It was a scene you'd expect to see in the locker room of the other team that calls the Meadowlands home.
In the moments after the Giants got back to their locker room on Sunday, the team celebrated their victory with a bit more verve than we're used to seeing from a team that likes to pride itself on being business-like to the point of boredom. Brandon Jacobs hoisted Tom Coughlin up into the air in the middle of jumping and chanting players before the coach delivered a rousing little speech congratulating his team on a well-fought victory.
The video of the whole thing is up on the team website, a pretty clear sign that they wanted everyone to know just how much they enjoyed beating the Patriots on their field. The whole episode looks like the opposite of everything the Giants have presented themselves to be in the recent history of the franchise.
Perhaps that's why Justin Tuck felt a need to apologize about the team's behavior by saying that they got a bit "carried away" in the locker room. He shouldn't have said anything because, based on anything public, there was nothing inappropriate or carried away about anything.
What you see on that video is a team giddy about winning a game with 15 seconds left on the clock, in hostile territory, after being installed as nine-point underdogs in the days leading up to the game. No one claimed that they won the Super Bowl or that they were an unstoppable juggernaut, they were just having fun in the moment.
Frankly, that's not something we see enough of from the Giants. Football is an emotional game, and letting yourself feel those emotions is perfectly natural and perfectly acceptable.
It is refreshing to see the team react to a victory the same way that their fans were reacting to it in front of their televisions. It was even more refreshing to see Eli Manning verge on cocky in his press conference instead of the normally soporific approach he takes.
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Why shouldn't he be swaggering a little bit? He's been the second-best quarterback in football through the first half of the season and he keeps on bringing his team back from the edge of defeat in the fourth quarter.
Those are things that should make you feel pretty darn good about yourself, and apologizing for it is like apologizing for breathing. Being human is still a good thing, no matter how many robot-boxing movies might suggest otherwise.
Success breeds confidence, and confidence breeds more success in the days and weeks to come. The Giants have every reason to be confident about themselves at this point in time and they have every reason to celebrate their successes as much as they want as long as they don't lose sight of the fact that there's still a lot of football yet to be played.
Judging by Coughlin ending his speech with eyes on San Francisco this Sunday, that's not a problem.
Josh Alper is a writer living in New York City. You can follow him on Twitter and he is also a contributor to Pro Football Talk.
