To any reasonable person, it took about 30 seconds of looking at Victor Cruz's options this offseason to know that there was never any fear that he would be doing anything but playing for the Giants in 2013. 

As a restricted free agent tendered a contract at the highest level, a team trying to sign Cruz would have to surrender a first-round pick while also signing him to a long-term deal big enough that the Giants wouldn't match. Since that never ever happens in the NFL, most people would have just stopped there. 

But they could have also continued on to realize that Cruz's desire to be more than just a football player -- see his fashion line and memoir written after one NFL season -- is best served by staying in the New York area. Jason Cole of Yahoo! Sports reports that Cruz told his agents (one of whom is now Jay-Z) as much. 

This is not the behavior of a man trying to get out of town. This is the behavior of a man destroying his only leverage in a contract negotiation. 

Cruz has been working out with Eli Manning and doing absolutely everything he can to get the message out that he wants to remain with the Giants. Which makes it pretty odd that the Giants are treating him like a greedy pariah. 

Owner John Mara, who usually makes snide remarks about teams residing in New Jersey that do their business through the media, has made sure to let the media and fans know that Cruz has been offered a deal that Mara deems more than fair for Cruz's services. It's believed to be in the neighborhood of $7 million per year, which Mara has been careful to point out is a lot of money for a player who the Giants rescued from obscurity as an undrafted free agent. 

It's also only slightly more over the next two years than Cruz can make by playing under this year's tender and then under the franchise tag in 2014, which explains why a player confident in his abilities would make a bet on himself rather than just sign whatever Mara deigns to slip under his nose. It isn't just the owner trying to make Cruz look bad, though. 

His teammate Justin Tuck is doing the same thing, urging Cruz to "show good faith" and show up for the start of voluntary workouts next week even though he doesn't have a contract. That's pretty patronizing advice to give a guy who can still sign with another team through the end of next week and who would be tossed aside in a heartbeat by the Giants if he were to injure himself while showing good faith. 

There has been nothing inappropriate about the way Cruz has handled himself this offseason. He's absolutely entitled to look for as much money as possible to do his job and has not missed one mandatory bit of work for a team that values him less than he values himself. 

Such is life in the professional world and it's a bit sad to see the attempts to make it seem like anything else from Giants camp when their real concern has nothing to do with what Cruz does this offseason. It has to do with next offseason when they could possibly face losing both Cruz and Hakeem Nicks as unrestricted free agents. 

You can only franchise one of them, which means it would be in the Giants' favor to sign Cruz to a below-market deal now so that they can either squeeze Nicks or use the tag on him. Hard to see the good faith and loyalty there, but, then, it has never been about those things. 

It's just business and there's nothing remarkable about any of it. 

Josh Alper is also a writer for Pro Football Talk. You can follow him on Twitter.

Tom Coughlin is not a man who often uses the media to fight his battles. 

He likes to spout off that talk is cheap and that players should just play the game, but Coughlin isn't above using the power of the microphone every now and then. Wednesday was one of those times as Coughlin decided that a coaches' breakfast at the league meetings in Phoenix was the perfect time to hammer defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul for being overweight last season. 

"He didn’t play as well as the year before. He was big when he came to camp. There’s not a lot of body fat [with Pierre-Paul], yes, but still," Coughlin said. 

Let's hope Coughlin stuck with egg whites and oatmeal during the breakfast. It would be a bit of a stretch to crush a guy for being porky with a plate filled with bacon, after all.  

It's easy to understand why Coughlin would take this motivational route with Pierre-Paul. He's a player who has gotten to this point on the back of his otherwordly physical skills, but they remain unrefined and the rest of the league will catch up to them before long. 

To continue to thrive, JPP has to be in top shape while also adding more nuance to his game. That's about hard work, something the coach made it clear that Pierre-Paul has do more of in the future.  

JPP said that the extra weight was muscle, an explanation that Coughlin didn't seem to be buying as he said that it took the end until the second half of the season to get back to his ideal playing weight. We won't argue that Pierre-Paul's play was at the the same level as it was in 2011, but we're not sure that the weight explains everything that went wrong. 

Pierre-Paul was the only member of the front seven who made even a handful of memorable plays over the course of the season and the coaching staff never figured out a way to stop teams from exploiting JPP's desire to get up the field as quickly as possible. Perhaps the weight stopped him from chasing down ball carriers all over the field as he had in the Super Bowl year, but, at some point, you have to wonder why the coaches were allowing themselves to get beaten the same exact way every week. 

Beyond that, there's the issue of the supporting cast. Osi Umenyiora had one of his lesser years and Justin Tuck was bad for the second straight season, leaving teams free to devote their blockers to Pierre-Paul without feeling any risk of reprisal on the other side of the line. 

He'll see more of them in 2013 and he'll need to be able to beat them if he's going to be successful, but the Giants are also going to need to do more to help put him into a position to succeed. After all, putting all the weight on one player is going to make him look heavy when the rest of the defense is allowed to put up an anorexic front. 

Josh Alper is also a writer for Pro Football Talk. You can follow him on Twitter.

Both times the Giants won the Super Bowl under Tom Coughlin, they've reached the big game in the same way.

They were in overtime on the road and close enough to let Lawrence Tynes knock a field goal through the uprights to make them the champions of the NFC. If they make it to a third Super Bowl next season, it will have to come via a different script. 

The Giants announced Wednesday afternoon that they have signed veteran kicker Josh Brown as a free agent, with the widely reported reason being that they couldn't get Tynes to agree to their interpretation of his value to the team. Brown, who was in Jets camp last year, has kicked for several different teams and will battle the previously signed David Buehler for the job this offseason. 

Tynes joins Chris Canty, Michael Boley and Ahmad Bradshaw as key parts of the team's Super Bowl teams who have been shuffled aside as the Giants try to construct a roster that can get them back to the playoffs. Canty has landed with the Ravens and Tynes will surely wind up kicking somewhere, even if he did have some wobbly moments for the team last season. 

Kicker isn't the only place where the Giants will look different next season. Tight end Martellus Bennett signed a four-year deal with the Bears that will pay him $21 million, a price that was likely several million dollars and perhaps years more than the Giants would have been willing to offer to keep Bennett. 

That will leave Jerry Reese to go shopping for a tight end again, something that shouldn't worry the Giants all that much. From Kevin Boss to Jake Ballard to Bennett, Reese has found production at tight end. Just to be on the safe side, let's make sure the new arrival's surname starts with a B. 

The Giants are also sniffing around some linebackers, but they'll probably wait for the second wave of free agency to start signing players. Prices drop along with the name value, but those players have done well for the Giants over the years. 

Josh Alper is also a writer for Pro Football Talk. You can follow him on Twitter.

Free agency opens in the NFL on Tuesday afternoon and, as discussed last week, there isn't going to be too much in the way of big acquisitions for either of the teams that call themselves New York while playing in New Jersey. 

The Jets signed quarterback David Garrard on Monday and may add another mediocre veteran quarterback, which doesn't so much excite you about the Jets season to come as it does further depress you about the state of the franchise. The Giants, meanwhile, signed defensive tackle Cullen Jenkins to take the place of Chris Canty in a sound football move that's low on the banner headline scale. 

No worries, though, because their impasse with Victor Cruz should be good fodder for the tabloids in the weeks and months to come. The Giants officially issued a first-round tender to Cruz on Monday, an offer that would pay him a shade under $3 million in the absence of a long-term agreement unless another team signs him away with a deal the Giants choose not to match. 

If that happens, the Giants would get a first-round pick but they'd also lose as popular and productive a player as anyone has stumbled blindly into in the history of the NFL. Owner John Mara made it quite clear on Monday that the Giants are prepared to say goodbye to Cruz if the wideout isn't willing to take what the Giants put on the table. 

"At some point, if somebody’s willing to pay more than we’re willing to pay, then we’ll have to say goodbye. Certainly we have the wherewithal to match just about any offer. It's just a question of whether we want to do it and what the number is going to be," Mara said. "We’ve made him a very substantial offer, but his agent feels like he wants to test the market a little bit and that's his right to do that." 

Mara wasn't always quite so respectful of Cruz's desires, sniffling that Cruz would be "wealthy" if he accepted what the Giants are willing to pay him, but these aren't times for kind words. It's all about rhetoric as two sides try to claim they want to be together more than anything else in the world while running in opposite directions. 

We've gotten used to that over the years with the Jets and Darrelle Revis, a relationship that looks a lot closer to ending than it has at any other point. A clogged cornerback market and the need for the Jets to move forward, even with an awful team, are combining to light a fire to make a trade involving Revis ASAP and there are signs that it is close to happening. 

It's a sad way for things to come to an end, although almost any other team would be able to spin not spending a ton of money on a routinely pouty-about-his-contract corner coming off a torn ACL into a positive thing for the team.

The Jets, though, could make you look askance at free sex and bacon so this is much more about the way the Jets painted themselves into a corner over two previous negotiations with Revis. 

If the Jets do pull the trigger, they'll be a story for a day or two and then it will be time for the Giants and Cruz to have the stage to themselves. It's a lot more likely than not that Cruz plays for the Giants in 2013, but there's a high chance that he'll be an unhappy camper and that the bad feelings generated now will create further problems down the road. 

Cruz wants to be paid like a top wideout, something his numbers would support even if the Giants seem to think that Hakeem Nicks needs to top the wage scale on their team. That's not the kind of feeling that goes away, especially if Nicks signs an extension that would serve as a ceiling on Cruz's contract possibilities with the Giants. 

There might not be any big acquisitions coming our way, although that hardly seems to get in the way of a little old-fashioned drama. 

Josh Alper is also a writer for Pro Football Talk. You can follow him on Twitter.

When your team is as reliant on the play of the quarterback as the Giants are, it's wise to invest some money in making sure that he remains upright. 

That's just what the Giants have done. Multiple reports indicate that the team has signed left tackle Will Beatty to a new five-year deal ahead of the March 12 start of free agency. 

Beatty was set to become a free agent at that point, but the Giants made sure he never made it to the open market by handing him a $38.5 million deal. The deal includes a $12.5 million signing bonus and $19 million in fully guaranteed money, a nice haul for a player who might not have landed as much in a loaded class of tackles in free agency and the draft this offseason. 

None of those players provide the continuity that Beatty provides to the Giants, however, and they clearly put a premium on that over the chance to save a little bit of money by looking in a different direction. They also seem to be placing a bet on Beatty either continuing to improve or maintaining the growth he showed in 2012 after being mediocre or worse through his first three seasons with the team. 

Given the need to find a reliable right tackle as well as the other holes that need filling on the roster, it's hard to argue with that approach. Beatty isn't an all-world tackle, but he's good enough for the task at hand and the Giants aren't going to have to worry that someone else will fail to live up to that standard. 

They seem less concerned about that prospect when it comes to tight end Martellus Bennett and wide receiver Victor Cruz. Bennett sent out a series of tweets on Wednesday indicating that the team hasn't been making much of an effort to get him under contract before he's able to test the open market. 

Bennett was a strong addition to the Giants last season, both as a blocker and a receiver, but the team might be betting that they'll be able to retain him at a price amenable to their needs once the market weighs in on his value. It's a risk, albeit one that is unlikely to make or break the team regardless of how it plays out. 

Losing Cruz would have more harmful effects, although there's much less risk because Cruz is only set to be a restricted free agent. With all signs pointing to the Giants choosing a Hakeem Nicks extension as their top priority for receiver contracts, Cruz is likely going to wind up with a free agent tender that guarantees him around $2.9 million for next year. 

A team willing to give up a first-round pick as compensation for signing the wideout could wind up poaching Cruz, but that happens rarely in a league that's either averse to risk or engaging in collusion to keep restricted free agent prices down. Either way, Cruz has no leverage since he has to play next year to become an unrestricted free agent in 2014 and the Giants, like every other team in the league, are turning the screws on a player without any other option. 

It's the wise move now, but it is one that can have ramifications for the future of their relationship. Cruz made that clear by dropping the "somewhere else" card while talking about his desire for a long-term contract. 

The Giants appear to be comfortable with that risk or at least more comfortable with that risk than they are with the risk of losing Beatty. 

Josh Alper is also a writer for Pro Football Talk. You can follow him on Twitter.

The offseason has begun for the Giants. 

You might have thought it started after the meaningless blowout of the Eagles in Week 17 when the Giants did not advance to the playoffs, but that was really just the start of the mourning period. The offseason doesn't start until you can make changes that get you pointed toward doing a better job next year. 

That period started on Tuesday when the Giants said their goodbyes to linebacker Michael Boley, who was cut with a year left on his deal to save the team his $4.25 million salary. Boley was essential to the Super Bowl run, but he was losing playing time all of last year and wasn't likely to start getting it back with the Giants' need to get more athletic at linebacker. 

It continued on Wednesday with the news that running back Ahmad Bradshaw is also looking for a new employer. The Bradshaw news is more surprising, if no less sensible from the economic point of view. 

Andre Brown and David Wilson are cheaper without being less productive than Bradshaw, whose $7.75 million in remaining salary was complicated by his chronic foot problems. Bradshaw's toughness will be missed and he'd been a leader in recent seasons, but that wasn't enough to keep him employed. 

Defensive tackle Chris Canty said he was sad to see Boley go, which might have been because he knew he was potentially in the line of fire as well. Canty was due $6.25 million and $6.5 million in the next two seasons, which isn't out of line for a productive player at a spot but it was too much for the Giants because he's been axed as well. 

Those are three key names from a Super Bowl champ, so it's clear emotion isn't being allowed to rule the day. They may not be the last ones. 

David Diehl has to be one of the next names up for discussion. His cap hit rose $3 million when he restructured his deal last season and isn't good enough to count for more than $7 million in total.

Maybe he re-signs at a smaller number, but Diehl won't be on the team and eating up that kind of space. That's the only easy decision, though.  

Cornerback Corey Webster's play in 2012 doesn't match his $7 million price tag, but the Giants have no depth at corner and may prefer the chance of a rebound over the possibility of losing Webster. Based on what we've seen in the last two days, though, the Giants could be taking care of all family business. 

Justin Tuck's name also comes up, but that is even more remote than Webster moving on. He'll get the final year of his deal to show that he can be more consistent than he's been the last two years, which might not have been the case if he was set to make a bigger dent than $5.6 million or so on the cap. 

There are a lot of Super Bowl rings and good memories in that group, but the curtain's coming down for at least some of them. Evolve or die, so says science and so says the NFL. 

Josh Alper is also a writer for Pro Football Talk. You can follow him on Twitter.

For the last two years, Victor Cruz has led a storybook existence. 

He shot out of nowhere to win a Super Bowl, danced his way into commercials and then proved in 2012 that it wasn't a fluke as he led the team's passing game while making it to the Pro Bowl. As anyone familiar with a storybook knows, however, you need a little drama and conflict at some point to make a truly compelling story. 

We might be getting some this offseason. Giants owner John Mara was asked about negotiations with Cruz on a long-term contract that would allow the team to pass on slapping a restricted free agent tender on the wideout. His answer was not what Giants fans would choose to hear as Mara indicated that Cruz is asking for too much money. 

"We certainly want him back, but like with any player, there’s a limit to where we’re going to go,” Mara said. “He’s been a terrific player for us, and he’s a fan favorite and does a lot for our franchise, but there is a limit."

Cruz hasn't been shy about saying he thinks he deserves to be paid like one of the best receivers in football, something that won't happen if the team uses the restricted free agent tender on him for the 2013 season. That would pay Cruz a bit less than $3 million unless another team offers him a contract, something that doesn't happen much since the signing team has to fork over a first-round pick in addition to whatever they pay him in terms of salary. 

