It ends now. It ends under the lights, in front of a national television audience that might only tune in because they’ve given up on “How I Met Your Mother,” that might take a break midway through to watch “The Blacklist,” that probably wishes they could start the World Series a few days early.
It ends, for the Giants, against a team that actually seems in even more flux than they are, that will break in its third quarterback — Bucs castoff Josh Freeman — a quarterback who sure already seemed broken at his last address. It ends in late October, a shocking, sickening time of the football calendar to still be carrying a zero on the left side of the hyphen.
It ends against the Vikings at MetLife Stadium because it has to end sometime, this stunning skein of hapless, reckless, winless football, because while the Giants may indeed qualify as a bad football team in this autumn of 2013, they aren’t historically bad, aren’t epically bad, aren’t bad enough that we should start wondering if there’s a 1-15 or a 2-14 or a 3-13 in this team’s future.
It ends Monday night. It might not come easily. It might not come until very late, until Eli Manning has to summon a piece of his own history to deliver them. But it will end. It ends now.
“It certainly is a very important game for us because we’re trying like heck to put ourselves in a position where we get some reinforcement for our team, our players, our fans, all of the above,” Tom Coughlin said a few days ago, and if you will never catch Coughlin making any defiant guarantees even in the best of times, all it takes is a glance at how restless he looks now to understand just how important “important” is this time around.
“I’m sure the same thing is being thought of in Minnesota, even though they do have a win.”
This wasn’t what the folks at ESPN had in mind, of course, when they saw the Vikings — a playoff team last year — and the Giants — perennial playoff contenders — meet in the Meadowlands. These teams have had some memorable games in recent years, a couple of playoff encounters, the game in November 2007 that was the both the nadir of Eli’s career and the engine that catapulted him toward glory a few months later.
But 0-6 against 1-4?
Not exactly Peyton vs. Luck.
And yet, for the Giants, it is a terribly important test, because there is a distinct difference between being bad and being comically bad, between losing and languishing, between believing you’re a play or two away from righting the ship and a hole or two away from thinking the boat is heading for the bottom of the ocean.
“There are some good things that we’re doing,” Manning said. “We’re just not playing a full, complete game. We’re not playing four quarters of quality football. We may get two or three in and then our mistakes are hurting us. The mistakes aren’t just a missed play; they’re turnovers and missed opportunities for big plays and things like that are hurting us. We’ve just got to get more consistent and just take care of business.”
Mostly, they’ve got to end this.
Maybe there’s little difference between 3-13 and 6-10, in the same way there will be only a little difference between 1-6 and 0-7 by the conclusion of business Monday night. And it isn’t as if the most regal of franchises aren’t entitled to have a little rain fall on them. The Cowboys were 1-15 between dynasties. The Packers were 1-10-1 in the eras sandwiching Curly Lambeau and Vince Lombardi. The Giants have had plenty of hideous records in almost a century of existence.
And maybe even a win Monday night won’t change everything.
But it’ll mean something. It ends now.