Spirits up as Giants find ways to win
The New York Giants are suddenly delivering to their starving fan base what they’ve been craving: winning football.
Yet there are some critics who refuse to believe that the football they’ve seen come from the boys in the Big Blue jerseys is real, the argument being that the Giants’ four wins coming after their Week 9 bye have come against weak teams and/or backup quarterbacks.
Giants head coach Pat Shurmur, whose team is getting ready to host a banged up and inconsistent Tennessee Titans team this weekend, doesn’t want to hear it.
“You can’t fake football,” he said. “There’s no ‘fool’s gold’ in my mind. You put a ball down in front of all those people and you’re on the field with 10 other guys, and you’ve got a job to do – you can’t fake that. There’s no fooling, there’s no ‘golding,’ there’s nothing. You cannot fake football.
“I don’t care when you’re playing it, whether it’s the first game of the year, the middle of the year, the end of the year, I think we all want to go out and perform well. Coaches want to perform well, we want to put our guys in the best position they can be in to win games. I think that’s the nature of competition.”
Shurmur’s response came after he was asked if he has to be careful moving forward in evaluating the team, if these last few weeks have been a case of the Giants simply being more together than their opposition.
In reality, though, an argument could be made that were it not for a long field goal that doomed them in a Week 5 loss to the Carolina Panthers, or a questionable call in their first meeting with the Eagles, the Giants could have easily had another couple of wins against teams that skeptics might allow to pass as “higher quality” opponents.
And certainly, there is a valid argument to be made that it took a while for the Giants roster to come together as a cohesive unit given all the new faces.
“I think anytime you have a lot of new guys, new coaches, new schemes, it takes a little bit for everybody to get comfortable,” said quarterback Eli Manning.
“Just for the coaches to kind of figure out what’s our best personnel, what are our best plays, what routes do we run the best, what run plays are the best. So, I think it just takes a little while for everybody to get a feel, for me to get a feel for how the coaches are going to call certain things.
“You kind of hope you’ll be able to win a few close ones as you’re figuring those out. We weren’t able to win some of those tight ones early on, but now it seems to kind of be clicking and having a great understanding of what we’re looking for and making adjustments.”
Shurmur, who has often spoken about his desire to stay in the moment, has barely looked back to those earlier weeks when his team was trying to find itself, trying to meld after a massive roster turnover that as of this week has just 13 players remaining from this time last year, and which will only field two starters — quarterback Eli Manning and receiver Odell Beckham Jr. — who were on the roster the last time the Giants met the Titans in December 2014.
Instead, he’s enjoying the roster he has now, one that he anticipates having most of it back after this season.
“It’s a unique situation when you’re here in the first part of December and only 13 guys are on the roster that had a Giants helmet on last year,” he said.
“I think that’s the lowest number in the league right now by a few, and we like our team and we like what our team is doing, so yes, the bulk of the guys will be here. I can say that with some certainty.”
That’s not to say there won’t be some changes, which Shurmur knows will ultimately happen, but he’s not worried about anything other than keeping his players focused on getting a win to help keep their slim playoff hopes alive.
“I think the important thing is we focus on the excitement of playing these games, and worry about that stuff later,” he said.
SERIES HISTORY: 12th regular-season meeting. Giants lead series, 6-5. The Titans have won four out of the last five meetings between the two teams since 2000. The Giants last beat the Titans in New York in 1991, when the franchise was known as the Houston Oilers.