This is all pretty much par for the course, but the bigger issue might be that the Giants are reportedly prioritizing a new deal for Hakeem Nicks ahead of a new deal for Cruz. Nicks has a year left on his contract before becoming an unrestricted free agent and the Giants would like to keep that from happening because they feel he's their No. 1 receiver. 

Arguing with the Giants' logic is nearly impossible. Cruz has no leverage over the Giants while letting Nicks hang without a contract would wind up impacting almost every other move the team thinks about making since they'll need to always keep space for him in mind when formulating the roster. 

It's hard to pay two players at the same spot the salary that comes with that top receiver designation, so reaching a deal with Nicks would both set the ceiling for any Cruz deal while also sending the message that the Giants think they can live without Cruz as long as they have Nicks. Another team is likely to agree with Cruz's take on his own abilities, whether out of scouting or desperation, and then the feel-good story of the last two years may be writing future chapters in a different uniform. 

We're a long way off from any need to seriously panic about Cruz's departure, but we've got our first bit of tension in the Cruz story. Now it's just a question of whether it winds up cementing his commitment to the team or foreshadows the end of a short but brilliant Giants run. 

Josh Alper is also a writer for Pro Football Talk. You can follow him on Twitter.

A large number of draft hopefuls have gathered in Mobile, Alabama this week for the Senior Bowl and that means a large number of football coaches and executives are in town as well. 

Giants G.M. Jerry Reese is one of those executives and he spoke to reporters on Tuesday. Given the fact that he was scouting college talent, it's no surprise that one of the questions had to do with Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o.

Reese said it is too early in the process to know whether Te'o's draft status will be affected by the revelation of the fake girlfriend hoax Te'o and the media used as inspiration for Notre Dame's undefeated regular season. It seems hard to believe that it would reflect well on Te'o regardless of his involvement, but there's little doubt that someone's going to take him come the draft. 

The same is likely true of Tyrann Mathieu, the former LSU cornerback/kick returner known as the Honey Badger. Marijuana use led to Mathieu's dismissal from the school before the start of last season, but Mathieu was a Heisman runner-up in 2011 and his talent is obvious to anyone who has ever seen him play. 

The Post reports that the Jets have spoken to Mathieu in Mobile, where he's trying to meet with teams since he's barred from taking part in the Senior Bowl. In Mathieu and Te'o, the Jets and Giants (and 30 other teams) have two players of obvious talent with risk that's a bit larger than the one you're taking any time you decide to commit to a kid just out of college. 

The big question for the Jets is whether or not talent is going to be enough to override other concerns given everything else floating around the organization right now. There's always been a place for guys with checkered pasts on Rex Ryan's teams, but the Jets have to be cognizant of the way they're viewed by the general public right now. 

If they have the confidence of their convictions, they'll ignore the circus commentary that they know is coming and pick any player they believe will help their team without getting into trouble that keeps him from being on the field. That's a big if, given owner Woody Johnson's preposterous claim this week that he was "forced" into the Tim Tebow trade. 

For a team with as little talent as the Jets have right now, though, it's hard to argue in favor of taking risky players with a top pick. Missing on a top 10 pick would be disastrous unless the Jets want to pick even higher than ninth in the coming years. 

A bit later in the draft, though? That's a very different computation and one that the Jets should think about long and hard as the draft gets closer. 

The shortest route back to respectability for the Jets is an immediate infusion of talent and that's something that would be aided greatly by landing an contributor who became available unexpectedly. Any team would be silly not to consider grabbing players who fall to them under such circumstances and the Jets can't let a potential backlash get in their way. 

The same is true for the Giants. They're always quick to point out the ways that they are a model franchise and rarely wind up with anything close to a scandal involving their players, but they've never shied away from character risks in the past. 

Ahmad Bradshaw, Mario Manningham and Marvin Austin all came to the team despite red flags on their resumes from the college ranks while David Diehl, Will Hill and others have been welcomed back to the team after running afoul of the law or the league. 

The chance to get a premium talent at less than a premium draft spot is a good way for the Giants to put themselves back into the playoff mix, especially when we're talking about players who play spots of need for the team like Mathieu and Te'o. That's not to say that they should draft them come hell or high water, but it's not something that should be dismissed out of hand. 

We're three months away from finding out whether either team takes the plunge. You can bet that plenty of people will share their thoughts on the topic between now and then, but we won't know how much the Jets and Giants are willing to risk until its their turn to make a selection. 

Josh Alper is also a writer for Pro Football Talk. You can follow him on Twitter.

The Giants season ended with crushing disappointment, but Giants fans could still have a reason to celebrate come Super Bowl weekend.

That's when the Pro Football Hall of Fame will announce the Class of 2013, and there's a pretty good shot that there could be a Big Blue-tinge to the class picture: Michael Strahan and Bill Parcells were among the 17 finalists for induction announced on Friday.

It's the first year that Strahan has been eligible for induction and he's part of a very strong class of rookies on the ballot. Former Ravens tackle Jonathan Ogden, former Cowboys guard Larry Allen and former Buccaneers defensive tackle Warren Sapp all have credentials for admission to Canton to match those put up by Strahan. 

Strahan holds the NFL record for sacks in a single season, he had a Brett Favre-aided 22.5 in 2001, and went to two Super Bowls as a member of the Giants. He ranks fifth all-time with 141.5 sacks and it's hard to think of any compelling argument against a player who was as good as Strahan for such a long period of time.

The same could be said for Parcells, who won two Super Bowls with the Giants and took the Patriots to another before moving on to somewhat less successful stints with the Jets, Cowboys and Dolphins. He also spawned a coaching tree that includes guys like Tom Coughlin, Sean Payton and Bill Belichick to further extend his influence on the game. 

The question, as it always is come voting time, is whether the arguments for others are more compelling. Unlike baseball, the voters for this Hall of Fame meet to discuss candidates with voters making cases for players before it goes to the floor. 

Those speeches can be impassioned which means that all those other new guys as well as the other 10 modern-day finalists (Jerome Bettis, Tim Brown, Cris Carter, Edward DeBartolo Jr., Kevin Greene, Charles Haley, Art Modell, Andre Reed, Will Shields and Aeneas Williams) will also have people pointing out all the things they did during their moments in the sun. Our own opinion is that owners have already gleaned the rewards for their efforts in the form of money, so we'd cut DeBartolo and Modell from the list before running into a brick wall with the other 13 guys. 

All of them have strong cases and we're still not sure how the Hall has failed to honor anyone from the Brown/Carter/Reed wide receiver trio over several years with all of them on the ballot. It's hard to separate them from one another, but not so hard to separate them from their peers. 

However the voters shape the class, which can't be bigger than and is rarely smaller than five people, we can be pretty sure that they'll actually have a reason for an induction ceremony this summer. After the baseball fiasco earlier this week, that's reason to celebrate even if the Giants wind up shut out of the fun again. 

Josh Alper is also a writer for Pro Football Talk. You can follow him on Twitter.

It's a rare day when it seems like a good idea for the Giants to follow the Jets' lead, but that's just where we are. 

The Jets have decided to go radio silent since the end of the regular season, a decision that has brought them nothing but ridicule from a vengeful media corps that's gone so far as to send paparazzi to the Bahamas to see what kind of tattoos Rex Ryan is sporting on his arm. Perhaps Tom Coughlin has something even more embarrassing than his wife in an Eli Manning jersey on his person because the man who once loved to say that talk is cheap has a problem keeping his mouth shut. 

Coughlin did an extended interview with Mike Francesca on WFAN Thursday in which he said that missing the playoffs was an "indescribable" before proceeding to talk about it for more than an hour. It's hard to imagine why the feeling would be so hard to put into words for a coach who has missed the playoffs in three of the last four years, but it's obviously not from a lack of trying. 

Much of what Coughlin had to say came back to the well-worn befuddlement about the team's performances that he's been selling for the last three weeks, something that's started to come across as a coach who wasn't quite on the same page with his team this season. The writing was on the wall for months -- the really bad Giants losses this season weren't the blowouts to the Falcons or Ravens, but the close losses to the Eagles and Redskins because those revealed correctable problems at a point when something could still be done -- and the Giants never even tried to adjust what they were doing to correct the obvious flaws that teams continually exploited. 

Coughlin kept going back to injured players like Ahmad Bradshaw and Hakeem Nicks instead of letting rookies Rueben Randle and David Wilson, whose first game fumble was treated like he did it on purpose instead of shrugged off like the poor play of veterans, learn on the job. The defense kept doing the same thing and expecting different results, which some people use as the definition of insanity, while the coaching staff didn't bother preaching urgency until it was too late. 

This isn't all on Coughlin. General manager Jerry Reese decided to say this week that it probably would have been a good idea to rest Nicks long enough for him to actually heal as if he were the first person to ever think of not sending players out onto the field when they are clearly shells of who they are when healthy. 

When you contrast that to the way the Giants talked about Nicks, Bradshaw and other injured players -- variations on them being tough-minded enough to overcome physical ailments -- it merely adds to the sense that the Giants brass just sat back and watched this season secure in the false belief that things just go their way because of the name of the franchise. The truth is that things went their way last season because of hard work and fevered dedication that simply wasn't in evidence this year. 

Perhaps that's an inevitablity after winning a Super Bowl, but it doesn't do anyone much good to keep making it obvious that the effort level (both physical and mental) was lacking during the regular season. That's all the Giants are doing by continuing to talk about what went wrong in 2012 when they should be focused only on 2013. 

Josh Alper is also a writer for Pro Football Talk. You can follow him on Twitter.

The Giants season ended a few days ago and the team has pretty much had one line about failing to make the playoffs. 

From Jerry Reese and Tom Coughlin on down through the team's players, the reaction has been one of complete astonishment about how the team could have missed the playoffs, a continuation of the season-long shrug of the shoulders that greeted every bad result. It seems pretty clear what the team needs to do in order to make the playoffs, though.

They need to win more games in the regular season and stop leaving their postseason chances in the hands of other teams every year. If you win 11 games, there's rarely going to be a need to check scores from around the league. 

That should be the Giants' immediate goal. One way they can do help their chances of doing that is by making the right choices about personnel this offseason, starting with the decisions they make about their own free agents. 

There are plenty of them to sift through. We'll profile the biggest names here, starting with three restricted free agents who will almost certainly be back next year before moving into the unrestricted crew. 

Victor Cruz: Do we even need to bother explaining this one?

Andre Brown: Brown scored eight touchdowns before breaking his leg, the latest in a series of injuries that have blunted Brown's chances of earning bigger roles throughout his career. Ahmad Bradshaw's status will determine whether Brown gets much time, but it is hard to imagine the Giants don't bring him back if he's healthy. 

Stevie Brown: You can't discuss Brown without discussing the next guy on this list, although eight interceptions and solid play after being signed off the street make it a no-brainer to bring him back. His role will depend on...

Kenny Phillips: The talent is obvious and the Giants thrive when they play three safeties because Antrel Rolle doesn't have many pass coverage responsibilities, but it doesn't mean much when Phillips is hurting on the bench more than he's on the field. The Giants can't afford to commit big money to someone so unreliable, especially not when they have a cheaper option on hand in Brown.  

Will Beatty: With an offensive line in this much flux, there's no way they can afford to let Beatty leave. He'll be franchised if they can't reach a long-term deal before the deadline to use the tag, which would pay Beatty around $9.6 million for 2013. 

Osi Umenyiora: The Giants have too many other needs to pay Umenyiora a big salary, especially when a healthy season bore little fruit in 2012. If they decided to move on from Justin Tuck, there'd be a place for Umenyiora but that seems highly unlikely. 

Kevin Boothe: He's similar to Beatty in that the Giants don't have enough on the offensive line to let one of the younger members of the line walk. Boothe is solid rather than spectacular, but there's a place for that on this team. 

Chase Blackburn: He's a Catch-22 in the body of a football player. He's a great teammate and helpful on special teams, but you've got problems if he's starting at middle linebacker. By starting at middle linebacker, though, he could wind up costing more than you can pay for a great teammate. 

Keith Rivers: Always injured, the trade for Rivers goes down as a worthy mistake for Reese. He shouldn't compound it by re-signing the veteran. 

Martellus Bennett: He's erratic and always seems to have a nagging injury, but he proved to be a better player this year than he ever showed while with the Cowboys. He's also the most entertaining quote on the team, which makes us want him back even if he wasn't a productive player. 

Lawrence Tynes: Tynes' consistency slipped a little this year, but he'll be back to try to win the job in camp at the very least.

Ramses Barden/Travis Beckum: Barden had one big game in his four years with the team, which is one more than Beckum managed. No place for either one on the team any more. 

Josh Alper is also a writer for Pro Football Talk. You can follow him on Twitter.

Winning a game 42-7 against one of your rivals is not supposed to result in conflicted emotions. 

It is supposed to result in great excitement and joy for the team and its fans without thoughts of anything other than victory entering the mind. This is not the case for the Giants. 

Sure, thumping the Eagles and showing a little pride in the job that laid before them makes you feel good about the Giants' performance in Week 17. Those good feelings can't erase the massive missed opportunity that is the true epitaph of this season, however. 

Entering Week 15, the Giants held control of the NFC East and merely needed to win out to win the division for the second straight year. They lost 34-0 to the Falcons, though, and were left needing flops by the Cowboys and Eagles to get another chance at that prize. 

Even after that loss, the Giants just had to win two games to assure themselves a playoff berth. They lost 33-14 in Baltimore in Week 16, however, and that meant they needed a ton of help on Sunday even if they beat the Eagles. 

The help never arrived, so the Vikings will go to the playoffs and the Giants will sit at home and watch 12 other teams vie for the Lombardi Trophy they called their own last season. All of that gives rise to just one question: Where was the Week 17 performance over the previous two weeks?

It's all well and good to compliment Tom Coughlin for getting his team to focus on ending with a win instead of their dismal playoff outlook, but you can't do that without delving into why Coughlin's team showed up totally flat in the two previous games.

And that means you can't avoid looking at Coughlin's entire body of work and wonder why he's able to push buttons well enough to win two Super Bowls while also being unable to reach his team in three of the last four seasons. It makes you want to shift the question away from what went wrong this year to what went right last year. 

That's problematic because the answer has nothing to do with the Giants. They had the same record each year, but the failures of others opened a playoff door to the Giants last year that did not exist this time around. 

Whatever changes the Giants make this offseason won't mean a thing if the team doesn't start playing with urgency every week of the season instead of just picking their spots the way they have over the last four years. Relying on the kindness of others isn't a winning way to conduct business because the surest way to make sure you get a ticket to the postseason dance is to earn it on your own merits. 

The Giants didn't do that this year, making for an ugly end to a season that started with so much promise. Here's the rest of the good, bad and ugly from Sunday. 

GOOD: Eli Manning's downturn in play from midseason on is something that should be a great concern for the Giants, but Sunday provided a strong reminder that we aren't dealing with some kind of Jets-level panic about the offense. Manning hit on big plays all day long, didn't make any of the killer decisions that sank him in past weeks and looked like the quarterback the Giants were missing for way too much of the season. 

GOOD: David Wilson and Rueben Randle ended their rookie seasons on high notes, raising hope that they'll take on bigger roles for the team in Year Two. It's a good sign for a team that's going to have to say goodbye to some older players who are no longer reliable because of either health or performance. 

BAD: Hakeem Nicks didn't do a thing on Sunday, ending a frustrating year that might not have happened had the Giants been more cautious with Nicks during the summer as he returned from a broken foot. All over the field, the Giants had players who got hurt, returned and then either got hurt again or remained limited for the rest of the season. Coughlin prides himself on having tough teams, but toughness can come at the expense of prudence.

GOOD: Ahmad Bradshaw's role next year is up in the air thanks to his chronic injuries and Wilson's presence, but he had a pretty vintage performance on Sunday. He ran hard and ran well all day, which would make this a pretty good way to go out as the team's feature back if that's what winds up happening. 

