Another escape...and heavy hitters await

Before I get started, let me mention the Star Ledger and NJ.com's Mike Garafolo and his game reviews. As a fan I feel like I'm lucky he writes for the Giants. Here's this week's, you'll see what I mean. He covers everything so thoroughly that anything I thought about saying about a game Sunday night, as maybe the one key observation that I feel no one else will have...MG will say it in his review Monday, along with about twenty other observations that are even better. Of course, the downside to reading a guy this good, is that anything I say I feel like I'm copying him because he's already covered it. So when it comes to the Giants, I like to try to stick with the "macro" view at a given time knowing Mike's got the micro locked down. To that, then...

The Giants are now 5-2. First place in the NFC East by a full two games - but as I see it, still merely "par" for the first seven games, having won when they should have won (except for the Seahawks), and lost when they should have lost (except for the Eagles).

The "playing with fire" nature of the way they've had to come roaring back after sluggish starts to beat teams like the Cardinals and Dolphins, is concerning with respect to measuring up against the elite teams coming. But the good news is, once the game is over, all that matters is the win. (Barring of course, a wacky tiebreaker scenario where it goes all the way down to point differential.) Having banked 5 wins at this point, no matter how they came about, is a great position to be in. Granted, this team has a brutal schedule coming. But on the other hand, it's a team that hasn't really peaked yet - at least compared to the past three years when they looked unbeatable at this point in the season and were generally considered the NFC Super Bowl favorite.

First up in this "murder's row" is a visit to New England Sunday. The Patriots have won 20 consecutive regular season home games. But the Giants do have a pretty good history of ending Patriots streaks.