Texans look pretty tough to Giants, who are supposed to say that these days
Daniel Jones #8 of the New York Giants looks to make a pass in the first half against the /jac at TIAA Bank Field on October 23, 2022 in Jacksonville, Florida. Credit: Getty Images/Mike Carlson
The Giants have played in a lot of these types of seemingly lopsided matchups over the last few years, so they know the narrative. They are ones in which the team everyone expects to win handily spends the week building up their opponent, taking them seriously despite their flagging record, talking about how dangerous they can be.
Usually, though, they’ve been the ones receiving the compliments and praise from the rest of the league.
It’s somewhat refreshing, then, to hear them talking about the Texans in such terms, contradicting Houston’s 1-6-1 record with plaudits about their skill and spunk, their pride and poise, and, in what is perhaps the most passive-aggressive thing anyone in the NFL can say about another team, how the film somehow belies their dismal performances.
Psst! Daniel Jones! That’s your cue!
“You look on tape, I think they’re a good team,” the quarterback said this past week, speaking right off the script for such occasions in the lead-up to Sunday’s game at MetLife Stadium. “They do a lot of good things on the defensive side of the ball. They’ve got a lot of good players, good sound scheme.”
The only thing left for the Giants to do now is what so often happened to them when they were getting those pregame pats on the head and attaboys for their efforts from other teams all those years, only to suffer indignities on Sundays.
They need to go out and prove the tributes and flatteries during the week were just polite falsehoods, fables told as much to convince themselves that this clearly weaker opponent is worthy of a full effort on their part than to portray an accurate depiction of the foe.
They need to complete the painfully familiar story arc.
They need to win.
The Giants earned the right to be in this position this week (and, committing the worst sin in football by looking ahead, next week too) by gutting through the first half of their regular season with a 6-2 record. It’s put them in a position to make a serious postseason run over the next two months.
There are a number of paths for them to reach that goal for the first time since 2016. Hardly any of them, though, account for losses to the Texans or the Lions, the currently two-win team they will face next.
There are plenty of witticisms and one-liners to be made about this opponent from outsiders. How’d the Giants get two bye weeks in a row? Didn’t realize there are preseason games for the second half of the schedule, too.
The Giants themselves aren’t going to partake in that frivolity.
“This is the NFL,” coach Brian Daboll said. “Everyone's good. Every coach is good. Every player is good. And that's our approach each week, regardless of who we play."
But as long as they are smiling and laughing coming off the field on Sunday, it’ll be a success. The joke this week cannot be on them.
Ironically enough, while the Giants are giving the Texans the better-than-their-record-indicates treatment, they are downplaying their own success.
“You have to step back and honestly evaluate the roster, too,” general manager Joe Schoen said during the bye week. “You can get caught up in ‘Hey, we won the game!’ But we were also down 17-3 in the game at some point. You’ve got to step back and look at it for what it is.”
There are some internal warning signs that have been mostly overlooked because of the disparity in the record of the Giants and Texans. The loss of starting defensive lineman Nick Williams to a season-ending biceps injury is a big blow to the defense, even though it hasn’t gotten as much attention as the loss of safety Xavier McKinney to an ATV accident during the bye. The Giants did not add any offensive playmakers to their roster at the trade deadline, so they’ll basically be pushing through this season with Jones and Saquon Barkley and that’s about it. Their offensive line and secondary are starting players who were not on the team in training camp, brought in as bottom-of-the-roster filler, and at one time healthy scratches.
None of that, though, is enough to excuse a loss to Houston.
Bill Parcells used to say: “You are what your record says you are.”
Daboll does not adhere to that thinking.
"To me, there's no records in the NFL when you're playing in a regular season,” he said. “You try to do the best job you can to string things together, and wherever you're at when you get to the end, that's where you're at. You need your best effort every week whether you're playing a team that's undefeated or you're playing a team that doesn't have the record that they'd like to have.”
That’s fine. That’s a great way of staying focused on the present. And in a few days, the Giants will be talking about how great the Lions look on film as well.
They just need to make sure it’s not the other way around.
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.