GOOD and BAD: The defensive line looked feistier on Sunday and Justin Tuck was even able to remember his post-sack celebration despite getting almost no chances to practice it this season. All their work provided was a reminder of how awful they were for most of the season, though.

UGLY: The Giants were disappointing, but they didn't make you question why you bother rooting for a football team at all. The Eagles do make you ask those questions and so do the Jets, which makes the Giants seem like champions by comparison.

Josh Alper is also a writer for Pro Football Talk. You can follow him on Twitter.

Giants coach Tom Coughlin said this week that he wanted to see his team play with pride and dignity in Week 17 against the Eagles. 

They certainly pulled that off, intercepting Michael Vick on Philly's first possession and then scoring five times in the first half on their way to an easy 42-7 victory in what's almost certainly the last time they'll face an Eagles team coached by Andy Reid. Somehow, though, we imagine Coughlin will still be disappointed in his team at some point on Sunday night. 

Thanks to the blowout losses in the last two weeks, the Giants' overwhelming victory means nothing as their season will not include a trip to the postseason. The Bears beat the Lions 26-24 in Detroit, formally eliminating the Giants from a playoff race that they tapped themselves out of with their dreadful play against the Falcons and Ravens. 

As pleased as Coughlin might be that his team brought their best game with them this week, it has to be galling that they were so uncompetitive in two losses that wound up ending their Super Bowl defense after just 17 weeks of football. The offseason is sure to bring changes, a topic we'll cover plenty in the coming weeks, so we'll just take one last chance to talk about this particular Giants team. 

Ahmad Bradshaw ran with a furor we haven't seen in more than a month, picking up 148 yards from scrimmage and scoring a touchdown. David Wilson also got into the end zone and gained 90 yards of his own, heralding a future with more for him to do and less grind on Bradshaw's chronically injured body. 

Eli Manning was 13-of-21 for 208 yards and five touchdowns, lighting up the Eagles secondary for big plays all day and enjoying the kind of time in the pocket that hasn't been in evidence all that much over the second half of the season. How much of his performance was thanks to the Giants getting back in an offensive groove and how much had to do with the Eagles being terrible is up for you to decide, but it is certainly nice to have a laughable enough game that even Henry Hynoski scores a touchdown.

The defense also showed more spark, although, again, they were playing a thoroughly beaten football team that seemed totally uninterested in competing outside of the occasional post-play shoving match. Give credit to the Giants for treating a team like that like it deserved to be treated, but there wasn't any way for a blowout this week to be satisfying without the outside help the Giants were forced to rely on to make it to the postseason. 

It was an enjoyable way to end a season against a bitter rival, but not enjoyable enough to wash away all that went awry for the Giants this year. After all, pride and dignity are only things you play for when the real prizes are no longer on the table. 

Josh Alper is also a writer for Pro Football Talk. You can follow him on Twitter.

Earlier this week, Giants coach Tom Coughlin said that he hoped his team would play with pride and honor against the Eagles even though winning isn't enough to get them into the playoffs all by themselves. 

He should have made that point to his coaching staff as well because one key member of it seems to be more interested in covering his own rear end than he does in anything having to do with the accountability that one normally associates with pride and honor. Defensive coordinator Perry Fewell said Thursday that the problems with the defense this year are entirely on the players because his schemes were above criticism. 

"We've prepared better than what we’ve played. I think if you look at the tape we’re in position to make plays. We haven’t made plays, " Fewell said. "We’ve been in position. We haven’t made a football play for the last couple of weeks. We’ve been in position to make football plays, but it hasn’t gone our way."

Anyone who watched Fewell run a 4-4-3 alignment out there against the Ravens last week will likely have a nice chuckle at the idea that he's some kind of misunderstood genius being let down by underperforming players. Taking a look at Fewell's full two years as the defensive play caller finds mostly terrible performances redeemed by the pass rush showing up in living color for six weeks at the end of last season. 

There wasn't anything particularly exotic about the way they were doing it as the Giants just lined up their front four and turned them loose on offenses every week. Fewell was more than happy to take the credit for that, so he should be a bigger man about taking the blame for this week. 

Fewell hasn't been the only Giant trying to cover for his own failures this week. Every where you look, there's a Giant player or coach saying they simply don't know how this season has gone so wrong which makes you wonder if Coughlin should can the five minute early rule for meetings and start using the extra time to actually come up with answers for why the team has produced results well below the talent on hand. 

The Giants have to bring everything they have left on Sunday. They need the Bears, Vikings and Cowboys to lose in order to wind up in the postseason, but that only matters if they show up and beat the Eagles.

The issue of not showing up is one of the first ones that needs to be addressed, simply because it has happened far too often over the course of Coughlin's tenure to be treated as some temporary blip during an otherwise consistent run. It would be nice if some of the team's supposed leaders took the reins on that front. 

Eli Manning is who he is and, even after this season, the Giants don't need to make any significant changes to their quarterback on the field. We'd love to see something more like what Tom Brady did after last week's victory over the Jaguars off the field, though. 

Brady ripped the Pats to shreds in the locker room for their complacency during a 23-16 win over one of the worst teams in the league, something you could never imagine Manning doing since he treats wins and losses of all stripes with the same even keel. Someone needed to light a fire under the Giants this season, though, and it's clear that Coughlin, who normally plays that role, wasn't able to reach this particular team. 

Urgency was never something the Giants seemed to feel this season, even as they talked about playing with it when their backs were against the wall. That makes it hard to imagine we're going to see a great performance from them on Sunday. 

After four straight years of traveling down pretty much the same road, it's hard to see where next year is significantly different without someone stepping up to try doing things a different way. 

Josh Alper is also a writer for Pro Football Talk. You can follow him on Twitter.

Right up until last week's loss to the Ravens, it was hard to find anyone willing to say that something was wrong with the Giants. 

Every loss and every shaky performance in a win was written off as a championship team going through the motions until they got to the point in the season when they would simply turn the throttle up and take over the league. Now that it is clear that no such switch ever existed, there's a race off the Giants bandwagon to rival the scrum after someone screams fire in a crowded theater. 

After a season in which we were told time and time again that the Giants were a championship contender even though they played like a .500 team fighting for a playoff berth, Paul Schwartz of the New York Post now admits that no one on the team had a good year. All of a sudden players like Chase Blackburn are no longer the heart and soul of the team, but limited players whose lack of talent is a problem for the franchise. 

After telling us on a weekly basis that the Giants would win because Eli Manning is elite and because Tom Coughlin knows what it takes to win, Schwartz's colleague Steve Serby points to arrogance as one of the reasons why their season has gone wrong. Funny how quickly confidence turns into arrogance, isn't it?

The Giants aren't any better or worse this year than they've been in the last four years. Their timing was spot on last season, but the overall picture wasn't any different despite the attempt to turn the intangible into something real. 

At least no one who spent the post-Super Bowl period telling people how stupid they were for thinking Coughlin should be fired if the Giants missed the playoffs are now calling for Coughlin's head. It's bad enough that they are speculating about Justin Tuck's future and criticizing Jason Pierre-Paul after spending the whole season firm in the belief that the lack of sacks is not a sign that the defensive line is failing to produce. 

While the opinions of writers and others in the media are unlikely to have much impact on the decisions made by the Giants this offseason, the reaction to the fairly predictable turns this season has taken speaks to the need for the team to approach this offseason with a much colder analysis of the situation than they did this year. Loyalty and the faith that things just work out in the end for the Giants won't cut it this time. 

That means giving David Diehl a fond farewell and finding younger offensive linemen with upside to rebuild the fraying remains of the group that the Giants desperately tried to keep intact despite mounting evidence of their shortcomings. It means figuring out whether players like Ahmad Bradshaw and Kenny Phillips can be counted on in the face of mounting injuries and deciding whether Corey Webster's bad year was an anomaly. 

Those aren't easy choices, especially for a team that has been slow to pull the plug on formerly productive players in the past few years, but they are ones the Giants have to make as they attempt to turn their team from one that relies on good timing and fortune to one that makes all of its own luck in the years to come. 

Whether they win or lose against the Eagles and whether or not they make the playoffs, that question will remain the one the Giants have to answer before next season gets started. 

Josh Alper is also a writer for Pro Football Talk. You can follow him on Twitter.

Every week during the season, we’ll scout out the Giants' next opponent. This week, that opponent is the Philadelphia Eagles.

You never wish injuries on any player, even the most hated opponent, so there's no happiness about the broken hand that will keep Eagles quarterback Nick Foles off the field on Sunday. 

But it is nice to get one last game between the Giants and the Andy Reid/Michael Vick Eagles before they go away for good. Reid's going to be fired once the regular season ends and Vick's almost certain to follow him out the door as the Eagles start trying to put their team back together again after the indignities of this season. 

When they leave, a robust chapter of the Giants-Eagles chapter will go with it. At various points during Reid's long tenure, the Giants held the upper hand in the rivalry but all of the biggest wins belong to Reid. 

The Eagles knocked the Giants out of the playoffs after the 2006 and 2008 seasons and DeSean Jackson's epic punt return as time expired in 2010 left the Giants without a playoff berth even though they finished with a 10-6 record. Vick starred in that last game as well and he played his best game of this season in the first meeting of the year between the teams to lead the Eagles to another win that could very well keep the Giants out of the playoffs once again.

Or it could be an Eagles win this week that does the trick. While Vick and the rest of the Eagles have had a dreadful season, there's something about rivalry games that brings out the best in teams.

There's even more about finding a new job that brings out the best in players and Vick is in just that position with his time just about up in Philly. A big win is a good way to do that, particularly one that completes the Giants' total collapse from 6-2 to 8-8. 

That's a lot on the line for the Giants and one imagines they'd rather see just about any other team across the field from them even if they are clearly superior to this Eagles team in terms of talent. If there's any spirit left in the Philly bones, it will come out in hopes of sending Reid out a winner. 

Here's the rest of the lay of the land on the Eagles heading into the final game of their season. And, without a lot of help, the final game of the Giants' year as well. 

Another Old Frenemy: LeSean McCoy returned to action last week after a long absence with a concussion, just in time to get his feet under him before trying to embarrass the Giants defense again. McCoy destroyed the Giants in the first matchup, an early warning sign of the problems with the Giants defense that were ignored because the team was convinced they would just flip a switch and start winning games. 

Future Isn't Now: It's hard to say what the Eagles will look like next year, but defensive tackle Fletcher Cox and linebacker Mychal Kendricks will be part of whatever tableau they create. They aren't likely to play in this game after suffering concussions against Washington, however. 

One More Goodbye?: When cornerback Nnamdi Asomugha signed in Philly, some thought he was the final piece of a championship team. He's turned out to be the poster boy for the misguided moves of the last two years, though, and his salary could be too rich for an Eagles team moving in a very different direction. 

Offensive Line: Whoever takes over for Reid is going to have to do something about an offensive line that's been a sieve this season before and after injuries to many of the team's starters. Their play has been, well, offensive and no quarterback can thrive taking the abuse Vick took this season. 

Josh Alper is also a writer for Pro Football Talk. You can follow him on Twitter.

It seems difficult to imagine that anything could be more infuriating than the way the Giants played in their 33-14 loss to the Ravens on Sunday, but that's only true if you didn't hear or read any comments from the postgame media scrum. 

Tom Coughlin claimed there was "no explanation for why we’re in the position we’re in" and defensive tackle Chris Canty said he had "no idea how we got here." Those are ludicrous things to say during a two-game losing streak during which the Giants have been outscored 67-14, but at least they were big enough men to speak to the media while Osi Umenyiora, Corey Webster and Justin Tuck refused to talk. 

It's ludicrous to say that because the problems that have led to the hideous performances the last two weeks have been obvious for almost the entire season. With the exception of a few games, the defense has been a joke since the opening weekend and the offense has been sputtering for more than two months. 

The only way you could be surprised by the results is if you chose willful ignorance over the reams of evidence that things were going wrong. The only way to have no idea how you got to this place is to sleepwalk through the season and assume that all would be fine when you woke up. 

There's been almost no changes to either unit despite the obvious struggles as Coughlin has decided, explicitly or tacitly, to endorse the philopsophy that the Giants could stink all they want because they would simply decide to start winning at the last minute and see the season turn out exactly as they hoped. It doesn't make much sense that a coach revered for his ability to make a mountain out of every molehill would just sit by and claim shock at another week of the same old thing, but there you have it. 

All year long, every attempt to point out that the Giants were not playing at peak levels and that injuries were sapping key players of their ability to help the team was met with scoffing that anyone would dream of worrying about the Giants after the way last year turned out. There was no empirical evidence to support the scoffers, just blind faith that last year's 99-yard touchdown passes and butterfingered punt returners would come in the nick of time. 

That's not how it works, as the 2008-2010 seasons should have made abundantly clear. No one bothered to consider the down side of the Giants playing like garbage until now and they've now run out of time to do anything about it themselves. 

It's a bad way to end the season. Here's the rest of the good, bad and ugly of Sunday's loss. 

BAD: Eli Manning didn't have much of a chance on Sunday thanks to an offensive line that couldn't have blocked newborns -- another long-standing problem Coughlin's chosen to ignore in favor of being gobsmacked by another loss -- but he wasn't doing much with his throws when he did have time. Something totally disconnected in the passing game over the last 10 or so weeks of the season and the Giants need to figure out how to get things back on track for their offense to be as potent as it was in 2011. 

UGLY: Ahmad Bradshaw has been hurting and his pride helps keep him on the field, but someone with the Giants medical staff might want to assert themselves in the best interests of the team. Bradshaw didn't run well and his pass blocking made it seem like he wanted Manning to get planted into the turf, leaving you to wonder why the Giants put him on the field in the first place. 

UGLY: Defensive coordinator Perry Fewell can't rush the passer, tackle or cover receivers all by himself. Judging from the work he's done this season, he also can't devise a scheme that makes his players do it either. 

UGLY: Corey Webster got beat early this season, he got beat in the middle of the season and he spent Sunday being picked apart by Joe Flacco, whose status as a rich man's Mark Sanchez was confirmed over the first 14 games of the season. Webster's decline makes cornerback a huge need for the Giants heading into the offseason. 

BAD: None of the calls wound up having any impact on the final result, but the officials on Sunday were bad enough to make one long for the days of replacement officials who didn't even pretend to know the rules. Lengthy replay reviews of calls that were badly blown on the field, confusing explanations of why calls were made and a general sense that your cousins from Holland could have done just as good a job even though they think that football is soccer. 

GOOD: The Giants actually still have a chance to make the playoffs. They'll need a ton of things to break their way, including winning a game themselves, but the light hasn't been extinguished even though things look dark as night right now. 

Josh Alper is also a writer for Pro Football Talk. You can follow him on Twitter.

Every time the Giants struggled this year, some member of the team would smile and explain that it was just a matter of time before the Giants flipped a switch and morphed back into last year's title team.

That switch was not flipped on Sunday. A week after getting pasted 34-0 by the Falcons, the Giants were dreadful again in Baltimore and lost control of their own playoff destiny in a 33-14 loss to the Ravens.

Figuring out whether the offense or the defense was worse on Sunday would be the kind of problem that the smartest minds of our country would struggle with for decades. We'll make the case for the defense first. 

They allowed Joe Flacco, whose has basically been a rich man's Mark Sanchez this season, to tear them apart from the start of the game all the way through the point that it became garbage time. Flacco was never pressured and he tore the Giants secondary apart as a result of having so much time to throw the ball. 

Corey Webster was his most frequent victim and it was another bad day in a season overstuffed with them for a guy who was once the best cornerback on the team. Torrey Smith went over, around and by Webster all day as the Ravens moved down the field pretty much at will. 

