NFL

Giants peaking at right time

Sometimes, it is a sprinkle of the unexpected that can jump-start an afternoon and roust a football team and 79,909 interested observers from torpor. Here was Eli Manning, ball in hand, pocket collapsing around him, his team down a deuce midway through the second quarter.

It was third down, two yards to go. The Giants’ offense hadn’t done much except put two points on the Falcons’ side of the scoreboard and another drive was about to die a meek death. The denizens of MetLife Stadium tensed in anticipation for a hard hit — or worse — when a lightning bolt of inspiration hit.

“I don’t think a lot of teams game-plan for me to run the ball,” Manning would say dryly later on, but in the moment he knew what he didn’t see — which was any receiver even remotely open — and what he did. Which was a sliver of an opening to the outside, and then 14 more yards before the sideline.

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There was still a lot of work ahead, still the matter of watching the defense break the spirit and soul of Matt Ryan, still three touchdown passes for Manning to throw, two of them to Hakeem Nicks and one to Mario Manningham.

Still, the matter of taking a couple of baby steps toward “Mission Impossible: 2,” which would happen as this 24-2 thrashing became a reality, with the knowledge the next few strides would come next week in a familiar old January haunt.

But it all had to start somewhere, and from the moment Eli found safety, away from the prying fingertips of the Falcons’ pass rush, the more the Giants found safety in the welcoming arms of momentum. It happens that way for teams on a roll. One play becomes five. One win becomes three.

“We are playing at a very high level right now,” coach Tom Coughlin said. “If we continue to play like this we are going to continue to be heard from in this tournament.”

If you don’t think the Packers remember how they were the Giants’ warm-up act four years ago on their way to shuttering the Patriots’ undefeated aspirations, consider this Tweet from Green Bay receiver Greg Jennings, typed out within minutes of the final gun at MetLife:

“The team that kept us from our potential Super Bowl in 08 is back on OUR turf now. Trust me, we haven’t forgotten.”

We trust him. We know they haven’t. If you were at Lambeau Field that frozen Sunday evening in 2008, you remember the sound of 70,000 silenced voice boxes and the look of 70,000 heartbroken Cheeseheads. It was Brett Favre’s final game as a Packer, his final act a game-altering overtime interception plucked out of the frosty night by Corey Webster.

Different quarterback for the Packers now, with the presumptive MVP, Aaron Rodgers, lying in wait for the Giants. Different Giants team making that trip, too, this one led by its own confident quarterback and by a defense that just a few weeks ago was being lit up in all sectors like a tiki torch and now is as stingy as your father with your allowance.

The Giants are 8 1/2-point underdogs, and that sounds about right.

But if ever a team had a puncher’s chance at blasting the NFC side of the bracket to bits, it has to be a team that has now won three games in a row and has looked increasingly strong doing it, a team that has now stolen the swagger of the Jets, Cowboys and Falcons in consecutive weeks and made it its own, a team that takes advantage of small plays every week and uses them to swallow games whole.

You know who was like that last year? The Packers. You know what the Packers did this time last year? They went on the road and they handed the NFC’s top seed its lunch, in its own backyard, and they never looked back.

“All we worry about,” said Nicks, six catches and two touchdowns and 115 receiving yards to his name on this day, “is what’s in front of us.”

In front of them now: Green Bay, an impossible mission, an improbable quest. And a history that screams nothing is ever quite as impossible or improbable as it seems.