The Giants were supposed to get fat on the early portion of their schedule. Their first six opponents have a current combined record of 19-46-1, and that includes the 7-4 Redskins, who will play host to the Giants at 1 p.m. this Sunday.
Sure enough, the defending Super Bowl champs emerged from that cakewalk with a 5-1 record, a slip-up in Cleveland the only blemish on the ledger.
Then, when the schedule got difficult, a funny thing happened: The Giants kept winning. And winning. And winning. Their win streak now stands at six, and as a result Big Blue are running away with the NFC, with a two-game cushion in their quest to wrap up the No. 1 seed for the playoffs.
The 10-1 Giants reach the Thanksgiving holiday today with double-digit wins for the third time in team history in the Super Bowl era (see chart below). The other two occasions were 1986 and 1990, the two years, excluding last season’s unexpected title run,
when the Giants won the big game.
“Everybody kind of gets caught up in the fact that [we are] 10-1 and blah, blah, blah,” defensive end Justin Tuck said, “but we are going out there every week trying to set ourselves apart not only in our record, but just continuing to play good football and try to carry that into the playoffs.”
That march continues with this weekend’s trip down I-95 to tangle with the Redskins. A win coupled with a Cowboys loss today to the Seahawks at Texas Stadium would sew up an NFC crown for the Big Blue, with the calendar still reading November. Yet the Giants insist they’re not concerned with the details of their torrid start.
“We are here to win games,” linebacker Antonio Pierce said. “We are not here to lose games or come up with different scenarios. Our job is to go out there and execute and perform regardless of who it is. If it is the ’72 Dolphins, the 2007 Patriots, or the 2008 Redskins, our job is to go out there and play them very hard.”
The trademark of the Tom Couglin-led Giants, as opposed to, say, Bill Parcells’ ’86 and ’90 Super Bowl squads, which relished domination, is their preference for being underestimated. But as the unquestioned favorites in the NFC, the Giants are forced to come up with excuses to perpetuate their underdog status.
This week, the Giants are anticipating that the ceremony at FedEx Field marking the one-year anniversary of former Washington safety Sean Taylor’s death will give the Redskins extra motivation.
“We like playing in games like that where it is kind of backing us in a corner a little bit as far as we know that football team is going to play with a lot of emotion and the crowd is going to be in it,” Tuck said. “It is going to be a difficult task.”
No task has been too difficult for the Giants in quite some time; they have won 14 out of 15 games dating to the start of last season’s playoffs. And the previous two times that the Giants have carried 10 wins into Turkey Day, their season has ended with a ticker-tape parade.
Giants’ best records at Thanksgiving since 1966:
1986: 10-2*
1989: 9-2
1990: 10-0*
2008: 10-1
* Won Super Bowl