Ray Rice had 158 total yards, Bernard Pierce ran for 123 yards, the Ravens converted 11-of-17 third downs and Baltimore held the ball for nearly 15 minutes on two second half field goal drives that sucked away what little life remained in the Giants. Perry Fewell has failed to produce a defense with any teeth this season, something the Giants can only survive if their offense is clicking. 

Their offense is not clicking. Eli Manning was harried by the pass rush all day -- Ahmad Bradshaw's pass protection was so awful that it is hard to imagine rookie David Wilson could be as bad -- and turned in another dismal day (14-of-28 for 150 yards, one touchdown) when the Giants needed him to be at his very best. 

Running plays went nowhere, third downs were left unconverted and the Giants gained just 109 yards outside of a 77-yard scoring drive that made the score 14-7 in the first quarter and represented the last moment it looked like the Giants had a shot in this game. No matter how much the Giants argued otherwise, something went very wrong for this Giants offense around midseason and they were never able to correct the flaws in the second half of the season. 

There's still playoff hope for the Giants. They can't win the division, but they can gain a Wild Card by beating the Eagles and getting some help with losses by other teams. 

Right now, though, this isn't a team that deserves a playoff spot any more than the Jets. This is a team that looks totally lost in every part of their game. 

It's going to take quite a bit of work from Tom Coughlin to get them right by next week. He should start by making it clear that the Giants need to start working harder and stop waiting for some mythical switch to flip into position. 

Josh Alper is also a writer for Pro Football Talk. You can follow him on Twitter.

Halloween passed a little while ago, but one of the iconic pieces of entertainment from that holiday came to mind when hearing Giants defensive coordinator Perry Fewell talk about the Giants pass rush this week. 

Anyone familiar with "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!" knows that Linus waits in vain for the arrival of the titular being all night in a pumpkin patch without ever seeing him come. Despite that, he remains unshaken in his belief that the Great Pumpkin is coming. 

Fewell hasn't been spending any time in pumpkin patches that we know of, but he still had a tinge of Linus to him as he talked about his belief that the Giants pass rush will catch fire before the season is out. Through 14 games, the Justin Tuck/Jason Pierre-Paul/Osi Umenyiora trio has combined for 15.5 sacks after dropping quarterbacks 32 times last season. 

"I do believe this about them," Fewell said. "They’re a proud unit. I think they will have success in the next couple of weeks. And I think you’ll see their numbers go up."

You can't really expect Fewell to say anything else. The Giants are built to succeed defensively by rushing the passer and Fewell's job is to make sure that the pass rush arrives. If he can't do that and no longer thinks he's capable of doing that then he's pretty much asking to get fired. 

The Ravens are certainly a team succeptible to the pass rush. Unless it is a horror film, they won't be making any sequels to "The Blind Side" based on Michael Oher's play at left tackle this season and the rest of the line has only been marginally better at protecting Joe Flacco. 

That's been true of a lot of the teams the Giants have faced this season, though, and those vaunted pass rushers haven't been able to make much of an impact. And there are signs that this week will be more of the same silence. 

Tuck, who has been the least effective of the three defensive ends, has a shoulder injury that has kept him out of practice all week. He's listed as questionable, but Tom Coughlin delivered a grim message for his chances when he said trainers felt it was in Tuck's best interest not to be on the field Friday. 

Having said that, that's just another excuse and we've heard enough of them to last a lifetime from the Giants defensive line this season. Different blocking, quicker passes and anything else you can dream of has been used as an excuse for the drop in production without much sign that they've come up with ways to combat those obstacles. 

If they've been holding something back, now's the time for them to unleash it. If not, Fewell might as well take up permanent residence in the closest pumpkin patch. 

Josh Alper is also a writer for Pro Football Talk. You can follow him on Twitter.

Every week during the season, we’ll scout out the Giants' next opponent. This week, that opponent is the Baltimore Ravens.  

In an alternate universe, Eli Manning never developed beyond the shaky inconsistency of his first few seasons and wound up being seen as a massive disappointment because he never took talented teams to the promised land. 

We know this because this universe has someone who already fits that description. Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco has had some success, including two trips to the AFC title game, but he has fallen well short of what people expected when he was drafted in the first round of the 2008 draft. 

In many ways, he's a rich man's Mark Sanchez. The highs are the same, but the lows of Sanchez have been mostly avoided by Flacco over the course of his career. 

Time after time, though, the Ravens have looked to Flacco to make the step from a guy who can win with a great team around him to a guy who can win when the rest of his team isn't doing all the heavy lifting and Flacco's failed every time. And, just like Sanchez, it has never been worse than this season. 

An aging Ravens team with some serious flaws asked Flacco to step up the aggressiveness and pace of the offense and got a series of flops in return. It hasn't been all his fault as the offensive line is a joke and wide receiver Torrey Smith, who could miss this game with a concussion, hasn't developed into the top receiver the Ravens need, but, again like Sanchez, there's only so many excuses you can make for a guy who keeps missing his opportunities. 

Flacco's not getting benched, but he is playing for a long-term deal after this season comes to an end and he hasn't done anything to make that advisable. The Ravens might franchise him in order to assure themselves of a halfway decent quarterback next season, but it is hard to see them saying they want to continue to build around a guy who simply hasn't improved. 

If Flacco wants to change that, beating the Giants at home and clinching the AFC North would be a very good way of going about it. If he doesn't, he may be battling Sanchez for jobs in the offseason. 

Here's some of the other Ravens to watch this weekend. 

Not Your Father's Ravens - Mainstream football pundits are the last to know, but the Ravens defense that they talk about in reverent tones just isn't that good anymore. Some of that has to do with injuries to Ray Lewis, Haloti Ngata and Terrell Suggs this season, but this is an older group that hasn't been able to strike gold as they try to augment and replace their longtime stars. 

With One Exception - Safety Ed Reed has been around as long as most of those other guys, but he hasn't seen the same dip in his play. Manning is advised not to do any of those lazy, back-footed heaves down the field because Reed is headed to the Hall of Fame because of how often he turns them into touchdowns. 

Rutgers' Shining Star - One of the reasons the Ravens fired offensive coordinator Cam Cameron last week was because he never seemed to figure out a way to make proper use of Ray Rice. Rice is the kind of back who has caused the Giants problems all season, but it won't make a difference if they continue to ignore him in favor of Flacco. 

Coaching Conundrum - John Harbaugh took over a good Ravens team in 2008, took them to the AFC Championship Game and elicited talk about greatness to come. The team hasn't improved over the ensuing years, though, and their regression this year raises the question of whether the Ravens need to make a change to take the next step.

Josh Alper is also a writer for Pro Football Talk. You can follow him on Twitter.

There are games that need thousands of words to properly capture everything that took place on the field and then there are games that can be summed up in less time than it takes to read a recipe for making toast. 

Sunday's 34-0 Giants loss to the Falcons is one of the latter games. Tom Coughlin told you just about everything you need to know when he started his postgame press conference. 

"Atlanta was very, very good. We were very, very bad," Coughlin said. “There's no excuse for what happened here."

Can't argue with that. The Giants looked as flat as they've looked at any point this season and any attempt to excuse that should fall on deaf ears because, win or lose, effort is the very least you can expect from a team. 

The Giants had none, which is a failure of the players and a failure of Coughlin to get them going on the field. Yes, there were key injuries to deal with but there are injuries everywhere and they are only a crutch for teams that are mentally weak. 

Calling the Giants mentally weak would be tough to support given how many times they have answered dire situations with strong performances. We'll find out in the next two weeks, though, because the Giants have certainly found themselves in such a situation once again. 

Their loss, coupled with wins by the Cowboys and Redskins, means that the Giants can only back into the NFC East title with the help of losses by teams ahead of them. If they win out, they will still wind up in the playoffs as a wild card, so it isn't like all is lost by any means. 

At this point, though, how much faith do you have that the Giants are capable of playing two good games in a row? They haven't done it in two months and that admirable ability to play well when the chips are down now looks a lot more like a lazy team that can't be bothered to give full effort every time they take the field. 

That's an ugly picture, but an increasingly accurate one. Here's the rest of the good, bad and ugly of Sunday's Giants loss. 

BAD: This loss can't be laid at Eli Manning's feet, but a team built around superlative play from their quarterback can't win if he keeps playing like this. His accuracy is down, his decision making is lacking and, to make a long story short, Eli's been looking a lot more like he did in the early years of his career than the Super Bowl winner from last year. 

UGLY: Jayron Hosley was forced into the lineup because of Prince Amukamara's injury and the results were hard to watch. He got caught peeking in the backfield on one big pass play that wound up setting up a touchdown and Julio Jones simply ran past him on a 40-yard score. 

UGLY: The mistakes by Hosley and the rest of the secondary would feel a lot less glaring if the Giants pass rush existed anywhere outside your memory banks. Justin Tuck likes to talk a lot about being a leader and what others need to do, but any self-analysis would lead him to know he needs to speak less and do more to make it stand up.

GOOD: We're not crazy about sports teams trying to become some kind of official face of tragedies, mostly because sports is an escape from the horrors of things like the murder of so many at Sandy Hook Elementary School. If teams are going to do it, though, we're glad there are men like Victor Cruz willing to offer whatever they can to the families suffering in the aftermath. 

GOOD and BAD: David Wilson certainly seemed fine carrying the load as the team's lead running back and he came close to breaking a few big gainers, but we also fully understand why the team buried him for the first 12 weeks of the season. His pass blocking was atrocious, forcing the team to use Ryan Torain and Kregg Lumpkin to keep Manning from getting planted into the Atlanta turf like some over-sized peach tree. 

BAD: Lawrence Tynes missed another field goal. That's three in three weeks for Tynes, who sure knows how to pick the wrong time to go into a slump. 

UGLY: We started with the total lack of effort from a team that looked like it just wanted to go home and we'll end there because we're still scratching our head to figure it out. The inconsistency of this team doesn't speak well for anyone involved with the organization right now. 

Josh Alper is also a writer for Pro Football Talk. You can follow him on Twitter.

The Giants are terribly fond of playing the "Nobody Believes In Us" card, which is a problem this year because plenty of people believe in the defending Super Bowl champions. 

So they decided to go the extra mile and make sure that no one believes in them heading into next week's game with the Ravens, getting burned by Atlanta by a 34-0 score. 

Things started going wrong immediately. Eli Manning's first pass was intercepted by Asante Samuel, setting the Falcons up with a short field that they turned into a quick touchdown. 

That erased some memories of last year's humiliating 24-2 playoff loss to the Giants and there would be plenty of other signs that things were playing out differently this time around. The Giants were stuffed on three fourth-down conversions and they kept making mistakes that the Falcons kept turning into points. 

Manning got intercepted again on a nice play by safety Thomas DeCoud, Lawrence Tynes missed a 30-yard field goal (his third miss in the last three weeks) and the Falcons correctly realized that cornerback Jayron Hosley was overmatched. 

He got toasted on a double move by Harry Douglas to set up a Matt Ryan touchdown pass to Tony Gonzalez and then ate Julio Jones' dust on a 40-yard touchdown in the third quarter that essentially put the game out of even wildly optimistic reach. No one on the defense made a play all day long, another clear sign that last year's game was no prologue for what would happen this time around. 

One imagines that Manning's two interceptions this week will rekindle the discussion about something being wrong with him even though there are others to blame on each of the picks. David Wilson's much discussed problems with pass protection were clear as he got steamrolled on Manning's first pick and Hakeem Nicks could have fought a little harder on that second pick. 

Both were plays that the Giants should have been able to make, however, and Manning had plenty of other horrid throws over the course of the day. It's a bit hard to know what to make of Manning right now since he can look like his older brother on one throw and Mark Sanchez on the next. 

For all of the other very real problems with this Giants team, the fact that Manning isn't in a groove still remains the biggest issue of all. This was a team that won the Super Bowl last year because Manning erased more mistakes than he made, but this year's inconsistent version doesn't have nearly enough jam to cover up the burnt, stale toast that the Giants are making elsewhere. 

At least Tom Coughlin's got everyone right where he wants them. Now it's up to the Giants to prove that everyone was wrong to stop believing in them again this year. 

Josh Alper is also a writer for Pro Football Talk. You can follow him on Twitter.

You have to admire Tom Coughlin's salesmanship. 

The Giants are the defending Super Bowl champions, leading their division with three games to play in the season and beloved by media members far and wide, yet Coughlin still gets his players to believe there's a general consensus that they're garbage. Listening to Victor Cruz on the NFL Network Friday makes you wonder if Coughlin missed his calling as a cult leader. 

"Every year at this time, people count us out, nobody picks us and then we go on this tremendous run to win the Super Bowl," Cruz said. "We're right where we want to be. Nobody's talking about us, and we want to continue to keep this trend going of the last year."

It's very hard to think of a place you could go where someone has counted out the Giants at this point in the season. It's the king of all strawmen arguments, but why argue with what seems to work for them?

This is a pretty good weekend to invent the latest round of The World vs. New York Giants Football. The Falcons have the inside track on homefield advantage in the NFC playoffs, which would seem like the perfect opportunity for the Giants to pull off an upset that starts them rolling to greater heights. 

Forget about the fact that it isn't actually an upset for the Giants to beat a team they beat 24-2 in the playoffs last year because reality doesn't matter. This is one of those moments where the story becomes the Giants overcoming the doubters, so you might as well just go with it. 

Injuries make that storyline juicier. The Giants won't have running back Ahmad Bradshaw on Sunday as the sprained knee he suffered against the Saints joined his neck and foot problems to finally knock him out of the lineup. 

David Wilson will be in line for the lion's share of the work out of the backfield, which works well given his breakout performance against New Orleans last week. It's a much bigger role than Wilson is accustomed to playing, however, and the Giants have had doubts this season about whether he was ready for the pass protection he'll need to provide for Eli Manning. 

Cornerback Prince Amukamara has also been ruled out, a big loss given the quietly strong play he's provided opposite the increasingly toasty Corey Webster. With Kenny Phillips still out, the Giants won't have much depth or versatility in the secondary against a good Falcons passing offense. 

That puts a lot of pressure on the pass rush to find itself after a mostly ineffectual season from the guys up front. But things didn't look too different in the playoffs and the Giants couldn't have had an easier time with it. 

Don't let that get in the way of the underdog storyline, though. Some things just sell too well to ever go out of circulation. 

Josh Alper is also a writer for Pro Football Talk. You can follow him on Twitter.

If you had any doubts that rookie running back David Wilson being the biggest story on the Giants after his three touchdowns against the Saints last Sunday, they were put to rest when the Thursday papers went to press. 

It doesn't really matter which paper you read with your coffee or at your desk when you're supposed to be working because all of them have variations on the same Wilson story. Members of the Giants are concerned that Wilson's going to hurt himself if he continues to celebrate his touchdowns with a backflip. 

Justin Tuck said he's told Wilson several times to save it for YouTube, Tom Coughlin refused to comment about them without giving much indication he's a fan and Wilson said that Jerry Reese said he can keep doing it as long as he doesn't get hurt. Eli Manning, who doesn't seem to worry about a thing, is the only Giant quoted who thinks it's just fine that Wilson keeps doing it. 

We imagine he's not the only one, although you can understand keeping quiet in the face of such a full court press on the other side of such a meaningful issue. After all, Wilson scored three touchdowns last week so he's clearly going to be scoring that much every week. 

We're also waiting for the "won't someone think of the children" style slams of all the NFL players who dunk the ball over the crossbar when they score touchdowns. They could roll their ankle after landing, after all, and that might wind up knocking them out just as easily as Wilson could hurt himself by failing to complete the backflip. 

