When Justin Tuck gave his traditional on-field pep talk before the Giants faced the Falcons in an NFL wildcard playoff game on Jan. 8, 2012, he made sure everyone knew what was at stake.

“First playoff game in MetLife Stadium!” he told his teammates huddled around him. “Can’t get no better!”

They all knew that of course. The building had opened just about 16 months earlier as the football home of the Giants and Jets for the start of the 2010 season. It had already seen some spectacular moments, too, from Victor Cruz’s three-touchdown breakout preseason game against the Jets in the first contest played there to the memorable Christmas Eve grudge match between the Giants and Jets just a few weeks earlier.

This, though, was a new level. Postseason football had come back to the Meadowlands for the first time since January 2009 and it had a new venue.

WEBLINK: Highlights: Giants dominate Falcons in 2011 Wild Card playoff game

“The atmosphere was lit, man,” Hakeem Nicks, the star receiver for the Giants that year, recalled in a phone conversation from his home in North Carolina this week. “The stadium was going crazy. It was true Giants football at that time.”

What no one at the time realized was that it would also be the last for a long, long time.

“Mentality-wise I was like ‘shoot, let’s win it next year, too,’” Nicks said. “But it was a different team, it got split up a bit, key parts started to be missing, and it went like that.”

As of this week we are at 14 years and counting since the Giants dominated the Falcons for that 24-2 victory, the first playoff step on their journey toward the Super Bowl XLVI title they’d bring back to the building a month later. That’s 28 combined seasons of NFL football between the two teams that call MetLife Stadium home without a postseason game being played there by either of them. As the NFL showcases its slate of wildcard games this weekend with contests everywhere from Charlotte to Chicago to Jacksonville, MetLife Stadium will once again be dark and boarded up through January.

The Giants have at least gotten to the playoffs since then, reaching t the postseason in the 2016 season when they lost at Green Bay in the wildcard round (just a few days after the most infamous boat trip in franchise history) and again at the end of the 2022 season when they won their wildcard game in Minnesota and lost to the eventual Super Bowl champion Eagles in the divisional round in Philadelphia. The Jets haven’t reached the postseason since the 2010 season, which was their first at MetLife, but had them on the road for games against the Colts and Patriots before they fell to the Steelers in the AFC Championship Game in Pittsburgh.

MetLife's last playoff winner... the Seahawks

Consider this: Since the day when the Giants topped Atlanta only one team has won a postseason game in New Jersey and the Seattle Seahawks who beat the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XLVIII at the end of the 2013 season. WrestleMania has come to MetLife Stadium twice since the last time the Giants or Jets played a home postseason game. And after this summer there will have been more World Cup soccer matches played there than NFL playoff games.

Giants fans support their team against the Atlanta Falcons during their NFC Wild Card playoff game at MetLife Stadium on Jan. 8, 2012.

The long dry spell ahead wasn’t on the minds of any of the 79,909 fans who attended the game on a cool but not terribly cold Sunday afternoon. Temperature for the 1 p.m. kickoff was a pleasant 44 degrees and the Meadowlands winds made it feel like 38. The skies were blue and so were the stands, filled with anticipation and optimism. The Giants were just three seasons removed from their most recent Super Bowl title and while there had been some rockiness during the 2011 regular season the team had won its last two in the building – that thriller against the Jets and a showdown with the Cowboys in the regular-season finale to clinch the division title – to finish 9-7.

Even when things started slowly, the crowd was into it. After a scoreless first quarter the Giants defense made a fourth-down stop on a Matt Ryan quarterback sneak from the 4 early in the second quarter to keep the Falcons off the board. Eli Manning was flagged for intentional grounding from his own end zone early in the second to give the Falcons a safety and a 2-0 lead.

After that it was all Giants, though. Nicks caught the first of his two touchdowns in the game on a 4-yard slant to go ahead 7-2 at halftime. Lawrence Tynes kicked a field goal in the third quarter and Nicks took a short pass over the middle and broke it for a 72-yard touchdown to go ahead 17-2 in the third.

