarterback in the division in Eli Manning. There can be no legitimate arguments coming out of Philadelphia, with Sam Bradford never having played in the postseason, or Washington, with Kirk Cousins just finding his way as a starter, or Dallas, where Tony Romo is out for the rest of the season.
The Giants also have the most experienced and established coach in Coughlin, whose two Super Bowl titles are two more than his division peers have combined to win, and whose 12 playoff wins are 11 more than the other three coaches combined.
This is not Cough lin’ s first rodeo handling a struggling team, trying to rebuild its confidence in crunch time while outside fan and media pressure mounts (see the 2007 and 2011 seasons).
In Philadelphia, it seems like a different story emerges every day about which college job Chip Kelly might leave the Eagles for. In Washington, they have been ready to fire Jay Gruden all season and even last season, his first with the team. And in Dallas, Jason Garrett lives his life on the hot seat.
When Dolphins interim coach Dan Campbell was asked on Wednesday about his impression from afar of the criticism Coughlin has been enduring, he delivered an answer that was flecked with respect.
“It makes me a little uneasy, because I know what coach Coughlin does when the heat gets turned up: He rises to the challenge,’’ said Campbell, who was drafted in the third round by the Giants in 1999 and played tight end with them for three seasons. “And he’s done as good as anybody — if not better — when the time comes when you feel like you’re in a hole, he finds a way to get them out.
“I don’t see this as anything other than we better be ready to go Monday night because I know that they’re going to be ready.’’
The Cowboys are 1-7 without Romo. The Redskins, who play three of their final four games on the road, are 0-5 away from home this season. The Eagles, who lost 45-14 to the Lions one week, then dominated the Patriots the next, have won two consecutive games only once this season. So they clearly have no idea which team is turning up from week-to- week.
With regard to the Giants’ propensity to blow fourth-quarter leads, the law of averages has to favor them. Eventually, one or two of them have to go the Giants’ way.
Yes, the bad news is the fact that they have lost five games in the final two minutes, four of those in the final minute. But the good news is they were good enough to have those leads so late in those games — games they should have won.
We can play the game calculating how large the Giants’ division lead might be by now had they just closed out two or three of the f ive games they lost late, but all of that is moot.
What matters now is whether the Giants can dig their damaged psyches out of the ditch and realize they have as good a chance as ( if not better than) the Eagles, Redskins and Cowboys to win the division.
That, of course, starts with beating the Dolphins. If that happens, then they will stop the sky from falling … at least for another week.
mark.cannizzaro@nypost.com