Injury concerns are somewhat reasonable, even if Wilson is just as reasonably telling everyone to "relax" about something he's been doing for 20 years without incident. Concerns raised by Gary Myers of the Daily News, however, are patently ridiculous.

Myers touches on the injury issue, but he really thinks Wilson should stop doing backflips because they anger opponents who think they are being shown up by the celebration. Per Myers, such defenders are going to be more likely to dish out cheap shots to Wilson than they would if he had a less exuberant way of marking his touchdowns.

We got to wondering what kind of touchdown celebration might meet with Myers' approval. Something understated like doing a salsa dance while your home stadium (and certain television networks) blast salsa music to accompany your moves would obviously be out, right?

Wrong, unless we missed Myers' long screed about how awful it is that Victor Cruz shows up defenses by dancing all over the end zone when he scores a touchdown. We're still waiting for that cheap shot against Cruz, one that won't come since years of watching touchdown celebrations have pretty much made everyone other than crotchety commentators just fine with it. 

You know what actually is insulting to Giants opponents, though? Assuming that three touchdowns against a bad team is somehow predictive enough of how the rest of Wilson's season will go rather than using the 12 weeks where he was barely a factor as a guide for how things will play out when the Giants play against defenses that understand stopping the offense is their goal.

If the Giants are fortunate enough to keep getting touchdowns from Wilson, how he celebrates them should be of as much concern to them as the price of coffee in Istanbul.  

Josh Alper is also a writer for Pro Football Talk. You can follow him on Twitter.

Every week during the season, we’ll scout out the Giants' next opponent. This week, that opponent is the Atlanta Falcons.

When last we saw the Atlanta Falcons in these parts, they were limping off the field after a humiliating 24-2 beatdown at the hands of the Giants in the playoffs.

The loss did more than just end their season. It cemented a narrative that's been growing around the team for the last several years. 

Atlanta has never had a better run than they've had in the five years that Mike Smith has been the coach and Matt Ryan has been the quarterback, but they continually run into a wall when the stakes are the highest. Three playoff losses in three playoff visits, poor performances in all three of those games and a sense that they don't have whatever intangible your favorite pundit uses to challenge the fortitude of a team. 

Such theorists got another arrow for their quiver on Sunday when the Falcons were manhandled by a 4-8 Panthers team that they beat earlier in the season. Winning 11 of your first 12 doesn't mean much if you can't win when the big ones and Sunday brings the Falcons another chance to show they can win against a rival for the throne. 

If they do, they'll take a big step toward home field advantage throughout the NFC playoffs and an even bigger one toward convincing people that they have what it takes to win a Super Bowl. It's a moment every good team reaches at some point, even if the precise "it" every team needs seems to only be known to sports radio hosts in hindsight. 

Should the Falcons lose, those doubts will rise even higher because this is the perfect situation to finally go out and show they are more than just the product of a forgiving schedule. Here's a few of the people who will be trying to help them avoid that fate. 

Three Amigos - There aren't many receiving trios in the same class as the one the Falcons deploy with Julio Jones, Roddy White and Tony Gonzalez and they've finally allowed them to dictate the pace of the offense this year. It's pick your poison for defenses that don't hurry Ryan into mistakes. 

Speaking of Hurrying Ryan - Matty Ice is ice cold right now and his struggles make Eli Manning's post-bye blues seem like a pretty big overreaction. Those receivers aren't going to throw themselves the ball, so Atlanta needs their guy to get right. 

Ageless Wonder - It seems like 20 years ago that the Jets moved on from John Abraham and started looking for his replacement as a pass rusher. It was only 2005, though, and the Jets are still looking while Abraham's still dropping quarterbacks in bunches. 

Turner No Longer a Burner - The Falcons offense sometimes reminds you of the Giants' offense the last two years whenever they'd try to run the ball with Brandon Jacobs. Michael Turner's not fast enough nor nimble enough to continue as a feature back in the NFL, which makes it all the better for a Giants team that can't stop the run. 

Josh Alper is also a writer for Pro Football Talk. You can follow him on Twitter.

Giants linebacker/defensive end Mathias Kiwanuka said Monday that he wasn't bothered by everyone paying attention to David Wilson and the offense in the wake of Sunday's 52-27 victory over the Saints.

"You put up 52, you got to tip your hat to our offense," Kiwanuka said. "We'll take the back seat to them. They put up a significant number of points."

Indeed they did, but that's not the only reason why the Giants defense is taking the back seat these days. The other, bigger reason is that the defense hasn't played particularly well.

That doesn't mean they've been awful. One look at the Saints defense is all you need to know that the Giants share few similarities with that pathetic unit.

They don't share many similarities with the defense we saw at the close of last season either and that certainly merits some concern as the team prepares for three games they'd be better off winning if they want to assure themselves of a spot in the playoffs.

New Orleans ran all over the Giants in the first half of Sunday's game against the Giants, piling up more than 100 yards against a unit that claimed their inability to stop the run against Washington was due to the Redskins running an option attack much of the time. We've seen them struggle to stop enough running backs in enough offensive systems at this point in the season to know that the real reason is that the Giants can't stop the run consistently. 

The Saints also hit a few big passing plays, they had five plays of 20 or more yards over the course of the game, and that's been another season-long theme. Corey Webster's been burnt more often than a wick and Kenny Phillips' absences have clearly taken a toll on the team's pass defense even though Stevie Brown's gaudy turnover totals have gotten more attention from the masses. 

Over the course of the season, the Giants have given up more plays of 20 or more yards than all but five teams in the league. The secondary bears some blame for this, but so does the pass rush. 

The narrative is still that the Giants have the most fearsome pass rush in all the land. Cris Collinsworth nearly leaped out of the booth when the Giants finally sacked Drew Brees in the second half because he finally had a chance to further that narrative. 

Truthfully, though, Jason Pierre-Paul, Justin Tuck and Osi Umenyiora have been fairly ineffective on that front this season. The mistakes made by the Saints on Sunday were not products of Brees being under pressure, there was an interception off a tipped ball and fumbles that found their way into Giants hands. 

Forcing turnovers has been the one thing the Giants have done really well this year, but there's no team more aware of how unsustainable such things are over the long term. Remember when Eli Manning threw interceptions by the bucketful in 2010? 

Those balls clanged off receivers' hands and into the hands of defenders when now they are dropped in the end zone by New Orleans defensive backs. Fumbles work the same way, something the Giants surely know after the 49ers were felled by them in the NFC Championship Game while Ahmad Bradshaw's Super Bowl miscue wound up back in friendly hands. 

It will take more than that for the Giants defense to hold up for the kind of run they'll need to meet expectations this season. And now's exactly the moment to start that run. 

Josh Alper is also a writer for Pro Football Talk. You can follow him on Twitter.

The last time the Giants won the Super Bowl, they returned the next year with essentially the same team and opened up with 11 wins in their first 12 games. 

Then Plaxico Burress decided he wanted to know what it feels like to get shot and the Giants folded up like a piece of origami because the team hadn't found any alternatives to Burress in their passing game. The Giants failed because they assumed everything would just fall into place again, a terrible judgment that they have avoided thus far this year. 

Much of this year's team looks exactly like the one that the Giants rode to another title in February, but they did a better job of protecting against the inevitable moment when the guy who got the job done last year failed this time around. Sean Locklear was there to play right tackle until he got hurt, Stevie Brown was available at safety and, perhaps most importantly, David Wilson was drafted to be a playmaker for a team that sent two of them packing when Mario Manningham and Brandon Jacobs went to San Francisco. 

There was no instant magic with Wilson, who mostly existed as a whipping boy for the coaching staff for the first 12 weeks of the season, but there's a reason why you don't make conclusions based on less than a full sampling of the goods. Wilson gave a reminder of that in the 52-27 win over the Saints. 

Wilson's 97-yard kickoff return gave the Giants points when their offense was scuffling in the first quarter and his 100 rushing yards allowed them to rest the obviously ailing Ahmad Bradshaw for a good portion of the game. And his 52-yard bolt of a touchdown run gave the offense a gear they haven't seen all season from the running back position. 

If that reminds you of the way that Bradshaw burst on the scene, it is for good reason. He came on to give a jolt of energy to a tired team in 2007 and wound up helping them get to the Super Bowl. 

Wilson did the same thing on Sunday. We can't know if the season will wind up the same way, but getting a new wrinkle this late in the season is sure to help their chances. 

Here's the rest of the good, bad and ugly from the win. 

GOOD: Martellus Bennett has always been an entertaining quote, but he's shown this season that he may actually have a place in the NFL as a player. He, not Jimmy Graham, was the best tight end on the field on Sunday. 

GOOD/BAD: Eli Manning got off to a horrid start, underthrowing Domenik Hixon on a potential touchdown and then getting picked by the Saints for a score, before winding up with four touchdown passes. There were a couple of passes New Orleans should have picked off in the end zone, though, and holding onto either could have made the whole game play out in a less amusing way for the Giants. Halfway competent defenses won't be quite so forgiving of mistakes. 

UGLY: Lawrence Tynes has two missed kicks in the last two weeks and neither was long enough to make you say that it is just part of doing business. If you're the kind of guy that believes that "clutchiness" is something that exists, that's no big deal but a couple more misses should have the Giants very concerned. 

BAD: The Giants run defense was non-existent in the first half, giving up more than 100 yards to a Saints unit that makes its money throwing the ball. We can't give them credit for firming up in the second half since running wasn't an option with such a lopsided score, so we'll just have to wait and see if they can actually figure out the whole tackling-the-guy-with-the-ball-before-he-hurts-you thing over the final three weeks.

GOOD: Victor Cruz and Hakeem Nicks have each had better games, but the second week of the season was the last time that they both played well in the same game. A strong closing would be the ideal way to put their struggles from the year behind them in time for the playoffs. 

Josh Alper is also a writer for Pro Football Talk. You can follow him on Twitter.

Ever since he fumbled on his first carry of the season, Giants first-round pick David Wilson has been a fringe player for the team. 

That changed on Sunday afternoon during a rain-swept 52-27 win over the Saints that kept the Giants in first place for at least one more week. Wilson returned a kickoff 97 yards for a touchdown in the first quarter, ran for a touchdown in the third quarter and then iced the game with a 52-yard scamper in the fourth quarter. 

Wilson's returns were part of a huge day of return yardage for the Giants. They had 413 return yards on kickoffs (Wilson had several other big returns into New Orleans territory and Jerrel Jernigan added a 60-yarder when the Saints kicked away from Wilson), punts, fumbles and interceptions. 

The fumbles and interceptions loomed just as large as the kickoffs. The Giants forced a pair of fumbles after Saints completions in the first half, halting the visitors' momentum and building a 21-13 halftime lead in the process. 

Then Stevie Brown picked off Drew Brees twice in the second half, leading to 10 more Giants points as they built up a couple of big second half leads. They jumped out to a 35-13 bulge after their first two possessions of the third quarter, let the Saints score a pair of quick touchdowns and then rallied back for 17 more points to put the game back out of reach in the fourth. 

All of those turnovers meant that the Giants offense didn't have to do all that much as seven of their drives started in Saints territory. What they did have to do, they did well for the most part. 

Eli Manning threw four touchdown passes and showed that he and Victor Cruz can still get on the same page. Give credit to the offensive line for keeping the pocket clean and to the Saints for the shabbiness of their defense this season. 

Manning threw a couple of bad picks and missed on a few passes that would have led to even more points, but they didn't come back to haunt the Giants and there was much more good than bad overall. It was the kind of controlled performance you wanted to see after the sloppy game in Washington. 

With the Redskins and Cowboys pulling out nailbiters early, the Giants had to win this game to stay on top of the division. They'll need to keep winning to guarantee themselves a playoff spot. 

If they keep getting games like this from Wilson, that shouldn't be a problem. 

Josh Alper is also a writer for Pro Football Talk. You can follow him on Twitter.

Up until this point, most of the references to the Giants' 1-3 record in the second half have been of the jokey variety.

"Look at that Tom Coughlin doing it again! Setting everyone up to think that the Giants aren't any good, just so he can deliver a speech about nobody believing in them and wind up looking like a genius even though everyone always believed in them in the first place."

That might change if they lose to the Saints on Sunday. If the Cowboys or Redskins win, the Giants won't be in first place anymore and they probably won't be in the playoffs at all when the curtain drops on Week 14. 

That's why Coughlin said earlier this week that the team has to win out if they want to be a playoff team. That might not turn out to be true, but it certainly isn't a risk that the Giants need to take.

Lose to the Saints and you face possible obsolescence with another loss in road games against the Ravens and Falcons. Closing with the Eagles gives plenty of reason to believe the Giants are fine if they get to that game with a shot, but the road ain't easy. 

On paper, the Saints are the perfect team for them to use as a springboard to their sprint toward the playoffs. The defense can regain its bearings after Monday's disappointment in Washington and the offense can get right against a terrible defense. 

The Giants defense doesn't have an easy day, mind you. With the exception of the games against the Packers, the Giants defense hasn't shown it can handle good offenses this season and the Saints have more running balance than Green Bay has shown. 

Drew Brees may be playing outdoors and coming off the worst game of his career, but he's still Drew Brees and there are still a ton of weapons at his disposal. New Orleans probably hits a few big plays on Sunday, but the Giants can still regain their bearings by letting things hang out a bit more on defense.

Perry Fewell has to know that the Giants will get chewed up by playing reactive football like they did against the Redskins, so they have to be aggressive and force the Saints to hit those big plays. If they do, you know your offense should be able to keep up and you're still just a sack away from turning the game around. 

Speaking of that offense, it's pretty much a dream matchup. Steve Spagnuolo may have been a genius with the Giants, but his Saints defense is a dud and Eli Manning should be able to rip it apart. 

Should is the optimal word, because Manning should have been able to do that to the Redskins too. New Orleans is vulnerable everywhere and it would be a good week for the Giants to use that to turn a few field goals into touchdowns instead of the other way around. 

Now's the time to put everything into place so that we can go back to laughing about the Giants' insistence on doing everything the hardest way possible. 

Josh Alper is also a writer for Pro Football Talk. You can follow him on Twitter.

When the schedules for this season were released, many Giants fans probably had a painful sense of deja vu when they realized the Saints were one of this year's opponents. 

The Saints humiliated the Giants last season, the second time in the last three seasons that they've run the Giants off the field. The Giants won the Super Bowl, but Drew Brees made them look like a JV squad without breaking any significant sweat. 

And then came the long arm of the NFL. As a result of their investigation into allegations that the Saints were running a bounty system offering payouts, the league suspended coach Sean Payton and general manager Mickey Loomis for the year and Joe Vitt, the first choice for interim coach, for six games.

They also tried to suspend defensive end Will Smith and linebacker Jonathan Vilma, although the players have so far been successful in their fight against Roger Goodell to keep the suspensions from being imposed. While that's been a win for the players against an inept prosecutor, it hasn't done anything to help the Saints.

They spent a lot of time complaining about the league's actions while they were also trying to hammer out a new contract for Drew Brees, pursuits that seemed to take their toll as the team started the year with four straight losses. The ship righted a bit, but they're 5-7 and essentially out of the playoff reckoning. 

When the story gets written on this year, those issues are going to get plenty of attention and you'll hear people talking about the difference that Payton makes on the sideline. Perhaps they're right, but this isn't much different from other conspiracy theories.

The simpler explanation is that Payton doesn't do defense, which means the Saints defense would be just as rancid even if the bounty controversy never happened.  

The Saints have scored exactly as many points as the Giants this season, but they've allowed almost 100 more points and that is the reason why the team is going to miss out on a shot at playing a Super Bowl in their home stadium. A Saints fan would have a longer list than that, but the defense is everything that's wrong with the New Orleans team this season. 

