The temporary fix

First win didn’t solve Jints’ issues or save McAdoo’s job

ABAND-AID. That’s what the Giants applied to their bloody 2017 season Sunday night in Denver in the form of their resounding and complete 23-10 victory over the Broncos. It, too, is what coach Ben McAdoo applied to his own tenuous job status. Band-Aids don’t stop the bleeding. They serve as a temporary fix to the problem, prevent the flow of further bleeding. That’s what the Giants did in their “where-has-this-been-all-season?” victory, in their first win of 2017. There’s a long way to go before the 1-5 Giants approach respectability, and that will begin with their next opponent, the Seahawks, on Sunday at MetLife Stadium. As impressive as it was in an against-most-odds performance, one win does not make a season. One win does not secure the embattled head coach’s job or the general manager’s job, either. For McAdoo, the win over the Broncos was a nice start. He had a tangible hand in the victory, finally ceding his beloved play-calling duties to offensive coordinator Mike Sullivan. McAdoo said after the game he delegated the play-calling because he felt the locker room needed more of his attention. The cynic in you wonders if he was pushed by someone upstairs to do that. Hopefully, that was not the case and McAdoo did it organically, because it seemed to work.

By all player accounts after the game, McAdoo’s motivational tactics behind closed doors last week, which was very much about building his beleaguered locker room up, were the right touch.

The question now is how long it lasts — if it lasts at all?

The Giants’ age-old circle-the-wagons mantra for this game worked — and they executed it to perfection.

Can they do that every week for the next 10 games?

The Giants played close to a perfect game against the Broncos, who were 12-point favorites.

The Giants ran the ball effectively by committing to it and utilizing the best game of the season by the offensive line.

They scored on defense, which statistically increase a team’s chance to win to about 90 percent. But many deficiencies were masked by all the good things the Giants did, beginning with the fact they scored one offensive touchdown.

Their replacement receivers for the injured Odell Beckham Jr., Brandon Marshall (both out for the season) and Sterling Shepard could not get open against the Broncos’ secondary, which is a concern.

Eli Manning completed just two passes for 22 yards to wideouts in the game, spend- ing most of his time passing to rookie tight end Evan Engram.

There were some passes by Manning that sailed high that the replacement receivers failed to haul in. Those were passes Beckham would routinely catch, make Manning look good and keep the chains moving.

So as the Giants move forward, make no mistake about this: These final 10 games represent a referendum on McAdoo’s future, and GM Jerry Reese’s, too.

How McAdoo continues to handle the locker room and motivate the players once their playoff chances are officially extinguished will be closely watched. There were signs last week he was in danger of losing the locker room. His handling of the suspension of Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie was curious if not clumsy.

This is not to say McAdoo should not have suspended Rodgers-Cromartie, but Rodgers-Cromartie is one the more popular players in the locker room and by not addressing the players about the suspension until Friday was bad form.

Can you imagine the potential unrest in the Giants’ locker room had they gotten blown out Sunday night?

So it’s a fine line McAdoo is walking, a fine line for the en- tire team, which remains very vulnerable at 1-5.

“We’re going to get greedy now and want more wins,” safety Landon Collins said. “I expect this to be a big boost for us going forward.” Will it, though? “It was a good night in Denver,” one Giants fan said. “But don’t expect much more the rest of the way.”

Was the win in Denver an outlier? It shouldn’t be, given the talent the team has on defense. Even with the deficiencies at receiver and on the offensive line, the defense should keep the Giants in most of their games.

Consider that the Giants delivered their best defensive performance of the season Sunday night while playing without starting defensive end Olivier Vernon and linebacker Jonathan Casillas, both of whom were out with injuries.

They, too, played without Rodgers-Cromartie.

So given the performance in Denver while playing shorthanded, there will be no excuse from the Giants’ defense if it falls back to the underachieving way it had been playing for the better part of the first five games.

So, if the defense starts underachieving again and the offense regresses, it’ll be doing so on McAdoo’s watch. And everyone — most importantly the Maras and the Tisches — will be watching carefully.