Sunday could be a glorious and fun day at MetLife Stadium.
the New York Giants play their most significant game in the building since the end of the 2011 season, when they beat the Dallas Cowboys Week 17 to win the NFC East and reach the playoffs, then routed the Atlanta Falcons the Wild Card weekend to start their race towards a superbowl Title.
The Giants have only made the playoffs once since. They can clinch a playoff berth on Sunday afternoon by beating downed 4-10-1 Indianapolis Colts.
They’re supposed to beat the Colts. DraftKings Sportsbook has the Giants as a 5.5-point favorite (-245 on the moneyline). Indianapolis has lost eight of its last nine games. The Colts and inexperienced interim head coach Jeff Saturday managed to blow a 33-0 halftime lead Minnesota Vikings a few weeks ago, the biggest single-game regular-season collapse in the NFL.
Big Blue View’s five writers picked the game win the Giants. As of Thursday afternoon, 98% of the 346 analysts who posted picks on Tallysight picked the Giants to win the game. ESPN used it Soccer Power Index to simulate results from Weeks 17 and 18. FPI has the Giants shredding the Colts, 34-0.
FiveThirtyEight gives the Giants a 92% chance of making the playoffs. The Football Power Index puts the odds at 95.4%. soccer strangers calculates a 91.4% chance the Giants will advance to the playoffs.
However, there is no guarantee.
A loss to the Colts on Sunday and the Giants could still reach the playoffs if the good teams lose in the day. They could also enter Week 18 needing to beat the 12-3 Philadelphia Eagles or hope for help to reach the playoffs.
So, as close as the playoffs are, as much as the Giants and their fans can taste them, there is work to be done.
Giants guard Mark Glowinski was part of an Indianapolis team last season that looked like a playoff display with two weeks left in the season, but lost its last two games to the Las Vegas Raiders and 3-14 Jacksonville Jaguars.
“All I can do is refresh everybody, use all the time I’ve had in the past for win-loss situations to remind guys it’s here and now,” he said. said Glowinski this week. “We have to perform and make sure we give everything we can.”
Glowinski said the Giants just had to run their business.
“I think more of us are taking no one lightly, making sure you’re in the moment, making sure you’re executing, making sure it comes down to fundamentals and technique, making sure that you want it more, he said. “Sometimes things slip through your fingers and you want them back, but new team, new game, let’s build some.”
Veteran safety Tony Jefferson was part of 2017 Baltimore Ravens team that lost a playoff berth when the 7-9 Cincinnati Bengals beat them 31-27 in the final week of the season on a fourth-and-12 49-yard pass from Andy Dalton to Tyler Boyd with only: 44 remaining.
“There’s nothing really different that you have to prepare for except we’re going to get their best shot,” Jefferson said. “Nothing will be given to us”
Coach Brian Daboll has been loath to talk about the playoffs all week.
“We’re not there yet,” Daboll said earlier this week.
Members of the media asked and asked throughout the week, trying to get the freshman coach to express even a hint of feelings about making the playoffs. He never bit.
You have to do the things you need to do to win every game. I know there’s ‘What is this? What is this? The way I was brought up in this company, in terms of being prepared to play games, doing the things you need to do every week, preparing yourself the right way, practicing the right way,” said Daboll said. “I know that’s a boring answer, but it’s the truth. I don’t think you can go too far ahead of yourself in anything. Every game is important. And as you go through the season, if you’re lucky enough to continue, then it’s one-game seasons. So we’re focused on this game. And we’re going to have to do a good job.
Daboll preached consistency all year. That doesn’t change with Sunday’s “win and in” scenario at hand.
The same way we’ve done all year: just do what we have to do to try to win a game and focus on this week. That’s what’s hard to do [in] this league,” Daboll said. Lots of other things going on and I understand all the questions [about the playoffs]. But it’s really, really – living this moment. Control the things you can control. And every day, have a nice day. And then finally, go there on Sunday and play and train a good game.
Failing to make the playoffs would bring a disappointing end to what was otherwise a promising season for the Giants in the first year of the Daboll-Joe Schoen regime.
“I think we are all aware of what is at stake and what we can achieve. You can’t get lost in that. You have to focus on the essentials,” running back Saquon Barkley said. “We have to go back to playing tight football, taking care of the ball, taking care of the little things and if you watch throughout the season when we do that we put ourselves in position to win football games. That’s just the goal. Try what we can do to win this game. Everything else that is in play, if you take care of what you need to take care of, the rest will take care of itself.
Barkley and the Giants don’t want to leave their fate to a roll of the dice in Week 18, especially against a game in Philadelphia.
“You don’t want to leave this to chance. The way you do it is to do what you have to do this week. That’s really it,” Barkley said. You just have to treat it like another week. One game at a time, it’s the most important game because it’s the next game on the schedule and try to make the little things, take care of the football, go ahead and try to win the football game.
Let’s see if the Giants can do what they’re supposed to do Sunday afternoon. If they do, MetLife Stadium could be quite the party scene.
If they don’t? Well, do we really want to think about it?
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