The most likely Sunday scenario in Minneapolis has the Giants taking the fight to the Vikings, dragging a tense game into the fourth quarter, and then losing on a last-minute or last-second play that summons the ghost of Christmas Eve past.
Maybe the difference-maker this time won’t be a 61-yard field goal. Maybe it will be a Justin Jefferson catch or a Dalvin Cook cut or something else that explains how a non-juggernaut the likes of the Vikes could go 11-0 in one-score games.
In that scenario, Giants fans would throw more roses at Brian Daboll’s feet and bask in the afterglow of a winning season that came out of deep left field. The same franchise that had lost 59 games over the previous five seasons, firing three head coaches along the way, was expected to deliver a fresh supply of defective goods in 2022. Instead Daboll became the league’s Rookie of the Year by hiring the right assistants, by restoring Saquon Barkley as a force, and by elevating Daniel Jones into a poor man’s Josh Allen. (OK, a pauper’s Josh Allen.)
Who could’ve ever believed at summer’s end that the Giants would go 9-7-1 and rest their starters for the playoffs on the final day of the regular season while the defending Super Bowl champion Rams were falling to 5-12 and heading nowhere but home?
Daniel Jones runs off the field at MetLife Stadium. Robert Sabo
But that’s the wild and crazy nature of today’s NFL, where just about anything is plausible, included a spirited postseason run by the NFC’s sixth seed — a team favored by oddsmakers to go one-and-done inside U.S. Bank Stadium.
Giants players, coaches and fans should put no artificial ceiling on their dreams. This tournament is wide open, just as it was last year. The 2021 Bengals had won 25 of their 80 games over the previous five seasons and had a second-year quarterback coming off a torn ACL, and yet they were a couple of plays away from winning the whole thing.
That doesn’t mean the Giants are bound for the Super Bowl in the Arizona desert, where their 2007 forebears finished their own improbable and magical journey by denying the Belichick/Brady Patriots a 19-0 record and a legacy as the greatest team ever. The best guess right now has the Giants losing in Minneapolis this first weekend or, if not, in Philadelphia the following weekend.
But remember, the Giants enter this wild-card round with the benefit of playing pressure-free football. Deep down, even if they can’t say so for the record, they know they don’t have to win this game. They know their season has already been established as a smashing success.
They should use that liberating feeling to their advantage against the Vikings, who could get tight if pressed to the max. Minnesota has a good team, not a great team. The Vikes were handled by two NFC East opponents (Dallas and Philly) and were nearly beaten on their field by both of MetLife Stadium’s tenants. No, the Giants are not going up against the ’85 Bears here.
So Daboll and his players can let it rip against a beatable favorite. They can compete without fearing the consequences of defeat, because, well, there are no consequences of defeat, other than no more football. If the Giants play their first competitive postseason game since winning Super Bowl XLVI more than a decade ago (that 25-point loss to Green Bay in the middle of the drought was more embarrassing than the drought itself), their fans will be in the mood for a ticker-tape parade.
Saquon Barkley runs the ball Giants. Robert Sabo
That’s the fun of being an underdog, a role that big-city teams don’t often get to embrace. In the wake of a close wild-card loss, Giants fans will assume it was the natural first step in the building of a championship program … even though it doesn’t always work that way.
But there’s no need now to spend a lot of time talking about close losses. As an assistant with New England and Buffalo, Daboll went 23-7 in the postseason, winning five Super Bowl rings with the Patriots. He learned a little something about January and February winning along the way, compelling him to call playoff experience “probably overrated” and to suggest the Giants’ lack of it shouldn’t spell doom.
“The first year that I was part of a Super Bowl,” Daboll recalled, “the quarterback didn’t have any playoff experience there at New England.”
Isaiah Hodgins celebrates a touchdown. USA TODAY Sports
Tom Brady did just fine for himself. In fact, the 199th pick of the 2000 draft started building the league’s signature dynasty only a few months after Belichick — loser of 13 of his first 18 games in Foxborough — thought he was getting fired.
Yep, the strangest things can happen in sports. Joe Namath’s Jets can beat the Baltimore Colts. Buster Douglas can knock out Mike Tyson. Leicester City can win the Premier League. Saint Peter’s can beat Kentucky and go to the Elite Eight.
And the Giants can get hot, and get as lucky as they did in Glendale, Ariz., 15 years ago, when Eli Manning’s desperation heave stuck to David Tyree’s head.
Anything is possible for these likable long-shot Giants. And that’s what makes the playoffs so damn fun.