The Giants' Hakeem Nicks celebrates after his 72-yard touchdown reception in the third quarter against the Atlanta Falcons during a NFC Wild Card playoff game at MetLife Stadium on Jan. 8, 2012.

“It was a shallow cross,” Nicks said of the long play. “It was actually zone and normally you sit in a zone but that week me and Eli were watching film and he was like ‘treat this like man coverage because they are dropping back so far you’ll catch it in space.’ Once I caught it I just did what I do best. The rest was just pure adrenaline and speed.”

A game for the defense

Between Manning’s performance – he threw three touchdowns, the last going to Mario Manningham, and set what was then a career playoff high in yardage (277) and passer rating (129.3), the latter of which remains his best ever postseason mark – and the rushing game from Brandon Jacobs and Ahmad Bradshaw that accounted for a season-high 172 yards, the offense found its stride. It was the defense that stole the show that day, though. Besides the goal line stand in the second quarter the Giants also stuffed a fourth-and-1 sneak at their own 21 in the third quarter, and added a third turnover on downs with about a minute left when Osi Umenyiora sacked Ryan to seal the victory. The Falcons came into the game with Michael Turner as the league’s third-leading rusher but held him and Atlanta to just 64 rushing yards.

The Giants' Osi Umenyiora, left, and Dave Tollefson celebrate after Umenyiora sacked the Falcons' Matt Ryan on the final play at MetLife Stadium on Jan. 8, 2012.

"It was great to have a home playoff game and have our fans involved as much as they were," coach Tom Coughlin said that day. "Our players greatly appreciate that."

"It's special," Jacobs said then, too, noting that he had played in two home postseason games before that, both at Giants Stadium, but hadn’t won either. “This means a lot to play a playoff game here at home and win."

The Giants would go on to win at Green Bay the following week – Nicks would make the defining catch in that game, too, on a Hail Mary at halftime – then top the 49ers at Candlestick Park before eventually beating the Patriots to win the championship. That Falcons game at MetLife Stadium often gets lost in the narrative of the season, but it was a significant one en route to the Super Bowl.

“We knew all year we were a good team,” Nicks said. “We had a tough schedule that year but we knew if we had a chance to get in the playoffs it was a whole new season and we looked at it that way. Everybody bought in. We were all in. Nobody cared who got the credit, we were just like ‘Let’s get to the Super Bowl.’ I know that’s how I was thinking. I was like, this is my first time in the playoffs, I’m gonna make sure they remember it.”

Fourteen years later, they do, if for no other reason than that they haven’t seen one in person since.

Maybe next season?

Nicks still follows the Giants and attended many of their home games this season. He likes what they have going with Jaxson Dart (“Kid is tough as [expletive],” he said) and is excited for Malik Nabers to return from his knee injury. And of course he can’t wait for them to once again host a playoff game so he can come root for them as a fan and so that his team’s winning effort no longer stands as the first and last postseason home game at MetLife Stadium history.

Or perhaps it will be the Jets’ turn to host their first ever playoff game in the building and end their streak. Their last home postseason contest was 23 years ago last week when they trounced the Colts, 41-0, in a wildcard game at Giants Stadium on Jan. 4, 2003. Chad Pennington threw for 222 yards and three touchdowns that day in what wound up being the last home playoff win by any team in that since-razed building.

General view inside MetLife Stadium.

As far as MetLife Stadium goes, though, it’s now been 14 years of idle Januarys saying the same thing, but it’s worth asking again: Maybe next year? Maybe even two home games in the same weekend? MetLife Stadium is one of just two places in the country where that could happen along with SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles where the Rams and Chargers play.

Perhaps Tuck will even show up and deliver a long overdue paraphrase of his marching orders from that brisk 2012 afternoon and shout out to the team and the fans: Second playoff game in MetLife Stadium! Can’t get no better!

“I’m telling you what,” Nicks said, “I hope so.”

Stay logged in.