Redskins now face all new Giants offense

Jake Ballard was watching the video of the last time the Giants played the Redskins, back in September, in an opening day loss at Washington. He might as well have been looking at baby pictures in a family album.

"It doesn't look like it's the same 80 and 85 out there," he said, pointing to Victor Cruz and referencing their two jersey numbers. "It's crazy to see how much we've grown since the first game. We think we're going in the right direction."

Ballard wasn't just talking about his own play, or that of Cruz. He was talking about the entire offense.

As they head into this Week 15 game against the Redskins, the Giants are a vastly different team from the one they were at the start of the season. Every team changes throughout a year because of injuries and emerging players, but the Giants have undergone a radical evolution in philosophy.

When they played the Redskins last, they were a running team with a scatter-armed quarterback who was coming off the worst preseason of his career and a 25-interception campaign in 2010. Now they are a throwing team, Eli Manning could eclipse Dan Marino's single-season passing record and is earning some growing sentiment for MVP, and they are in first place in the NFC East with three games to go.

Maybe baby pictures was the wrong analogy. That game was more like the awkward pre-teen pictures with braces and zits.

"I think we had a number of new key players in our offense," Ballard said of the Giants in September. "We were just trying to all mold together. We eventually developed our identity."

The Giants' running game has been absent for most of the season -- they average a league-worst 85.8 rushing yards per game -- but in the last two games, there have been hints of it coming back to life a bit.

"We don't have huge stats, but I'm looking for consistency," offensive coordinator Kevin Gilbride said. "I thought for the most part we got that [last week]."

The Cowboys beat the Bucs, 31-15, Saturday night, so the Giants know they need to beat Washington to stay in a tie with Dallas atop the division (they also have a head-to-head win in their pocket). Beating the Redskins would mean the Giants would be alive -- at the very least -- when they face the Cowboys again on Jan. 1 at MetLife Stadium, even if they lose to the Jets next week.

"The most important game of the season is right now," Manning said. "We know it's a talented team that beat us earlier in the season. From an offensive standpoint, we know they play great defense. They have a lot of talented players."

That brings up another difference that the players noticed when watching the old Super-8s of the September game: The Redskins were a more intense team. That game was played on the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks and was an emotional cauldron. The Giants did not seem to match that fervor.

"There is no way that will happen again," Brandon Jacobs said. "What we're playing for, what's at stake, there is no way we can't match their intensity. There is no way we can't want it badder than them. I just think that's impossible."

The Giants do have a history of playing down to their level of opposition. They had games go down to the wire against the Cardinals and Dolphins and lost at home to the Seahawks and the Eagles, not to mention giving the Redskins one of their four wins all season. "We'll see Monday morning if it's that way," Jacobs said of the Giants coming out flat. "And if it is, that's a shame."

It also would mean that for all the evolving the Giants have done this season, they really haven't changed at all.