NFL

Giants gaining confidence atop East

Now that they showed they’ve still got it, the Giants are eager to keep it.

Six games into the season after they won Super Bowl XLVI, the Giants — despite a rough opening-game loss, early failures on offense running the ball and on defense getting after the ball — find themselves alone in first place in the NFC East. That they are perched on top is remarkable, considering they’ve lost the only two division games they’ve played.

Through five games, the Giants only briefly and fleetingly resembled the outfit that surged to six consecutive victories, barely getting into the 2011 playoffs and then winning it all. It took until game No. 6 for the Giants to remind everyone what they can be when they are at their best as they cranked it up on both sides of the ball in overwhelming the 49ers 26-3 to give pause to those anointing Jim Harbaugh’s club as the conference bully.

“It has been uneven,’’ linebacker Michael Boley said yesterday. “For us, it’s all about how we ended last year. Not to bring that up, but pretty much just find what works for us, find that niche, whatever we did one week, do everything we can throughout the week to carry that over.’’

That niche was in full effect in San Francisco as the Giants controlled the ball on offense, swarmed to the ball on defense and gained an upper hand on special teams. Eli Manning on his weekly WFAN radio spot called it “by far our best performance as a team’’ and it injected the defending champs with a familiar feeling.

“We kind of put everything together and we showed that we’re a team to be reckoned with,’’ Boley said.

Does a champion need a confidence boost, and if so did the Giants get one in the Bay Area?

“Well, we all need that,’’ coach Tom Coughlin said. “I think the fact we played well against a very, very good football team is a plus. Now, it’s very early in the season, but it’s time for us to build on thatWe have some critical games right flat in front of us.’’

It’s on to the next one for Coughlin, and it won’t take all his motivational machinations to come up with a theme for this week’s challenge. The Redskins come to town on Sunday and no one forgets how it was the Redskins who put the potholes into the 2011 road to the playoffs by beating the Giants twice in games that Manning would like to forget.

“They’re going to feel confident coming in,’’ said Manning, who last season threw four interceptions and not a single touchdown pass against the Redskins. “Offensively we didn’t play very well in either game against them.’’

Heck, the Redskins swept the two games from the Giants a year ago with Rex Grossman at quarterback, so coming in with Robert Griffin III, the most sensational of the NFL’s rookie quarterbacks, is sure to breed confidence.

Asked specifically about Griffin, Coughlin said: “I’m sure we’re going to be very much aware of the talented player that he is. I don’t know how you get much more excited when you’re playing in the division, that’s the key for me.’’

It’s such a key, Boley says the head coach doesn’t even have to remind the team about it, though you know he will.

“I think, if anything, he’ll bring up the fact that they’ve had our number recently the last couple of years,’’ Boley said.

Last season, the Giants responded to their highly emotional, last-second comeback victory in Dallas with an absolute stinker, at home, to the Redskins, a game that very nearly cost them a playoff bid. Now they are coming off another emotional game, with the Redskins up next, at home, again.

“We lost twice last year to Washington, Washington just came off a huge win, and it’s in the division and we need to get going in the division,’’ Coughlin said. “I would hope it just does something to whet our appetite and want to continue to play in that vein and to make more progress. That was last year and I’m hoping it’s different this year.’’