NO HOPE: Victor Cruz takes a big hit from Falcons safety Chris Hope during the Giants’ 34-0 loss to Atlanta yesterday. (AP)
ATLANTA — You wouldn’t trade in one moment of the improbable, damn near impossible ways the Giants won those two Super Bowls the past five years. Neither would they. Part of the wonder attached to those two runs will always be the degree of difficulty attached to both of them.
Five road wins, two of them in January in Lambeau Field. Two wins over the favored Patriots, one when they were sitting on history’s doorstep with an 18-0 record. To say nothing of the twin abysses facing both of those teams: 0-2 (and down two TDs at the half in Week 3) in 2007; 7-7 after 14 games last year.
“Triumphs of the spirit,” was the phrase coach Tom Coughlin summoned in the minutes after last year’s mission was complete.
Yes. All of that was wonderful. All of that was unforgettable. But there is a flip side to that, and we’re starting to see it. The Giants would likely be reluctant to admit as much privately, let alone publicly, but the way they’ve played across these 14 games in 2012, the message is unmistakable:
When the lights are on, we will be, too. Trust us. Which is a hell of a way to let a season get away from you.
“We know we can overcome losses,” Eli Manning said yesterday, in the aftermath of a 34-0 crunching at the hands of the Falcons that just might be the most humiliating loss of the Manning-Coughlin Era. “We know how to bounce back.”
It is a skill that has rewarded them handsomely twice in the past five years. But it’s a tough way to live in the NFL.
The Giants’ margin for error officially shrank to zero when the Redskins — playing a backup quarterback — beat the Browns at the same time the Giants were being flattened at Georgia Dome.
Though destiny still rests in their own hands, it no longer seems to lurk over their shoulders like a guardian angel.
“We should be better than them, both sides of the ball, flat out,” Osi Umenyiora said. “But we didn’t look that way today.”
If you have no rooting interest here, part of the Giants’ appeal is you honestly have no idea which version of the team will report to work week to week. The one that slapped the Packers around like a Pop Warner team … or the one that looked a step and a half slow all night in losing to the Redskins.
The one that hung 52 on the Saints last week?
Or the one that scored exactly 52 points less than that yesterday?
Giants fans, of course, are less charmed by all of that.
Challenged to explain it all, the Giants tried to keep it simple.
“Atlanta was very, very good,” Coughlin said. “And we were very, very bad.”
Justin Tuck, asked if this was the worst loss he has experienced as a Giant, said: “Yes.”
Asked to describe how the team looked, running back David Wilson said: “Poor.”
Maybe it was Jason-Pierre Paul who captured the miasma of misery best: “I’m tired of, ‘We’ve been here before,’” he said. “Forget all that. I’m tired of hearing it. We just got to go out here and play. There’s no, ‘We’ve been here before.’ ”
Not any more, there can’t be. There’s a newly-crowded pile of names atop the NFC East now, and another pile of wild-card hopefuls sitting at 8-6, so if the Giants really were for the jumper cables, they’re here now, starting in Baltimore next week for a game that’s equally critical for the reeling home team as it is for the Giants.
“We have two games left to play,” Coughlin said. “There is a lot of fire and a lot of character in that locker room, and we have to come back from a devastating loss and shake it off somehow, some way.”
There is a lot of fire, and a wealth of character, and the result of that has been two epic marches to glory across the last five years, as well as a confidence nourished by the knowledge that with seasons and championships hanging in the balance in past years, they’ve found a way. When they absolutely, positively have to win, they believe in the pit of their guts they will win.
Starting next week, the mission becomes as simple as they like it.
Prove it. Again.