Giants, just like last year, have played themselves into having a chance down stretch

There was understandable panic after the Giants’ 0-3 start. They were staring at a horrible, seven-game stretch, filled with tough games and dangerous road trips. They looked so done that the conversation had already turned from wondering if Dave Gettleman would be fired to discussing who might be shoved out the door with him.

The Giants always thought that was all a bit premature.

Maybe they were right -- because, since then, they’ve gone 3-3 in that killer stretch, including a 23-16 win over the Las Vegas Raiders on Sunday that gave them something good to think about on their bye week. Their defense has gotten its act together after early-season struggles. And their decimated offense might be close to full strength when they return to play the Super Bowl champs in Tampa Bay in two weeks.

After that, they’ll get the part of the schedule they’ve been eyeing all along -- a soft, seven-game finale that includes the Miami Dolphins (2-7), Chicago Bears (3-5), Washington Football Team (2-6) and the 3-6 Philadelphia Eagles twice. And they are currently, remarkably, just 1 ½ games out of the final playoff spot in the expanded NFC field.

They have a long way to go to actually look like a playoff contender, and it still might take a small miracle to get them in. But in pulling out this win, in a crazy week where their entire operation was disrupted by a false positives for COVID-19, they managed to give themselves something it didn’t look like they’d have two months ago:

A chance.

“A lot of things (from this win) just kind of reaffirm all the things I’ve known about them all along,” said Giants head coach Joe Judge. “We have a very resilient team. We have a very mentally tough team. They stick together and they work together. They challenge each other, they come back, they respond.”

They do, but the shame of this is that they know this season could’ve been better. They had a real chance to knock off the Chiefs last Monday night in Kansas City, but blew it when Oshane Ximines’ offsides penalty nullified a game-sealing interception. They lost a game to Washington when Dexter Lawrence jumped offsides as the WFT kicker missed his first attempt at a game-winning field goal. And a pass interference penalty late cost them their game against the Atlanta Falcons, too.

Yes, they are those three mistakes and three field goals in the final minute from being 6-3 instead of 3-6. But as Judge keeps preaching to his players, it’s too late to cry about that now.

“You can sit there and you can lick your wounds,” Judge said, “or you can look forward and say, ‘What do we have to do to be successful this week?’ We couldn’t dwell on what happened on Monday night. We can’t dwell on any previous game. They keep moving forward.”

And because of that, they are starting to show signs of what they did last season, when they salvaged what was a 1-7 start under a then-rookie-coach Judge and played competent football the rest of the way. That was enough to get them to the final night of the season when they still had a chance, at 6-10, to win the NFC East.

Thanks to the Dallas Cowboys (6-2) the division isn’t offering that kind of gift this season. But there’s a lot of mediocrity in the NFC. Right now, the seventh and final spot in the projected NFC playoff field belongs to the Falcons (4-4). And they are not a good team.

What would it take for the Giants to do the unthinkable? Assuming they lose in Tampa coming out of the bye, they’ll probably need to go 6-1 in those final seven games. That’s a lot to ask a team with an offense that is one of the most anemic in the league.

But maybe they’ll be different when Kenny Golladay and Kadarius Toney are fully healthy, which they clearly were not on Sunday. And who knows what kind of boost they’ll get when Saquon Barkley returns, hopefully in Tampa. Sterling Shepard has a shot to be back by then, too.

When a team is crushed by injuries like that, all it has to do is stay afloat, to prove it could be resilient.

There’s no doubt, over the last six games, that’s exactly what the Giants have done.

“We just don’t blink,” tight end Evan Engram said. “We just didn’t blink.”

They certainly didn’t this week. And they haven’t blinked much all season through controversies and bad losses and a ton of outside noise.

Maybe it won’t matter. Maybe this really is all too little, too late. Maybe they just don’t have the talent to save their season, or to save Gettleman or whomever else might follow him out the door. Maybe this team just is what it is -- a non-contender with too many issues to be solved over the final eight games, and one that needs the offseason house-cleaning everyone assumes it will have.

But for now, at least, they are fighting again, believing again, and starting to play competent football again. It’s too soon to tell if they can really save their season or anyone’s jobs. But they can spend their off week feeling good that it’s also too soon to completely rule it out.