Playoff Giants will be best version Eagles see this season
PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA - JANUARY 08: Zech McPhearson #27 of the Philadelphia Eagles tackles Jamie Gillan #6 of the New York Giants at Lincoln Financial Field on January 08, 2023 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Tim Nwachukwu/Getty Images) Credit: Getty Images/Tim Nwachukwu
It’s Philadelphia that now stands between the Giants and the NFC Championship Game. Of course it is Philadelphia.
Who else would be a suitable opponent for this team trying to exorcise the demon misery that has haunted the franchise for a decade? Where else would be the ideal location to illustrate just how much has changed this season? This month?
It is the stadium where the Giants play every year but haven’t won since 2013, a streak of nine straight losses. The team that handed them their most lopsided and embarrassing defeat of this season on its way to the top seed in the NFC playoffs. The franchise that has been breaking the Giants’ hearts — or worse — since Bednarik stood gloating over Gifford, more recently winning 11 of the last 13 and 24 of the last 30 meetings between the division foes.
The Giants will be taking on all of that Saturday night when they play the Eagles at Lincoln Financial Field. The history, the rivalry, the geographical proximity, the cemetery of dreams buried under that haunted turf.
They are two teams so familiar with each other that hardly any video study need be done, yet tangled in this blood feud that has been so one-sided that there isn’t a player on the Giants’ roster who was around for their most recent victory in Cheesesteak Town.
What impact will it have on the game?
“None,” Brian Daboll said. “Every game’s a new game.”
The Giants had better hope so, because if it’s anything like most of the recent ones, their season won’t make it through the weekend.
But these Giants haven’t yet faced the Eagles with a full allotment of personnel. Leonard Williams and Adoree’ Jackson missed both games with injuries. Xavier McKinney missed the first. Daniel Jones and Saquon Barkley sat out the second, a Week 18 contest in which the Giants rested the majority of their starters.
The Giants have a quarterback who is coming off one of the greatest performances in postseason history — before Jones shredded the Vikings, no one had ever thrown for 300 or more yards with two or more touchdowns and run for 70 or more yards in a playoff game — yet remain nonplussed by his achievements and the newfound respect of the football-watching world.
More than personnel, though, the Giants simply carry themselves very differently from any other iteration the Eagles have seen in a very long time. They have a newly minted confidence.
The team that lost to the Eagles, 48-22, on Dec. 11 is long gone. The team that lost, 22-16, on Jan. 8 will be mostly back on the bench. These will be the new and improved Giants. In the old and haunted setting.
“I’d say you try to evolve after every game,” Daboll said. “I think we’ve gotten a little bit better each week.”
The pendulum of this matchup has swung both ways. The Giants and Eagles have met in the postseason four times and the Giants won the first two, including a divisional round game in the 2000 season when they advanced with a 20-10 win without scoring an offensive touchdown (thanks, Ron Dixon and Jason Sehorn!). Then the Eagles crushed the Giants’ dreams with a 23-20 Wild Card win at the Linc on a walk-off field goal in the 2006 season and ended their promising 2008 season with a 23-11 win over the Plaxico Burress-less Giants.
It didn’t take long after their last game, the statement win in Minnesota, for the Giants to start thinking about the Eagles. The Giants knew that a victory would send them down the Turnpike to face the top seed in the divisional round.
They had not yet looked at a game plan or thought about a formation, but they certainly were aware of their futility against this opponent as well as the challenges their nest can present.
“I’m sure the atmosphere is going to be insane,” wide receiver Darius Slayton said of the familiar locale for his team’s next step in its improbable journey through the playoffs. “Plenty of boos and middle fingers for us.”
At least the Giants know what they are heading into. That remains a constant.
It’s what they are when they come out of there that has to change.
Always Cloudy in Philadelphia
Saturday night would be a great time for the Giants to end their futility at Lincoln Financial Field, where they haven't won since a 15-17 victory on Oct. 27, 2013. Six of the nine losses have been by six points or fewer:
2022 Eagles 22, Giants 16
2021 Eagles 34, Giants 10
2020 Eagles 22, Giants 21
2019 Eagles 23, Giants 17
2018 Eagles 25, Giants 22
2017 Eagles 27, Giants 24
2016 Eagles 24, Giants 19
2015 Eagles 27, Giants 7
2014 Eagles 27, Giants 0
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
