It's fun to be in a do-or-die game

This might be the biggest regular-season game of Mathias Kiwanuka's career.

Heck, it might be the biggest in Giants history.

"It's always one team that has a chance to knock somebody out, but I don't think there's been a time where it was one team or another," he said of the winner-take-all stakes for Sunday night's game against the Cowboys at MetLife Stadium. "It's fun. That's what you play for."

There is more than just fun on the line in this one. Both teams come in at 8-7. Whichever team wins will clinch the NFC East title and host a wild-card playoff game next weekend. Whichever team loses will spend the offseason mulling lost opportunities -- not only in this game but all season long -- and perhaps even getting used to a new head coach.

When the season started, most people figured the Eagles would run away with the division. That clearly did not happen. So a Giants-Cowboys game that was supposed to be an afterthought now is the final game of the NFL regular season and the centerpiece of Week 17.

"It could not be a better situation, if you ask me," Brandon Jacobs said. "It's going to be a great game. This is what you live and die for if you are a football player, a situation like this and having everything on your back."

Though the situation may be unique for the Giants, it's somewhat familiar for the Cowboys. In 2008, they faced the Eagles in Philadelphia in Week 17. The Giants already had won the division title and the Cowboys had a lead for the wild card. After the Bucs and Bears won earlier in the day, the Cowboys-Eagles game became a play-in game for the final playoff spot.

The Cowboys lost, 44-6. It was Chris Canty's last game as a Cowboy. Now Canty is a Giant. He's hoping this game turns out better for him . . . but the same way for the Cowboys.

"It's going to be a great stage on Sunday night," Canty said. "It doesn't get any better than this. As a kid, this is what you dream about playing in. Just to have this opportunity, we're excited. If you would have told us at the beginning of the year we could win one game and we're in the playoffs, who wouldn't sign up for that?"

And have it against the Cowboys?

"There's something there," Canty said with a smile. "Whoever wants it more is going to win this football game. That's just what it comes down to. You can get fancy, you can get cute, but whoever goes out there and hits the other guy in the mouth is who's going to win the game."

A Giants-Cowboys showdown in the finale always was a possibility, but it wasn't until earlier this month that Giants coach Tom Coughlin said he started looking at the possibility of it coming down to the last game.

"When we beat them, I did [think the division would be decided in this game]," he said. "And then moving on, you just figured you've got to keep winning. The Washington [loss] was definitely a setback to my approach to what I thought might happen, but in reality, it was always, 'We're going to have to play Dallas again.' "

If the Giants had been able to find another two wins elsewhere this season, they wouldn't be in this situation.

"I was hoping we would already have things figured out in our favor," Kiwanuka said, "but regardless of the circumstances, to be able to play at home, last game of the regular season against a division opponent that is a rival and hated as much [as the Cowboys] and have everything on the line, us or them, it's not just one team that could knock off the other, it's us or them, that's one of the biggest stages for the regular season that you could have."