It is spoken about as one unfortunate moment, referred to almost as a blip in time, a bad break, a misstep: “Blah blah blah, blah, blah blah since ‘the 0-6 start.’ ”
Lump all the terrible football together, push it into a dark corner somewhere and, in hushed tones, describe “the 0-6 start’’ as regrettable but, thankfully, buried in the past, replaced by a far more representative six-game sampling.
Is this the new dumbed-down standard for the New York Football Giants? From “Talk is cheap, play the game” to “All-in,’’ is the rallying cry now to be, “We didn’t quit!”
Coach Tom Coughlin’s books after the Super Bowl victories were entitled “A Team to Believe In’’ and “Earn the Right to Win.’’ Is the tale of the 2013 season going to be “We Almost Made It to Thanksgiving!’’
The conversation in the locker room most recently has been about resiliency, and the Giants have been thrown bouquets for not turning on each other as the losses piled up like leaves in the backyard.
After they fell behind 14-0 and came back to beat the moribund Redskins 24-17, Justin Tuck said, “I’m pretty proud of the way we fought the last six games.’’ Pride always is a good thing, but playoff contention is even better, and the Giants can’t break into the “In the Hunt’’ column in even the most inclusive graphics.
The stretch run is approaching, and there will be games flashing across our flat-screen TVs showing teams in the fight, some falling by the wayside, others hanging on. The Giants aren’t part of that landscape. The Cowboys and Eagles are in a dogfight for the NFC East title in a year when 7-5 gets a share of first place, yet the Giants couldn’t hang around.
Sure, 0-6 could have greased the skids to 4-12, and Coughlin exclaimed, “You bet your life it does, it makes all the difference in the world’’ as to what it would mean if his club manages to get to 8-8 rather than a losing 7-9 record. That’s a head coach talking, but not the head coach of the Giants. The Buccaneers and Jaguars are fighting to the finish and showing signs of life, but the Giants are supposed to be above such late-season, feel-good consolation prizes.
Coughlin told NBC’s Bob Costas that as the Giants finally started winning some games “the word relevance came up many times’’ and, heading into the Nov. 24 showdown with the Cowboys, “We were relevant again, and we were in a big game that, if we won, we were in second place in the division, etc., etc.’’ Well, relevance has left the building, and home games against the surging Seahawks then the brutal Redskins to end the season will feature plenty of empty seats, which will be like daggers thrust into the eyes of co-owner John Mara.
Perhaps the Giants can provide a service before they close down. They might take it upon themselves to give a tour of their Qwest Diagnostics Training Center to Pete Carroll, Russell Wilson and the rest of the Seahawks, as they likely will be the NFC team to inhabit that facility for practice in the week leading up to Super Bowl XLVIII. Lord knows the Giants will have cleared out long before then.
This will be four times in the past five seasons the Giants failed to make the playoffs, unquestionably a trend, and this effort is far and away the worst of all.
“The 0-6 start’’ cannot be treated like some infection that has been flushed away by antibiotics. The 5-1 record since has been tremendously better but hardly tremendous, with four wins over teams with a combined record of 15-31-2 and a fifth coming against the Eagles without Nick Foles, the hottest quarterback in the land.
The colder it gets, the more everything heats up around the league, with division races and wild-card scrambles making Thursdays, Sundays and Mondays one thrill ride after another as teams exult and agonize with every deed and misdeed. The Giants don’t have a ticket, and the residue of the season is the emptiness created by “the 0-6 start,’’ a wound that keeps on inflicting damage.