CRUZ AND CRASH: The five-game winning streak that finds the Giants headed to the Super Bowl began when Victor Cruz (left) and his teammates beat Antonio Cromartie and the Jets — who lost in the last two AFC Championship Games—29-14 on Christmas Eve. (Getty Images)
Justin Tuck isn’t ready to vote the Jets a playoff share if the Giants win the Super Bowl, but the defensive end still gives them credit for their role in turning around the season.
Basking in the 20-17 overtime victory against the 49ers in the NFC Championship late Sunday night, Tuck pointed to the Giants’ Dec. 24 win over the Jets and the week leading up to it for sparking his team’s remarkable transformation.
“You can say that, since we haven’t lost since then,” the veteran said, recalling the Giants’ hard-fought 29-14 “road” win over the Jets at MetLife Stadium. “That week was an emotional week for everyone. We started to click that week.”
As Tuck and several of his teammates admitted, Rex Ryan and the swaggering Jets certainly brought out a more talkative side of the Giants aside from the always opinionated duo of Brandon Jacobs and Antrel Rolle.
Since speaking up that week (including Jacobs’ obscenity-laced postgame confrontation with Ryan on the field), the Giants have reeled off five consecutive victories — all of them in do-or-die situations — to set up a Super Bowl rematch on Feb. 5 with the Patriots in Indianapolis.
Tuck said the Jets also had the unfortunate timing of facing the Giants the week after an embarrassing home loss to the Rex Grossman-led Redskins that completed an even more embarrassing season sweep by Washington.
That dreary loss to the Redskins, combined with the natural intensity of facing the rival Jets, proved to be a potent combination, according to Tuck.
“We just looked at ourselves after that Redskins loss and said, ‘We can do better than this,’ ’’ he said.
That’s exactly what the Giants have done, rolling to lopsided wins in succession over the Jets, Cowboys, Falcons and Packers before surviving Sunday’s slugfest in San Francisco.
“We just found that 11 guys playing as one is hard to beat,” Tuck said. “A lot of this season, we played as individuals. But not anymore. We’ve got that confidence now that, if it’s close, we’re going to come together and pull it out.”
Just like they did that chilly day in the Meadowlands last month against a team that’s been known to fill up an opponent’s bulletin board.
Since then, brash talk has come from some unusual suspects in the Giants’ locker room, including guard Chris Snee and tight end Travis Beckum.
It’s obvious the Jets aren’t the only New York team now that’s willing to make its pride public.
“We’re playing our best football at the right time,” Tuck said. “We’ve had kind of a roller-coaster year, but all that’s forgotten because it counts now. We’re starting to gel and play our best ball, and hopefully, we’ve still got our best game ahead of us.”