Here's a few other things to keep in mind heading into Sunday, starting with the guy in charge of that defense. 

Return of Spags - Steve Spagnuolo flopped as head coach with the Rams and the Saints job looked like the perfect chance for him to rehab his image while making over a bad defense in time for a playoff run. It hasn't worked out that way and Spagnuolo's defense will have to make a leap in 2013 if he's going to get another head coaching job.

Catching Brees at the Wrong Time? - Brees has had a customarily strong season, but he looked like Mark Sanchez against the Falcons last Thursday night. He threw five interceptions in an awful performance, something that doesn't figure to happen two weeks in a row. 

Intentional Grounding - One of the problems with the Saints last season was their inability to maintain a strong running game while Brees and company were lighting up the sky. Chris Ivory, Mark Ingram, Pierre Thomas and Darren Sproles have all had good moments and they've made the Saints more difficult to stop as a result. 

Cracking Graham - Jimmy Graham was too much for the Giants last year and he could be too much for them again this time around if Kenny Phillips' knee still isn't right. Stopping Graham is essential to stopping the Saints, so whoever's covering him will need to play at a very high level.  

Josh Alper is also a writer for Pro Football Talk. You can follow him on Twitter.

After winning the Super Bowl last season, everyone around the Giants seemed happy to live in a world where the team did nothing until the last possible second. 

That happiness came because Eli Manning had a knack for winning games in the final minutes and the excitement of those moments made it easy to ignore the fact that the Giants' inconsistency was making games much closer than they needed to be. The fact that most of their wins were one unlucky bounce from going the other way was much less significant than the fact that the bounces went the Giants' way more often than not. 

If the lesson for that year wound up being "In Eli We Trust," this year's lesson is that choosing to play for just a few of the 60 minutes every week is a really bad idea. Four of the Giants' five losses this season have come by one score and all of them have found the Giants unable to dig themselves out of the hole created by their mistakes. 

Monday night's 17-16 loss to the Redskins wasn't any different. The Giants offense moved the ball easily for the entire first half, but only had 13 points to show for it thanks to settling for field goal attempts instead of getting the ball into the end zone. 

Third down conversions were a snap right until the Giants would get the ball into scoring position. The Giants attacked most of the night and then got conservative on their final two drives. It was like the Giants wanted things to be as hard as possible for them.  

The defense forced the only turnover of the game to kill a promising Redskins drive in the third quarter, but, again, the offense could only manage a field goal. There were games last season when teams would do that against the Giants, leading people to say that you can't beat Eli by kicking field goals. 

It is a maxim that applies to Robert Griffin III as well. The Giants nearly lost the first game between the teams because they let the Redskins hang around after turning the ball over several times and this time they got beaten by finding themselves in the same situation. 

Tom Coughlin acted surprised that the Giants did this after the game, but it is pretty hard to understand why it would have been any kind of a shock. This is what they've done all season, what they did all last season and, it seems, the way things are always going to be for the Giants. 

Unless you come out and play a complete game, as they did against Green Bay, you're going to run the risk of losing thanks to a freakish play (Griffin's fumble into the arms of Josh Morgan on the first Redskins touchdown) and continued opportunities that give the opposition life. It's a bad way to live and one that all but guarantees another slog to the end of the season.

That's also bad, since things don't tend to work out the same way twice. Here's the rest of the good, bad and ugly from Monday night.

GOOD: Ahmad Bradshaw might be banged up, but it hasn't been easy to notice in the last two weeks. He's running as well as ever, give a pat on the back to the offensive line as well, and giving the Giants balance they should be able to use to better effect than they did in Washington.

BAD: RG3 is difficult to stop and the creativity of the Redskins offense makes it hard to know which way the ball is going on every snap. We get all that and accept it. That doesn't make the play of the Giants defense any easier to swallow, especially the way they got run over on the final Redskins drive of the game when they needed a stop to give the offense a chance to win the game. 

UGLY: Nine penalties are never acceptable, but Monday's flags were especially galling by a Giants team that prides itself on discipline. The special teams were flagged on almost every kick or punt return, mental errors led to penalties that killed two first half drives short of the end zone and Will Beatty was flagged for holding on what looked like a key third down conversion in the fourth quarter. 

BAD: The passing offense looked very good in the first half, but even then the Giants just missed on a few plays that could have led to big gains or touchdowns. It looked even worse in the second half outside of one long completion to Victor Cruz and clearly rumors of all being well after the Packers game were greatly exaggerated. 

UGLY: Cruz has had a problem with drops for quite a while and it reared its head in the third quarter when he dropped a potential touchdown on a third down play. We're not sure if he was already doing his touchdown dance in his head or not, but it looked that way and it looks that way far too often at this point in Cruz's career.

GOOD: You might not like the fact that the Redskins used one of NFL's lamest decisions as motivational material (Giants owner John Mara's leading role in league penalties for the Redskins violating the "spirit" of the salary cap in an uncapped year) or that loathsome 'Skins owner Dan Snyder gloated a bit too much after a regular season win, but you'd have to hate football to not love the atmosphere from Monday's game. The Redskins are punching up at the Giants and they want to resume a rivalry that's been dead for years. Monday's win helps do that and sets the table for two must-see games a year as long as Griffin and Eli are on the field. 

Josh Alper is also a writer for Pro Football Talk. You can follow him on Twitter.

Eli Manning got the last laugh on Robert Griffin III when the Giants faced the Redskins the first time, but RG3 got some revenge on Monday night. 

Griffin threw a touchdown pass to Pierre Garçon in the fourth quarter to put the Redskins ahead 17-16 and then he hit Garçon again for a first down just before the two-minute warning to allow the Redskins to run out almost all of the clock on the win. The drive that led to the winning touchdown was a nifty little number, covering 12 plays in 86 yards against a Giants defense that didn't know if the Redskins were coming or going. 

Zone read plays out of every formation under the sun gashed the Giants all night long. Alfred Morris went for 124 yards on 22 carries, beating the Giants by going around them or through them as the moment dictated. 

It's a duo the Giants should probably get used to seeing and one that isn't going to get any easier to deal with in the coming years. But as much as they did, this was a game lost because of sloppiness on offense. 

The first Giants drive established two narratives that would recur throughout the night. The first was that the Giants could move the ball well on the ground and through the air. 

There were a few misfires throwing the ball here and there, but Manning looked better than he did against the Packers for most of the night. Ahmad Bradshaw ran really well for the second straight week, bullying his way to keep the drive moving along into Redskins territory. 

And move along they did, getting into scoring position. The drive stalled after a false start on Sean Locklear and the Giants settled for a field goal.

On five of their first six possessions of the game. Thanks to a series of drive killing penalties and poor execution on other plays, the Giants only came away with four field goal attempts and one touchdown. 

Lawrence Tynes missed one of those kicks thanks in part to a bad snap by Zak DeOssie, lost points that loomed large as the final seconds clicked off the clock. But the bigger misses were the penalties -- the Giants would have nine on the night, including one that wiped out a big David Wilson kickoff return after the Griffin touchdown pass -- and the fact that so many points were left on the board. 

That's why the Giants led only 13-10 at the half even though they dominated. Even the Redskins touchdown was a fluke when wide receiver Josh Morgan caught a Griffin fumble and scampered into the end zone. 

The second half was a different story, though. The Redskins held the Giants to another field goal after what seemed like a killer Morris fumble and then came the backbreaking drive. 

A sack killed one Giants drive and then another penalty, holding on Will Beatty, wiped out a third down conversion on the next possesion. The Giants would punt the ball away and then the defense got run over as the Redskins ran out the clock. 

There was a confusion on both sides of the ball in the second half that was concerning for the Giants, who lived down to fears that last week was as much about having two weeks to prepare for one game as it was about rejuvenation. The defense, in particular, looked like they had no idea what to do with Griffin. 

They won't be the last team to struggle with that, which is of little comfort to the Giants right now. The Giants now lead the division by a game against both the Redskins and Cowboys and they have no tiebreaker advantage on either team.

It's a race again in the NFC East and the Redskins are the hottest team in the division. 

Josh Alper is also a writer for Pro Football Talk. You can follow him on Twitter.

The Giants can take a big step toward the NFC East title on Monday night. 

Beating the Redskins would leave them two games clear of both the Cowboys and Redskins with just four games to play while also leaving them with at least three wins in the division. With the hapless Eagles standing between them and a 4-2 mark, the Giants would be sitting rather pretty after a win.

Getting that win is a little more difficult with it looking unlikely that safety Kenny Phillips is going to play on Monday night. Phillips hurt his knee again against the Packers, an injury which could threaten to end his return to the lineup after just one game. 

Phillips' return was vital to the easy win over Green Bay because his presence as a deep safety made it possible for Antrel Rolle to play a more physical, aggressive style close to the line of scrimmage. The Giants knew they could count on Phillips and that enabled them to take more risks and try more things to attack Aaron Rodgers. 

It's doubtful that they are going to take the same kinds of risks with Robert Griffin III with Phillips out of the lineup. The rookie has been on a jaw-dropping roll the last two weeks and the Giants have already gotten a big taste of what he can do against a defense that doesn't have Phillips hanging out to clean up messes. 

Having seen RG3 once could make the Giants better equipped to deal with what he can do, although that's mitigated a bit by the fact that Griffin keeps on showing more wrinkles to his game. If Jason Pierre-Paul, slowed by back issues at the end of last week, isn't fully ready to go, it could be a long day of trying to choose between giving Griffin time to throw or chasing him around the corner. 

It's a big task and it is one that could lead the game into a shootout. Eli Manning doesn't play the same game as Griffin, but he's certainly capable of putting up the numbers. 

We're just not sure he's capable of doing it right now. His game last week was hailed as being all the way back thanks to the final score, but it didn't really feel that way while watching the game. 

There was a big screen pass to Ahmad Bradshaw and three touchdowns, but a couple of dropped interceptions, maddening drops and inaccurate throws looked straight out of the worrying weeks before the bye. The Redskins do not have a good pass defense, but they did a strong enough job on Manning the first time around until their inexplicable breakdown on Victor Cruz's game-winner. 

A win would make the division title almost inevitable. They'll have earned it if things play out that way.

Josh Alper is also a writer for Pro Football Talk. You can follow him on Twitter.

One of the common threads of the last two Giants Super Bowl victories are that previously little used or little known players stepped up to play huge roles in the final portion of the season and playoffs. 

Ahmad Bradshaw and Chase Blackburn are two such players. Both of them have roles on the team today because of the job they did in those title runs. 

The three years in between went up in smoke mostly because Giants given an opportunity to shine failed to take advantage of it. At 7-4 with plenty of evidence supporting both potential outcomes available, it seems that the fate of the Giants season may come down to whether or not this year's crop of players waiting to take the next step are able to actually take it. 

We can't know what injuries might crop up between now and the end of the season, so David Carr might well wind up being the guy who has to step up if this Giants season is going to avoid ending in disappointment. Barring that development, though, there are five guys who look like they are going to be in position to have an outsize impact on the final result of this season. 

David Wilson: With Andre Brown done for the year because of a broken leg, Wilson is going to finally get a chance to show why the Giants thought he was worth a first-round pick. It has always seemed strange that the Giants picked a player with weak pass blocking and ball security skills before benching him for being a bad pass blocker who fumbles, but that can now become backstory for a gauzy profile from the same beat writers who have done the Giants' dirty work in regard to slamming Wilson this season. 

The Giants signed a couple of veteran backs this week, but Wilson is the only guy on the roster capable of both spelling Bradshaw's chronically injured feet and giving the Giants offense a burst that it doesn't get from Bradshaw. If Wilson can't pass block or hold onto the ball, though, he won't give the Giants anything and their running backs could do more harm than good. 

Rueben Randle: This year's second-round pick has shown a few more flashes of NFL readiness than Wilson, but he hasn't grabbed hold of the third receiver spot the way the Giants obviously wish he could. If he can give the team a reliable option that demands defensive attention, you won't hear any more nonsense about Eli Manning's tired arm. 

Prince Amukamara: No more cold tubs for the guy who has been the best Giants cornerback this season. The Giants probably aren't going to demote Corey Webster, although he gives them plenty of reason to make such a move, but Amukamara can limit any damage he does on the other side by continuing to play at the level he's reached in his second year as a professional.

Michael Boley: Boley doesn't quite fit the little user or little known qualification, but he also doesn't fit with the image of the player we saw finding himself in the Giants defense at the end of last season. If he can pick up his play, the Giants will be much more flexible as Boley can play on all three downs without giving up any obvious edge to the offense. 

Linval Joseph: Joseph has been slow to rise, but the results have been worth waiting for. Just as Chris Canty helped pace the defense by controlling the interior of the line in the final weeks last year, Joseph could do the same for them this year and pick up a defensive line that's underwhelmed to this point of the season in the process.

Josh Alper is also a writer for Pro Football Talk. You can follow him on Twitter.

Every week during the season, we’ll scout out the Giants' next opponent. This week, that opponent is the Washington Redskins.

Over the last few seasons, games between the Giants, Cowboys and Eagles have been staples of the prime time television schedules, thanks to their fights for divisional supremacy and large fan bases. 

The NFC East didn't get any bigger, but they're going to all have to start sharing a bit more of that spotlight after this season. With Robert Griffin III heading the Redskins, we will need to get used to seeing them under the lights a lot more often.

Monday night will be Griffin's first prime time game as a pro, although he did get quite a platform to show his stuff on Thanksgiving against the Cowboys. Griffin threw four touchdowns for the second straight week to lead his team to a 38-31 win that kept their flickering playoff hopes alive.

Winning this week would dump kerosene all over them. They'd move a game behind the Giants with four games left to play. 

And they'd be playing with the hottest quarterback in all of football. Griffin's last two weeks (just nine incompletions to go with those eight touchdowns) would almost certainly be matched by a third sparkling performance if the Redskins beat the Giants. 

Griffin almost led the Redskins back in a game that was part of the Giants' slide toward two losses just before the bye, but was undone by turnovers and an unforgivable defensive breakdown on the game-winning pass to Victor Cruz. He's better than he was last month, which explains why Justin Tuck said he's been having nightmares about this game. 

We don't have to tackle him, so we're free to enjoy watching him breathe life back into a franchise and rivalry that really needed it. And if it means a few more late nights in the years to come, so be it. 

Some things are worth losing sleep over.

Here's a few other things the Giants coaches will be losing sleep over heading into the game. 

Good Draft, Redskins - Mike Shanahan is fickle when it comes to running backs, but we doubt Alfred Morris is going away anytime soon. Morris had 120 yards in the last meeting and will get to 1,000 on the season if he gains 18 this Sunday. You might want to book the over on that. 

Bon Jour, Pierre - The Redskins were down a receiver in the first game with Pierre Garçon sidelined and they lost another one when tight end Fred Davis got hurt in the first half of the game. Davis is done for the season, but Garçon is back and he's given Griffin a better option than he had at his disposal at the Meadowlands.

Back Up Off Me, Bro - Redskins cornerback DeAngelo Hall uttered those words to a reporter asking him about his $30,000 fine for berating an official and he later had a screaming match with a reporter in the locker room after practice. He's a combustible fellow, in other words, and one that the Giants might want to test in hopes of sending him off his game. 

London Bridge Never Falling Down - Since linebacker London Fletcher has entered the NFL, his teams have played 235 games. Fletcher has played in every one of them and continues to play well in his 15th season hunting down ball carriers. 

Fletcher was undrafted, pretty much the opposite of the first overall pick we led with. Prime time is open to all comers with a good story to tell, though. 

Josh Alper is also a writer for Pro Football Talk. You can follow him on Twitter.

After a few weeks of turmoil, all is right in the Giants' world right now. 

