Going out with a bang
Season-ending win over Eagles would be big step
Everything seems to be lining up for the Giants to upset the Eagles on Sunday in the Meadowlands.
The Eagles have lost four of their last five, including a colossal defensive meltdown last Sunday against Arizona. The Giants have lost three in a row themselves, but they took the Eagles down to the wire in Philadelphia on Christmas and then fell one point short of the playoff-bound Rams.
Consider too that the Giants will now be starting Tyrod Taylor instead of Tommy DeVito at quarterback, and the Eagles know they can’t win the division unless the Cowboys lose to Washington.
Surely this is the Giants’ chance to end the season strong against the team that ended theirs in the playoffs last season, right?
“Every team is good you play, and you got to play well to give yourself a chance,” Brian Daboll said Friday when asked if the Eagles are more vulnerable than the previous four times that he faced them as Giants head coach.
“They got good players, good coaches. Everybody goes through stuff during the season. That’s a good football team.”
It’s true that momentum can change on a dime in the NFL, and in all sports, really. Recent results don’t necessarily mean similar things will happen in the next game. The same goes not only from week to week but from season to season.
Some might say that beating the Eagles would be a major step for the Giants because they have yet to do so under Daboll — that closing the gap on divisional opponents must be the next step in the rebuild.
There’s some truth to that, but let’s be clear: What happens Sunday will have no bearing on next season.
Beating Washington in the 2017 finale didn’t help the Giants under Pat Shurmur in 2018, and beating Dallas in the 2020 finale only led to a worse record in 2021 and the firing of Joe Judge.
Tanking is dumb and nobody should actively cheer for their team to lose, especially earlier in the season or when you’re still mathematically alive for the playoffs. But the reality is that the Giants have more to gain as a franchise by losing to the Eagles in this final game.
With a win, the Giants could fall to as low as eighth in the NFL draft. But they are guaranteed a top-five pick if they lose, and they could possibly jump to the No. 2 pick with some help from around the league. The latter has a much better chance of landing the Giants a top quarterback or a franchise-altering player in the first round. That is more important than securing a meaningless victory against your rival who will also undergo changes in the offseason.
The Giants still will go out all to win this game, of course, and you have to appreciate that as a fan. Daboll wouldn’t have benched DeVito at halftime in Philadelphia to sub in Taylor, a veteran who probably won’t be with the organization next season, if the organization cared more about evaluating youth than winning.
It’s just that there isn’t a symbolic meaning to this game that there was in, say, the season opener against the Cowboys, when the Giants were trying to build on last season’s playoff run. The opposite happened as the Giants were shut out by 40 points and never fully recovered.
If you’re a Giants fan attending the game, you should focus on enjoying what may be the final game for many of the players with the franchise, including Saquon Barkley. The former No. 2 overall pick admitted it’s possible that his sixth season as a Giant will be his last since contract negotiations stalled last offseason and he was ultimately franchise-tagged for one year — an outcome that Barkley has no desire of seeing again.
“I’ve mentioned before that I wanted to be a Giant for life — that was a goal of mine when I got drafted,” Barkley said. “I wanted to leave a legacy here, but it’s out of my control. I truly have no say.
“It’s really up to those guys upstairs, to Joe (Schoen) and all those guys. They’ve got to do what’s best for the team and whatever they feel like is best ... then they’re going to make the decision.”