Dream team? Giants getting there with postseason a real possibility
Leonard Williams #99 and Jaylon Smith #54 of the New York Giants celebrate a defensive stop during the first half against the Houston Texans at MetLife Stadium on Sunday, Nov. 13, 2022. Credit: Jim McIsaac
Leonard Williams, like most of the other Giants, is so used to thinking about this season in one very specific, granular way that it is difficult to even admit other angles exist. Brian Daboll has drilled his day-to-day, week-to-week mantra so deeply into them that repeating it has become as much a reflex as firing out of a three-point stance when the ball is snapped.
Maybe that is why when the defensive lineman was asked on Tuesday if he allows himself to think about making the playoffs for the first time in his career at the end of this regular season he initially gave the pre-programmed Pavlovian response.
“Not really,” he said.
But then he shook his head as if snapping out of hypnosis and changed his answer.
“You know what? Yeah, I do allow myself,” he told Newsday. “I try to stay in the moment and play week-to-week, but at the same time, knowing the end goal is going to help me week-to-week. If I want to go to the playoffs, even though I am focused on this week, I know I have to treat this week like a playoff game.”
Something has changed with the Giants.
At some point during the gap between Thursday’s loss to the Cowboys and their return to work on Monday their eyes have opened to the possibilities that lie ahead of them. The intentionally myopic approach which carried them through most of the first half of the season is still hanging around a little bit, but it has been joined by the sudden acknowledgment of a bigger picture that is no longer taboo. A team that used to stammer and deflect at every mention of the idea of the postseason has become obsessed with them.
Daboll, it seems, has lifted the verbal restrictions and is allowing his players to dream.
There is a new bravado and confidence that belies a squad which has lost two straight games, has won just once in the last five weeks, and will be a home underdog on Sunday to a Washington team with a worse record than their own.
Everywhere around the locker room on Tuesday the talk wasn’t about matchups with Washington or the minutiae of the day’s workout but what these next few games mean and what potentially lies on the other side of them. It’s the same suppositions and calculations the rest of us have been making for some time regarding their fate. The only difference is they have decided to join the conversation.
“This is where you want to be,” quarterback Daniel Jones said. “These are the games you want to play in. We’re fired up.”
The newness of the situation makes the possibility too tantalizing to pass up without comment. For any of the players who have spent time in a Giants uniform before this year just being able to contemplate a postseason game at this point in the schedule is thrillingly unfamiliar.
“It’s playoffs or go home, that’s the mindset,” fourth-year safety Julian Love said, “and I’m tired of going home.”
They all know this isn’t something that can’t be talked into existence, however. It must be played into reality.
It’s still far from a given they’ll make it. They have the most difficult remaining schedule in the NFL thanks to two games against the 10-win Eagles and one against the nine-win Vikings. Williams said he thinks the Giants have to “pretty much win out” over their last six games to make it.
“We have to have a different sense of urgency right now,” Williams said. “We have to double-down on the things that got us to this moment. We can’t slack off. We don’t have time to feel sorry for ourselves or feel beat up or sore. This is the time of year for us that it’s all or nothing and we have to pretty much forget everything outside of football and completely dial in on what is in front of us.”
They need to, he said, treat every game as if it is a playoff game… even if the majority of them have no point of reference for what that actually means.
“It would be my first time, in Year Eight, which is insane to think about,” the veteran said of the possibility. “I’ve played for two different New York teams and to be able to finally go with one of them would mean a lot to me.”
All he and the rest of the Giants can do now is wonder what that might actually be like.
And, for the first time all season, speak about it.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