They laid a beating on the Packers at the Meadowlands Sunday night, giving the team their first win in November and quieting those who decided that two losses were enough reason to write off a team they were touting as a champion at 6-2. The season ebbs and flows, something that seems to be forgotten every year when one of the ebbs comes about. 

It's also easy to forget that one week's raging success means nothing for the next week. The Giants need only look to their performances after blowouts against the Panthers and 49ers to make that clear, although defensive end Justin Tuck isn't thinking that way. 

"I think winning just like losing is kind of contagious, that winning feeling and hopefully that’s a contagious feeling for us and we’ve had a lot of success late in the season the past few years and hopefully we can continue that."

Thing is, it isn't actually all that late in the season. There are five regular season games to play and, barring a serious downturn by the Falcons and/or 49ers, the Giants are looking at a game the first weekend of the playoffs. 

That would mean sustaining a run for 10 weeks to win another Super Bowl, far more than the six-week sprint that brought them the title last year. The Giants were able to ride a wave of rejuvenation and two weeks of planning into this week's game, something that won't be available to them unless they advance to New Orleans in February. 

Injuries to Kenny Phillips and Andre Brown drive home the importance of those two weeks of rest and preparation before the Packers game. For the rest of the season, the Giants will have to fly by the seat of their pants when it comes to which players will be available from week to week and their game plans will have to account for that uncertainty going forward. 

Beyond that, players like Ahmad Bradshaw and Hakeem Nicks looked better than they have in at least a month coming off the extended rest. Bradshaw's a particular worry since Brown won't be around to split carries for the rest of the season. 

And, despite the 38-10 score, every problem hasn't gone away. Eli Manning avoided disaster thanks to the poor hands of Packers defensive backs, but the performance wasn't markedly different than the ones that sent people into a tizzy before the bye. 

The outcome was better, but calling this a great Manning performance is a bit of an insult to the legitimately great ones in the past. Too much was made of his slump, but too much can be made of a rebound that relied heavily on a screen pass that accounted for a quarter of his yards. 

We're not trying to rain on any parades. The Giants can all but wrap up the division this week and are just as strong a contender for the title as they have been all season. 

It's just that it is still way too early to start talking about late-season runs to the Super Bowl. 

Josh Alper is also a writer for Pro Football Talk. You can follow him on Twitter.

There are teams that respond to rough patches by throwing the baby out with the bath water and there are those that stubbornly stick to what they think will work in the face of evidence that a change is necessary.

The Giants faced one of those rough patches headed into Sunday night's game against the Packers and they refused to go whole hog on either approach. Every part of the team was analyzed on its own merits and the team made calls on how to proceed based on evidence instead of some overarching philosophy.

On offense, faith in what had worked in the past was the answer. The results weren't spectacularly different from what we saw before the bye as there were poor decisions by Eli Manning, drops by receivers and other mistakes over the course of the evening. 

The mistakes never cost them as the Packers dropped what should have been interceptions and the Giants running game meant they didn't have to put too much on Manning's plate. Give Tom Coughlin credit for knowing that the big picture was still positive for the offense and that only a fool would believe that something had suddenly changed with an offense that has generally been great over the last two seasons. 

Such a fool would probably have said that the Giants just needed to keep things rolling the same way on defense as well, even though there's a much longer track record of issues on that side of the ball. Relying on the front four to create all the havoc for the defense simply has not worked this year and the team tried a lot of different things to confuse Aaron Rodgers over the course of the evening. 

Four safety looks, corner blitzes and aggressive coverage on outside receivers were part of that new package and the result was the best Giants defensive effort we've seen since the Super Bowl. The Packers offense was humming when it rolled into the Meadowlands, but it took a smack in the mouth similar to the one the Giants took in Cincinnati before the break. 

The Giants will now need to prove that they can come up with such effective game plans without two weeks to prepare for one team. Their ability to improvise and improve what's failing bodes well on that front. 

Here's the rest of the good, bad and ugly from Sunday. 

GOOD: Ahmad Bradshaw and Andre Brown were very strong on Sunday night, exploiting every hole to gain chunks of yards behind an offensive line that kept opening them up. Bradshaw looked the best he's looked in weeks, raising some concern that it was a function of the time off but it's appreciated regardless of the reason. 

BAD: Brown broke a bone in his leg late in the game, which will take some of the oomph out of the running game in the coming weeks unless David Wilson suddenly goes from the doghouse to the penthouse. 

UGLY: The score was 7-7 in the first quarter when the Packers chose to try a 55-yard field goal with struggling kicker Mason Crosby on 4th-and-5 from the Giants' 37-yard line. Crosby predictably missed and the Giants had great field position, which makes you wonder why McCarthy didn't have the faith in his offense to just go for it if he was willing to let the Giants have the ball right there.

GOOD: Kenny Phillips' return to the lineup seemed to be an essential part of the changes the team put in place against Green Bay. Having Phillips as the last line of defense makes it much easier for Perry Fewell to mix and match looks up front, most notably the way fellow safety Antrel Rolle could focus only on the things he does well. 

BAD: Phillips couldn't finish the game because of an issue in his knee. Should he be lost, the Giants defense will have to redefine itself once again. 

UGLY: The Giants enjoyed some good luck when punt returner Rueben Randle fumbled two kicks without losing either one of them. It's a killer spot to make a turnover and the bounces won't always favor the Giants. 

GOOD: Hakeem Nicks had a good game against the Bengals just before the bye and he looked almost all the way back on Sunday night. If he can keep winning battles on the outside, Victor Cruz should get more single coverage and the offensive problems will seem like a distant memory. 

Josh Alper is also a writer for Pro Football Talk. You can follow him on Twitter.

These are the Giants we've been waiting to see. 

After heading into the bye with two losses and a division race that had suddenly materialized after weeks out in front by themselves, the Giants made an emphatic statement that all they needed was a chance to recharge their batteries. They thrashed the Packers 38-10 at the Meadowlands on Sunday night to improve to 7-4 and take a two-game lead in the NFC East into next week's game with the Redskins. 

The evening started out on a good note when Eli Manning hit Ahmad Bradshaw for a screen that turned into a 59-yard gain and set up a touchdown, hit a brief bump when the Packers tied the score and then it was all Giants on the way to the victory. Manning wound up with three touchdown passes (including a Giants franchise record 200th for his career), the Giants sacked Aaron Rodgers five times and the only concern was whether or not Vegas would be paying out over or under bets. 

In other words, it was exactly the game that the Giants needed after a bad stretch before their bye week.

The passing offense still wasn't as crisp as it could be, but it wasn't a frightfest like it was before the bye and performed better as the game moved along. That might have had something to do with the Packers seeming to pack it in awfully early, but it will be nice to get away from the doom and gloom of the last few weeks all the same. 

Even better, the running game was very strong with both Ahmad Bradshaw and Andre Brown gaining yards thanks to hard running and good blocking. The Packers couldn't seem to figure out how to defend the Giants because of their success against the run and that's a good position for the offense to be in over the final five weeks of the season. 

The offensive line looked the most refreshed of anyone on offense as the Packers could neither mount a stout defense on the ground nor pressure Manning much when he dropped back to pass. The rest of the issues with the timing and accuracy of the passing game look like they are on the road to recovery, something that will only accelerate with Manning having time to throw the ball. 

More than anything on that side of the ball, though, it was the defense that makes you think that the Giants have put some of their problems to bed. It was a performance that looked a lot like last year's playoff game as Rodgers was swarmed by pass rushers on almost every drop and wound up playing a tentative, confused game. 

Those familiar with last season will know that is exactly the kind of game that the Giants want opposing quarterbacks to play. The big difference this time was how the Giants did it. 

While there was plenty of work done by the front four, including the obligatory Osi Umenyiora strip sack, the Giants also brought blitzes from unusual (for them) angles and kept Rodgers guessing by showing more looks than they showed prior to the bye. Beyond that, defensive coordinator Perry Fewell tweaked things during the game to keep what was working early -- a 61-yard touchdown pass to Jordy Nelson -- from ever working again.

Getting Kenny Phillips back also helped because Antrel Rolle was able to play a more aggressive role closer to the line of scrimmage without having to be the last line of defense behind the cornerbacks. Rolle was active, so was Phillips, and the Giants faster looked noticeably faster than it did before they took their vacation. 

That makes Phillips' departure with a knee injury the one real black mark on the night because we're not sure if the can play the same kind of game in the secondary without him in the lineup. It would be a severe and cruel loss so soon after getting a glimpse of what the Giants defense looks like at full strength.

Outside of that, though, there are nothing but smiles for the return of Giants football. Literally and figuratively. 

It's not often that the Giants find themselves in bed with the Redskins, but Robert Griffin III and company did Big Blue a solid on Sunday. 

Had the Cowboys won, they would have been in position to take over first place in the NFC East if the Giants continued their November swoon against the Packers on Sunday night. That's not much breathing room and there would have been a lot of pressure on the team when they took the field. 

Now, though, things are little looser for Tom Coughlin's team. No one's saying that a loss is okay, but it does give the team a chance to go out and play without much fear of what the downside means. 

For a team that has been struggling so much over the last four games, that's a very good thing. It is much easier to fix problems without the sense that the whole world will collapse if you lose, especially in a case like the Giants' where there are multiple areas in need of attention. 

Eli Manning is at the top of the list. He hasn't thrown a touchdown in three games and he's battled whispers that he has a tired arm that's limiting his effectiveness during games. 

Manning denied it and then returned from the bye saying that his arm had more pop while Coughlin said he was sharp during practice after saying pretty much the same thing before the last three games. While there have been some moments when Manning's arm was underwhelming, but his decision making has seemed like a much bigger issue. 

It would be easier for Manning to make smart decisions if Ahmad Bradshaw and Hakeem Nicks both got closer to full speed during the bye week. The run game has not forced defenses to take attention away from stopping the pass and Nicks, who looked better in Week 10, hasn't been able to force defenses to lighten up coverage that's basically eliminated Victor Cruz. 

Throw in a leaky offensive line (which gets a break with Clay Matthews out for Green Bay), a front four that's been about as fearsome as a hamster this season (which doesn't with Aaron Rodgers doing his thing) and a toast-prone secondary to complete a recipe for this year's downturn. It sounds more dire then it really is when you put it out there like that, but the Giants were a team in need of recharged batteries when we last saw them. 

We'll find out Sunday whether a little rest and relaxation did the trick. If it didn't, the Giants will have some work to do if they don't want to keep relying on the kindness of Redskins. 

Josh Alper is also a writer for Pro Football Talk. You can follow him on Twitter.

Every week during the season, we’ll scout out the Giants' next opponent. This week, that opponent is the Green Bay Packers.

The Giants have caught the Packers at all different times in the last couple of seasons. 

They caught them for the first time when the Packers were undefeated last season and rolling through the NFL like a knife through hot butter. The Giants pushed them to the limit, but ultimately lost 38-35 in a game that fell in the middle of four losses in five games. 

When the teams met again, it was January in Green Bay and the Giants routed a heavily favored Packers team to continue their march to the Super Bowl. It seemed like the perfect example of a team peaking at the right time facing one that had peaked a little bit too soon. 

It's time for round three this Sunday night at the Meadowlands and it is hard to predict what role momentum will play in this latest battle. The Giants are sending off rested-and-ready vibes after their bye week, but they looked dreadful in their last two games. 

The Packers, on the other hand, have won five straight games and look like they've found their groove after losing three of their first five games. With the Bears stumbling thanks to Jay Cutler's injury, they're in position to grab the lead in the NFC North and continue on the road to playoff redemption. 

Getting through the Giants would be a big step in that direction. It would allow the Packers to show that they've shored up the pass-blocking and pass-defending weaknesses that signaled their doom in January while also striking a blow that would stir up even more trouble for another NFC contender. 

Ultimately, though, the question of who's hotter now doesn't much matter. It's about who's the hottest when the year comes to an end and both of these teams still need to cement their spot in the postseason. 

Here's a few of the things to know about the Packers as the Giants try to stop them from doing that. 

Second Verse, (Almost) Same as the First: There's no MVP buzz around Aaron Rodgers this season, but that's a reflection on not being undefeated more than it is a reflection on Rodgers' play. Rodgers has been almost as good as he was last year and he's certainly been just as valuable to the Packers thanks to that high level of performance. 

New Face in the Crowd: Casey Hayward wasn't the most highly touted player coming out of college, but the second-round pick has upped his stock considerably through 10 games. He's given the Packers a deeper, more talented secondary (even with Charles Woodson out) and Eli Manning won't find it quite as easy to pick them apart as it was last year. 

Injuries Again: When the Packers won the Super Bowl two years ago, they did it despite a slew of injured regulars. Things aren't quite that bad this year, but their chances of winning will take a hit if linebacker Clay Matthews and wide receiver Greg Jennings remain out of the lineup thanks to injuries.

Targets, Targets Everywhere: If Jennings is out, the Packers will be just fine with Jordy Nelson, James Jones, Randall Cobb, Jermichael Finley and Donald Driver. There are deep threats and reliable receivers and everything in between on that list, something that will test a shaky Giants secondary if the front four can't get the pass rush fired up. 

Josh Alper is also a writer for Pro Football Talk. You can follow him on Twitter.

It was just five weeks ago ago that the Giants went into San Francisco and wiped the floor with the 49ers in a blowout win that had people talking about a repeat Super Bowl title. 

Thanks to the way the Giants have played in the four games since that victory, it feels like it has been at least twice as long as that. That was the last moment that the Giants looked like a playoff contender, let alone a contender to challenge for the championship of the entire league. 

Everyone had their own theory about why the Giants cratered after that 49ers game, which made sense because it would be impossible to say that a team playing as badly as the Giants was just one little tweak away from everything going right. The Giants obviously couldn't fix what was wrong on the fly or they would have done it, so the hope is that the bye week has done them some good. 

Eli Manning said it has, reversing course from his earlier denial of having a tired arm by saying Monday that his arm has more pop than it did before he took a week off from all football activities. Manning's passes weren't always without zip -- see the would-be touchdown against the Bengals that Victor Cruz dropped -- and the line's inability to pass protect after Tom Coughlin decided that David Diehl deserved a starting job based on tenure instead of merit seemed to be just as big a problem, but if Manning feels better that's certainly a good thing for the offense. 

As for the defense, defensive end Justin Tuck says that the group lost some of its focus in the last few weeks. He also said that the losing streak hasn't cost the team any confidence, saying that the Giants are actually "borderline cocky" when it comes to their ability. 

One might suggest that there's a pretty clear line between being overconfident and losing focus on doing the little things that enable you to take care of a task at hand, but Tuck didn't seem to see the connection between the two things. Not that it matters what Tuck says or that the team meeting the players held on Monday. 

That's all for show, an attempt to make it seem like the team is working on what's wrong and just part of the process that goes on for every team in the league. It ultimately doesn't mean anything because having a little chat here and there isn't going to help you block, tackle or score. 

What will help is getting Hakeem Nicks and Ahmad Bradshaw healthy enough to give the offense a full complement of weapons while Tuck figures out that he'll help the team a lot more by stepping up on the field instead of spending so much energy on his often entertaining but ultimately useless media sessions. And the help needs to come immediately. 

The Giants once had a huge lead in the NFC East, but it is mostly gone after the last three weeks of play and could be totally gone by the time they take the field against the Packers. If the Cowboys beat the Redskins on Thursday, they will be positioned to move into first place with another Giants loss. 

That would mean that the Giants no longer control their own playoff destiny and that they will have to navigate a tough closing stretch -- opponents have a 36-24 record this year -- without having any margin for error available to them. The Giants have always liked to make things more difficult than they need to be during games and it looks like they've decided to do it again on a macro scale this season. 

It's certainly more interesting than just playing well all of the time, but it's hard to find too many people that would rather be interesting than successful. 

