Mike Lupica: Can the Giants beat the Panthers and at least be champs of Germany?

The Giants aren’t close to being the best team in the NFC East, haven’t been close to being that for a while, since the last time they won the East was the last time they won a Super Bowl, in the 2011 season. The Giants aren’t even the best team in New Jersey right now, because even the Jets have managed to win one more game than they have. So, it has come to this for the 2024 Giants: They at least try to be the best team in Germany on Sunday.
It means they try to be better than the Panthers. If they can’t even do that, if they go to 2-8, then they stay in the conversation about the worst team in pro football this season.
For now, the Giants are 2-7 along with the Patriots, a team they once defeated in Super Bowls; along with Carolina and the Browns and Saints and Jags and Raiders. The Dolphins and Titans, two teams also going nowhere, are 2-6. That is the underclass of the NFL this season, and a big one. The Giants are still a part of it. They have been part of it for a long time, even with two playoff appearances since that last Super Bowl over the Patriots in Indianapolis, the time they beat Brady and Belichick again.
This is now six seasons for the Giants with Daniel Jones as their quarterback, and now there is talk that Jones might be at risk of losing his starting job and soon, and not because of injury this time. But there is no point in doing that, in moving off him to Drew Lock or Tommy (Cutlets) DeVito, a nice Jersey kid who actually won them some games last season, but is still a better nickname than he is a starting quarterback in the league. The Giants have stayed with Jones this long, they might as well stay with him until they almost inevitably will part ways when this season is over, and they have played the Jones era all the way out.
Here is what Brian Daboll said of Jones the other day:
“He’s made a lot of good decisions. He’s improved certain things that we work on. He’s got the right mindset. He’s pretty consistent. He does everything he can do every week to try to play as good as he can play the quarterback position for us.”
There is no intent here to pick on Jones, a good teammate and good guy who’s played his entire career in a really tough spot, which means the Meadowlands. But look at what Daboll said. He sounded as if he were talking about a rookie quarterback and not the sixth pick in the 2019 draft. You know what that means? The Giants have now been riding with Jones for as many seasons as they once rode with Dave Brown, also out of Duke, the top overall pick in the NFL’s supplemental draft over 30 years ago. Giants fans of a certain age remember how well that worked out for everybody.
Now, a big game for the Giants is a game like this against the Panthers, both of them trying not to fall to 2-8 in a season in which they have been yet to win a home game. Through it all, though, they continue to believe in the home office that they are a first-cabin quarterback away from being a contender again, and relevant. And we’ll see about that.
This the 13th season in all the Giants have played since the last Super Bowl. The regular season record for those years 78-125-1. Unless things starting turning around in another country, this will be their 10th losing season in that time, during which there have been just those three playoff games, two of which have seen the Giants getting their doors blown off. There have been four head coaches since Tom Coughlin. It has reached the point where the one playoff victory they’ve had since Indy, the season before last, is starting to feel like the good old days.
Again: They will be looking for a new quarterback when this season is over, through the draft or through a trade. Maybe they can even find someone who can do for them what Sam Darnold is doing for the Vikings. Or, who knows, maybe Darnold might be an option for Joe Schoen for 2025, and wouldn’t that be a thing over in Jersey?
But there is another quarterback problem that has nothing to do with the current situation in Jersey, and that problem is Jayden Daniels, the Heisman kid from LSU who has already beaten them twice so far this season and who, in his rookie season, is every bit as much the league’s MVP this season as Jared Goff of the Lions is. And maybe more. The Lions, currently at 7-1, were supposed to be a powerhouse this season. Daniels’ Commanders were not. But they’ve gone to 7-2 and, guess what, they’re not going anywhere after this season the way Daniels isn’t.
Of course, this is the same division from which Jalen Hurts has already gone to a Super Bowl and nearly won it off Patrick Mahomes, with whom he went toe-to-toe that night. And for all the constant drama with the Eagles, who almost try to out-drama the Jets sometimes, they’re at 6-2 and just a half-game behind the Commanders.
You are either moving toward the Lombardi Trophy in the NFL, or away from it. Sometimes it seems — a lot of the time it seems — as if the Giants have been moving away from it since the last time they won it. If they do end up with a losing record this time, that will make it seven times they’ve done that in the last eight seasons.
Long time since they were champs. For now, they try to be the champs of Germany. Try to at least be better than the Panthers. It’s come to that.