For this one Thursday night at MetLife Stadium, a dead zone in pro football for far too long, the Giants were them.
Them being the Eagles: Who have been just about everything lately that the Giants have not. But it was the Giants who had the best quarterback in the game in the kid, Jaxson Dart, and not the Eagles with Jalen Hurts, the Super Bowl MVP. The Giants had the best running back in the game — by a lot — in another exciting kid, Cam Skattebo, not old friend Saquon Barkley who, you’ve probably heard, used to play here.
The Giants defense did to the Eagles, especially in the second half, what the Eagles defense once did to the Giants after the Giants had won their one playoff game since their last Super Bowl, beating them 38-7 the week after the Giants beat the Vikings a few years ago. If you remember that game — and how could any Giants fan forget? — you know that the gap between the two franchises looked a lot wider than the distance from the Meadowlands to 1 Lincoln Financial Field Way in Philly.
On Thursday night, it was the Giants pushing the Eagles around the way the Eagles did that to the Chiefs in the last Super Bowl, shutting them out and shutting them down in the second half.
So Giants fans, looking at the best football night the football Giants have had in years and years — as good as they’ve had since the Sunday night in Indianapolis when they got Belichick and Brady again in a Super Bowl — had a right to look at the game their team just played this way:
We were them. They were us.
And who saw that coming after the Giants started out 0-3, the beginning of one of the most brutal schedules — still a brutal schedule — that anybody has ever seen?
On the night after the Yankees lost to the Blue Jays and lost their season, Dart and Skattebo were what the Giants once dreamed about Daniel Jones (whatever happened to him?) and Saquon being together. Skattebo, of course, was a high-speed human wrecking ball on his way to three touchdowns and 98 rushing yards and back-flips that were every bit as amazing as this upset was. It wasn’t just that the Giants did upset the defending champs. It was the way they did everything in the second half, on both sides of the ball, except ask Saquon if there was still time for them to add one extra episode to his Netflix documentary.
The schedule doesn’t get any easier. It just doesn’t. The next game is in Denver against the Broncos, even though you have to say the Broncos had a much rougher time getting a game off the Eagles last Sunday than the Giants did on Thursday night. But it is fair to look at who the Giants are now with Dart at quarterback, and the charge he and Skattebo have thrown into the team and the fan base, and see how close this team — one that came into the season with such low expectations — is to being 4-2 right now instead of 2-4.
It took a 64-yard field goal from Brandon Aubrey to tie that Giants-Cowboys game at the buzzer a couple of weeks ago. Then Russell Wilson (whatever happened to HIM?) threw a ridiculously bad deep ball in overtime that seemed to hang in the air longer than the Goodyear Blimp before being intercepted. Not long after that Aubrey kicked another field goal to turn the thing into another heartbreak loss. It’s the kind of loss we’ve been watching from the Giants for years, no matter who has been coaching the team.
And last week against the Saints? The Giants did turn back into the Jets — our two teams still have the two worst records in the league over the past eight seasons — with turnovers on five straight possessions, kicking away a game they absolutely should have won. But with everything that happened in New Orleans, including the way Dart himself gave the ball away, the Giants were going to win that game if Skattebo didn’t fumble on his way into the end zone.
Still: When they had the Eagles coming to town and could easily have gone straight to 1-5, you know what they did? They won easily. And for all the good things that happened, the way the guys on the defensive line played and the way Cor’Dale Flott picked off Hurts and nearly turned the play into a pick-six; and the way Skattebo gashed the Eagles all night long, the headline is still the way Dart played.
There have been three great Ole Miss quarterbacks who have played — and won — for the Giants. One was Chuckin’ Charley Conerly. And then two decades ago, along came Eli Manning to win two Super Bowls for the Giants and turn himself into the greatest Giants quarterback of them all. No one is saying after a handful of starts that Dart is going to be either one of them. But what he has shown you so far, with his poise and flair and arm and the way he can run, is that he has a chance. And has given the Giants a chance.
For now, Dart has become somebody to watch and made you want to watch his team again and has truly made Giants fans feel excited again, after all the dreary seasons when their team became part of the permanent underclass of the NFL along with the Jets. You can see, with only the flashes he has given us so far, why Joe Schoen and Brian Daboll thought he could be somebody to watch.
The kid has now started three games since Daboll took the ball away from Wilson, who not only threw that interception against the Cowboys but then finished the Chiefs game the next week by acting as if he saw open receivers in the stands when the Giants got to the red zone.
On Thursday night Dart was 17-for-25 and 195 yards and one passing touchdown and 58 rushing yards and another rushing touchdown. It was Bill Parcells — yeah, him again — who once talked about not rushing to anoint young quarterbacks, and no one should be doing that yet with Jaxson Dart. But again: The Giants really might have something here, if he is blessed with good health and good luck. But there are no guarantees about either one, we all saw what just happened with Malik Nabers, as talented an offensive player as the Giants have ever had.
Listen, Aaron Judge is the biggest sports star in New York right now. Not if Dart is the one who brings the Giants back.
LEAVE THE DOC ALONE, YANKS JUST NOT GOOD ENOUGH & BAKER LEADS MVP TALK …
Rooting for Brian Daboll to make it.
But stay away from the team doctor, and away from the tent, OK Coach?
We good?
We can all agree that you can only play the teams the schedule says you have to play, in baseball or anything else.
Nobody would ever dispute that.
But in the shadow of the Yankees’ season ending the other night against the Blue Jays, we heard a lot about how the team came together down the stretch, and started to show its true pinstriped, true-blue colors.
We also heard so much on the postgame shows about the way the Yankees after mucking around for so much of the summer finished 32-12, as if that was a big marker of big things to come.
Except:
Except that 24 of those victories came against the Twins, Cardinals, Rays, Nationals, White Sox, Orioles.
The Yankees were 24-4 against those tomato cans.
None of whom they were then allowed to face in the playoffs.
The bottom line on the Yankees, really, is this:
Brian Cashman took a team that was clearly not good enough at the trade deadline and made it into a better not-good-enough Yankee team.
A Jets fan friend of mine texted me after watching Justin Field’s performance against the Cowboys last Sunday, pointing out that his team is once again looking to take a quarterback high up in the first round of the next NFL draft.
“I feel like I’m on a hamster wheel,” he said.
Things appear to be going gangbusters for Coach Belichick down there in Chapel Hill.
My favorite take on his current circumstances came one day on X, when somebody had Bill’s girlfriend entering the transfer portal.
Too soon?
Baker Mayfield is the MVP so far, just because of the way he keeps winning all those close games.
And Josh Allen will always be in the conversation as long as he’s still throwing it around and running it.
But say it again:
Daniel Jones isn’t far behind.
With a little bit of luck, and without a couple of bonehead plays, the Colts could be the last unbeaten team in the league.
I’m guessing the Red Sox would be happy to take Pete Alonso off David Stearns’ hands if he thinks it’s time for the Polar Bear to move on.
And here’s the deal on Kyle Schwarber, also about to become a free agent after 56 home runs — only Cal Raleigh hit more — and the most RBI in the whole sport:
He’s a year younger than Aaron Judge and only a year older than Shohei Ohtani.
You look back at the night the Red Sox had a chance to close out the Yankees, and see these four names in Alex Cora’s batting order:
Rob Refsnyder, Romy Gonzales, Nathaniel Lowe, Nate Eaton, Nick Sogard.
The Yankees must have thought they were still playing the Royals and the Guardians.
Here’s an interesting question:
When was the last time the Knicks came into a season looking like they were our best bet to win a title?