Josh Alper is also a writer for Pro Football Talk. You can follow him on Twitter.

We've officially reached the point of ridiculousness when it comes to Eli Manning's recent slump.

The "Is Eli Elite?" debate has gotten ginned up again, as if there were some semantic signifier that actually impacted his level of play instead of just being fodder for the lowest level of talk radio. At least it gave Dan Fouts a chance to break out the loathsome "You can't spell elite without Eli" line that we hoped had been retired permanently. 

Manning has won two Super Bowls and he won six of the team's first eight games this season, leading exactly no one to openly question whether or not he's an elite player even when he played poorly. It was just two weeks ago when people felt comfortable claiming he was the best quarterback/player in the entire league. 

If there's a good thing about the Eli discussion moving away from what's actually gone wrong in the last month and toward things that simply don't matter, it might be that anyone with a brain will be led to consider other problems with the Giants that could use some attention during the bye week. Manning's the poster boy for the team and gets the lion's share of attention, but it isn't like there's a shortage of other work to do over the next two weeks.

1. Stop the patronage - The Giants claim that David Diehl has played well since his return to right tackle, but there's simply no evidence of it during games or on film watched in the days after the last two contests. Sean Locklear made nowhere near the glaring mistakes Diehl makes every series and the entire line was more effective without Diehl, whose only saving seems to be that he was on two teams that won Super Bowls and that the team isn't prepared to cut its ties to those teams.

2. It's not all about you - Tom Coughlin has been a staunch proponent that the Giants need only worry about the Giants and that's a useful approach much of the time. When it has become clear that teams have settled on successful approaches to stopping you from doing what you want on both sides of the ball (Victor Cruz in particular), however, it is time to look at what they're doing and make the necessary adjustments.

3. Get the run game going - Either Ahmad Bradshaw is healthy and underperforming or he is hurt and playing poorly as a result. The Giants need to figure out which of those is true so they can either get Bradshaw healthy or see if Andre Brown's flashes will lead to better results in a run game that's been invisible of late.  

4. From Prince to king? - Those ice baths seem to have done Prince Amukamara good because he's been the best and most consistent member of the secondary through the first 10 games of this season. He's been much better than Corey Webster, which makes you wonder if Amukamara shouldn't be getting more time on the opposition's best receivers in the final six games of the season. 

5. Where's the pass rush? - The Giants win because of the way they throw the ball and the way their front four is able to stop the opposition from throwing the ball. Their inability to do the second has been magnified as the offense has shut down over the last few weeks and it needs to change immediately or any offensive shifts may prove to be meaningless.

The common thread behind all of these things, including Manning, is that the Giants need to toss out preconceived notions. Bradshaw and Webster need to be evaluated as they are now, not what they have been or not what the Giants think they could be, and the Giants need to be open to the idea that what other teams are doing plays a role in how well they are able to execute. 

Anything less is unfair to the team and will leave the Giants vulnerable to an unhappy end to the season. 

Josh Alper is also a writer for Pro Football Talk. You can follow him on Twitter.

The Giants have not thrown a touchdown pass in the last three games.

It's been a long time since Big Blue has had a run of futility that long with Eli Manning at quarterback. You have to go all the way back to his rookie season in 2004, which is fitting because Manning looked like the rookie version of himself the past few weeks. 

Sunday was the worst of those performances as Manning looked completely bewildered by the Bengals defense and the Giants offense changed itself around in order to try to get Manning on track. The first half was all about quick, short passes that Manning completed without doing much in the way of moving the ball or pressuring the defense. 

It's a far cry from the kind of game we're used to seeing from the Giants in recent years and the flaws of the approach became apparent once the Giants fell behind. The Giants weren't able to protect Manning enough for him to throw deep, the receivers weren't able to find openings against another defense that seemed to know exactly what they were doing and Manning made brutal decisions while turning the ball over three times. 

Keeping things short and easy are good for creating rhythm and confidence, but that strategy doesn't do much to make a defense break down when the opposing team knows that the Giants will sputter in the red zone or on third down when those easy throws aren't there. And, right now, the Giants can't make anything but the easiest of throws. 

Every time they tried to do more on Sunday, the Bengals crushed them with a sack or interception. Manning made terrible decisions under pressure and gave some credence to whispers about a tired arm as he failed to drive the ball around the field like he normally does. 

Manning doesn't think that's a problem, but you almost wish it were. At least that would explain why there's actually a question about which Meadowlands-based quarterback had an uglier game on Sunday. 

Here's the rest of the good, bad and ugly from Sunday's loss. 

GOOD: Bye weeks are normally the worst part of the season, but there probably aren't many Giants fans upset about not having to watch this team play in Week 11. The whole team looked beaten from the opening kickoff on Sunday, which falls on Tom Coughlin as much as any player, and the only hope is that they can find some rejuvenation in the next two weeks. 

BAD: Teams are daring the Giants to run the ball and the Giants keep failing to do it at the crucial points in the game. Ahmad Bradshaw's tough guy credentials can't be questioned, but you have to wonder if he's hurting the team by not allowing himself to heal up and he's now lost three fumbles this season on top of his middling results running the ball. 

UGLY: Something else Coughlin needs to answer is why he thought returning David Diehl to the starting lineup made any sense at all. Diehl was a turnstile on Sunday, just as he was against the Steelers, and the Giants line has fallen apart since he replaced Sean Locklear at right tackle.

GOOD: Hakeem Nicks still exists! It didn't amount to anything worthwhile, but Nicks was an active contributor to the offense for the first time since Week Two and that bodes well for post-bye action. 

UGLY: Giving up a 64-yard punt return to Adam Jones is bad enough on its own. The fact that it came after a great punt wiped out by a player intentionally running out of bounds is grounds for that player (cornerback Justin Tryon) finding another place of employment. 

UGLY: There's no doubt that there was a miscommunication between cornerback Corey Webster and safety Stevie Brown on A.J. Green's early 56-yard touchdown pass. The part that is less clear is why Webster seems to be involved in so many miscommunications with the rest of the defense when he's touted as a team leader and their best cornerback.

BAD: Victor Cruz is one of many symptoms of the offensive malaise of the Giants, but three straight invisible games means that it is time for him to adjust to the way that he's being defended. Teams aren't letting Cruz beat them anymore, which means he has to beat them without their help or the team has to find someone who can. 

Josh Alper is also a writer for Pro Football Talk. You can follow him on Twitter.

It's going to be hard for the Giants to ignore those questions about a second half collapse now. 

The Giants turned in another rancid offensive performance Sunday afternoon in Cincinnati and they head into their bye week as losers of two straight games after the Bengals crusied to a 31-13 win.

Eli Manning looked a bit better in the first half as he completed 15-of-20 passes, but he fell apart in the second half with a pair of interceptions under pressure that should never have been thrown. Manning made these kinds of mistakes in his first few years in the league, but he has to know when to throw a ball away at this point in his career and he failed to recognize it twice. 

The Bucs turned both of those interceptions into touchdowns, blowing open a game that was 17-6 at halftime and seemed to be swinging the Giants' way as Ahmad Bradshaw ran his way down the field on the team's second possession of the second half. Adam Jones stripped Bradshaw at the end of a first down run, though, and the Giants were on their way to their worst loss of the season. 

Pinpointing the Giant's offensive issues remains difficult simply because nothing is going well. The running game was ineffective when the game was in doubt, the pass protection was horrid and Manning was again totally off his game. He would turn it over again in the fourth quarter when he held the ball forever before getting strip-sacked.

While the defense gets somewhat of a pass because of the turnovers and because another Bengals touchdown was set up by a 64-yard punt return by Jones, they set the tone for the day when they let A.J. Green, who famously said there were holes in the Giants defense, get behind them for a 56-yard touchdown. The last thing the Giants offense needs right now is the pressure of playing from behind, but that's what they got and they were totally incapable of getting the job done. 

It was better the rest of the day, but Andy Dalton made plenty of throws and the Bengals never really seemed to sweat after jumping ahead 14-0. 

Tom Coughlin's got a lot of work to do during the bye week to fix an offense that looks nothing like the one that the Giants rely on to win games. We've been here before, of course, but it's worth a reminder that neither the 2009 or 2010 Giants were able to pull out of these second half nosedives. 

We'll wait two weeks to find out if this team is destined for a similar fate. Sunday's performance offered plenty of evidence that we could be headed that way. 

Josh Alper is also a writer for Pro Football Talk. You can follow him on Twitter.

For the eighth time in Tom Coughlin's nine seasons as coach, the Giants started off the second half of their season with a loss last weekend. 

While interesting, there's nothing particularly meaningful about that statistic all by itself. It is only within the larger context of Coughlin's teams playing losing football in their final eight games of the year that it becomes something more than a bit of trivia to use to impress your friends. 

Coughlin's teams are 27-38 in the second halves of seasons and they've mustered a winning record in just one of his eight years as the team's coach, a history that is as hard to understand as it is well known to anyone who follows the Giants. Because the history is so well known, Sunday's game takes on a slightly different magnitude than it might under other circumstances. 

The Bengals are the kind of team that the Giants should beat handily. They rarely beat such teams handily, choosing to burnish their own reputation as comeback artists over playing well for 60 minutes, but no one much cares as long as they beat them. 

Should their high-wire act fail and they wind up losing a game to a team like that in the first half of the season -- see the Cowboys and Eagles this year -- no one much cares. Losing a game like that in the second half, though, leads to a round of "Here we go again" across the area. 

It would be even worse if they lose this one. The Giants have a bye next week, which means they would have two weeks with two straight losses and all the negative history they represent hanging over their heads. 

When you throw in Eli Manning's recent struggles, it would be a recipe for a period of hand wringing and soul searching that would seem out of whack for a team with a two-game lead in the division and last year's Super Bowl trophy on their mantle. It would seem that way for anyone else, that is, because it was just 2010 when a 6-2 Giants team wound up missing the playoffs after going 4-4 on the back end. 

This year's NFC does not look like it would be lacking a place for a 10-6 team, but that's not really a risk anyone wants to run. It would be much easier to win this week, spend the bye getting Hakeem Nicks and Kenny Phillps healthy and putting focus on grabbing as good a playoff seed as possible. 

That can't happen with a loss this weekend so the Giants would be well advised to avoid one by any means possible.

Josh Alper is also a writer for Pro Football Talk. You can follow him on Twitter.

The Giants have spent a lot of time obsessing about their offense this week.

There's good reason for this obsession, although it has been just a wee bit hysterical given the track records of the players involved on the offense. Getting Eli Manning right is important. But it's more likely that he'll get back on track than stay in the funk for the rest of the year. 

If the Giants could say the same thing about their defense, they'd be a little more justified in spending their time trying to fix an offense that probably isn't broken. It more likely just a little sluggish. The defense, on the other hand, has been mediocre or worse since the first week of the season. 

So send a note of thanks to Bengals wide receiver A.J. Green for pointing it out on Thursday. During an appearance on WFAN, Green said that the Giants defense has "a lot of holes" that the Bengals will be trying to exploit on Sunday. 

As the Giants are a team filled with players who take it personally when a restaurant runs out of a dish before they order, it's not surprising to learn that they take great affront to a player pointing out that the team ranked 25th in the league on defense might actually be lacking in some areas. Giants safety Antrel Rolle told Green that he'd better duck if he sees Rolle coming, a charming threat to make in light of what we've learned about concussions in recent years and Rolle's own admission that he suffered a concussion because he landed awkwardly due to concerns about driving his helmet directly into Dez Bryant's head.  

Some might argue that he shouldn't have launched himself at Bryant's head in the first place, but we're getting off on a tangent here. The real point is that the Bengals have every reason to believe that they can make plays against the Giants. 

The Giants have struggled against big, rangy receivers like Vincent Jackson and Dez Bryant, which bodes well for Green as he is better than both of those guys. They've also struggled to stop slot options and the Bengals have found good success throwing to Andrew Hawkins in that role. 

Corey Webster and Prince Amukamara have not been nearly effective enough on the corners, which leaves the Giants vulnerable every week of the season. There aren't a ton of talents behind Green, but it's not like the Giants discriminate when it comes to letting receivers chew them up. 

The big caveat to all of this is the pass rush. The Bengals are not a good pass blocking team and Andy Dalton is not a good quarterback under pressure, two things that should make it possible for Jason Pierre-Paul and Justin Tuck to tilt the playing field in the Giants' favor if they decide not to make this one of their Sunday rest days. 

All of the secondary holes in the world won't matter if Dalton doesn't have a chance to throw the ball. And it just might lead to a game where the Giants can win with or without any heroics from their struggling quarterback. 

Josh Alper is also a writer for Pro Football Talk. You can follow him on Twitter.

Every week during the season, we’ll scout out the Giants' next opponent. This week, that opponent is the Cincinnati Bengals.

Thanks to his two Super Bowl titles, Tom Coughlin gets associated with pretty good company in the coaching fraternity. 

He may not be on the Bill Walsh level when it comes to ingenuity or the Don Shula level of generation-spanning success, but he's otherwise situated among the biggest names in the profession. There's talk of a bust in Canton when all is said and done, although it's probably premature to have such conversations until we know what Coughlin's entire record looks like as an NFL coach. 

There's been no such talk about Marvin Lewis, even though he's now in his 10th year as coach of the Bengals. Lewis has a 72-79-1 record as Bengals coach, he's never won a playoff game and he's the owner of a new contract extension that takes him through the 2014 season. 

Coughlin never enjoyed that kind of job security until after he won a second Super Bowl, something that probably says everything you need to know about why the Giants are the Giants and the Bengals are the Bengals. There are plenty of other ways, including the Bengals' refusal to employ a general manager or much in the way of scouting, but their happiness with the job that Lewis has done speaks volumes.

Making a fetish of mediocrity is the surest way to guarantee that your team continues to reside in that neighborhood and the Bengals do it like few other teams in football. There are some star players in Cincinnati, but the roster drops off tremendously after the first few names and that leaves them eternally vulnerable to the opposition. 

A better coach might be able to string those pieces together into a workable whole, but Lewis has consistently proven not to be that coach. Whatever very real complaints anyone might have about the Coughlin era, he's shown the ability to weave winners out of teams that are clearly flawed on two different occasions. 

Something worth keeping in mind while the Giants deal with this week's befuddlement over what's gone wrong with Eli Manning and the passing game. Here are a few more names and notes to keep in mind. 

Green Machine: When we mentioned the Bengals having some stars, wide receiver A.J. Green was at the top of the list. Green is the heir apparent to the Calvin Johnson/Larry Fitzgerald class and he will be a nightmare for whoever the Giants try to put in his way come Sunday. 

The Red Menace: Andy Dalton's red hair and purportedly weak arm became something of a joke leading up to last year's draft, but he quieted the laughter by taking the Bengals to a Wild Card spot in the playoffs. He's been better in most parts of the game this season with the glaring exception of interceptions, something that could be a sign that eschewing any kind of running game altogether was a mistake on Cincinnati's part. 

Get to Know Geno: The other big star on the Bengals this year is defensive tackle Geno Atkins, who probably qualifies as the best defensive player that most casual football fans wouldn't recognize with a copy of Geno Atkins for Dummies on their laps. He's got seven sacks in the first eight games and his pressure could make it hard for Manning to get back on track. 

Trouble on the Corners: Injuries have kept the Bengals from being at full strength at cornerback this season, but full strength might not even be enough to get their pass defense up to snuff. Terence Newman was easy pickings in Dallas, Leon Hall isn't 100 percent, Pacman Jones is Pacman Jones and Dre Kirkpatrick will be playing his second NFL game. If that's not enough to get Manning right, we're not sure what the answer will be. 

Josh Alper is also a writer for Pro Football Talk. You can follow him on Twitter.