Giants come alive in fourth quarters

It is a familiar football thing, at all levels and in all regions.

The clock winds down for the third time in the game. Players raise their arms and show four fingers to indicate the importance of the upcoming quarter.

Easier gestured than done. But the 2022 Giants, whose 5-1 start has shocked the NFL, are making the fourth quarter count where it matters — on the field.

Their latest late-game dramatics came in a 24-20 upset of the Ravens on Sunday, a game in which they trailed by 10 points midway through the final quarter.

It was the third time this season the Giants have won after trailing by 10 or more in the second half, making them the fourth team to record three such victories in their first six games and the first since the 1993 Eagles.

The last time they overcame a 10-point deficit in the final seven minutes of the fourth quarter? Dec. 11, 2011, against the Cowboys.

The Giants have led only once at halftime and have trailed or been tied at some point in five of their six fourth quarters. They have outscored opponents 48-22 in fourth quarters.

“We don’t fold,” Jihad Ward said after Sunday’s game. “We have so much talent out there. Sure, there are going to be some heads down, but that’s our job to keep them up.

“This is the ‘Don’t Fold Team.’ Just to let you [reporters] know. That’s two words we don’t do. We don’t fold.”

The flip side is that the Giants are living on the edge. All six of their games have been decided by eight or fewer points. Better starts would lessen the drama but would be a safer path to travel.

Asked about the slow starts, receiver Darius Slayton said Monday, “There are plays that have been there where we’ve been a guy away here, a guy away there, and it just comes down to 11 guys executing at a high level, and obviously that’ll help us get faster starts.”

To a man, the players have credited the team’s resolve to the culture change coach Brian Daboll has engineered.

“I think his approach has been great; I’ve told that to him,” safety Julian Love said. “When we win games, when we lose games, it stays constant. His mindset and his mentality and his approach to us stays really constant.

“There are not super-high highs when you win or super-low lows when you lose. I told him, ‘Man, that’s an approach I haven’t seen in recent years.’  ”

The love from Love extends to Daboll’s staff.

“When I first got to OTAs and I spent about a week with Wink [Martindale, the defensive coordinator], I told my wife right away, ‘I just love the environment right now that’s going on in the building,’  ” Love said.

“I had joy going into work each day, I had joy leaving work each day. When you build a culture like that, good things are bound to come.”

Love has been a Giant since 2019. Saquon Barkley has been one since 2018, and in the past has said he wants to be a part of the Giants turning things around.

Now that it is happening (so far), is it everything he imagined?

“The stadium was so loud, you could really feel the energy from the fans, and it wasn’t always necessarily like that in the first couple of years,” Barkley said after Sunday’s victory. “We weren’t doing a really good job of going out there and winning games.”

Now they just have to figure out how to win some first halves to makes things easier on themselves.

In the 2011 Super Bowl season, coach Tom Coughlin famously instituted “FINISH” as a team mantra after late-season flops in 2008, ’09 and ’10.

Thus far, the 2022 Giants have that part down. Daboll might want to try “START” as a new motto.

By Neil Best

neil.best@newsday.com@sportswatch

Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.