A season that was supposed to be gone with the wind blows back into MetLife Stadium with hurricane fury on what will be Sunday Bloody Sunday, a brass-knuckled fight to the finish with the hated Cowboys that will end with the Giants giving metropolitan New York a Thanksgiving they can be thankful for, and a season as well, or with a sad turkey trot back to the slaughterhouse.
“We got to win this game, plain and simple,” Terrell Thomas said.
They got to win this game because the sight and sound of Jerry Jones exulting “How ’bout them Cowboys!” in the bowels of their stadium at a time when defeat is no longer an option would be anathema to them and to Big Blue Nation. Justin Tuck still cringes and bristles whenever he hears the name Flozell Adams.
They have to win this game to give themselves this improbable chance to make history as the first team to start 0-6 and reach the playoffs. And here they are, up off the canvas and ready to rumble, and ready for revenge — and blood.
“We’re going to put it on ’em, man,” Jason Pierre-Paul declared shortly after his pick-six ensured this Sunday showdown will mean war on the gridiron. “It’s going to be a fight, it’s going to be a dogfight, and there’s going to be a lot of blood spilled out there.’’
Jones and Tony Romo and Dez Bryant won’t recognize these Giants.
Turkeys no more.
The Giants are ALL IN again, conducting their players-only Monday debriefing sessions at the Giants training center on a day they were scheduled only to lift. And if they needed any extra motivation, which of course they didn’t, NBC has kept their Dec. 1 game against the Redskins on Sunday night after flexing the Packers game out of prime time in favor of Broncos-Chiefs.
“From the outside looking in,” Jon Beason said, “people are saying, ‘Are they really going to make this run? It seems like it’s happening. Are they going to hit a road bump, or is it going to be one of those special seasons, something you’ve never seen done before?’ People want to sit down and watch that. The reason they created this flex schedule is because they want meaningful games at peak hours. And if you’re playing in those games, then you’re doing something right.”
If the Cowboys are America’s Team, somebody forgot to tell the Giants. The Tom Coughlin-Eli Manning Giants have won two Super Bowl championships since Jones last won one, Super Bowl XXX, with Barry Switzer. Jones tried hiring Bill Parcells to end the drought, was so confident his All-Pros would beat Coughlin’s All-Joes in the 2007 playoffs he left airplane tickets to the NFC Championship Game in his players’ lockers, watched the Giants spoil the inaugural of his new palace and suffered the indignity of Manning leaving his signature on a wall of the visiting locker room for posterity, an innocent act that was taken as insult by then-head coach Wade Phillips and linebacker Bradie James.
But the 2013 Giants know they won’t be embraced as New York’s Team unless they carve up the Cowboys on the eve of Thanksgiving, and move to within one game of the first-place Eagles.
What makes them dangerous is they are peaking at the right time.
“Once you start to get that confidence,” Cullen Jenkins said, “you get that doubt out of the mind, and if there’s any doubt that there was early, that stuff starts to leave. Even when times get rough, people have a sense of belief that we’re going to get it done.”
They believe because they stared adversity in the eye and never blinked, they stood at the gates of hell and never wavered.
They believe because Beason has been a godsend at middle linebacker, a merchant of swagger alongside Antre Rolle, and the Cowboys have lost their middle linebacker, Sean Lee.
They believe because Jason Pierre-Paul believes he is finally over his back concerns and ready to wreak havoc again.
They believe because Tuck has become a force again and those big butts inside are stuffing the run.
They believe because Eli Manning has stopped pressing and throwing grievous interceptions.
They believe because Andre Brown has provided balance to the offense and helped take the heat off the suspect offensive line.
They believe because Rueben Randle has picked up the slack for Hakeem Nicks opposite Victor Cruz and become a reliable punt returner at the same time.
They believe because the defense righted the ship and began having fun again and it mattered nothing to them the quarterbacks they faced recently might have been considered akin to Joe Louis’ Bum of the Month Club.
They believe because Coughlin never stopped believing in them, and because his captains and leaders kept the ship from sinking.
Forget about 75 days to Super Bowl XLVIII. Five days to the Cowboys.