david dieHl - New York Giants

Punchless Giants fall to Ravens, playoff hopes dwindle
By Tom Rock
Newsday
Dec. 23, 2012
Help wanted.
That's what the Giants are looking for, both internally and externally, as they head into the final
week of the season. Although Sunday's 33-14 loss to the Ravens did not technically eliminate
them from playoff contention, it pushed them to the brink and swiped control of their destiny.
For the defending Super Bowl champions to advance to the postseason, they'll need to beat the
Eagles on Sunday at MetLife Stadium and root for a favorable result in games involving the other
teams in the hunt for the wild card.
The most direct way for the Giants (8-7) to get in now is a swerving road that includes their own
win plus either a Redskins (9-6) win or tie against the Cowboys (8-7), a Packers win over the
Vikings (9-6) and a Lions win over the Bears (9-6).
That was too much for the Giants to process Sunday, though. Tom Coughlin described the
playoff possibility as "very remote right now."
" . . . do we deserve it by the way we played? Do we?" asked defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul. " .
. . I don't think so . . . There's really nothing more I can say."
Because the Cowboys lost to the Saints in overtime earlier Sunday, the Giants could not be
eliminated. Not even back-to-back blowouts in which the Giants have been outscored by a
combined 67-14 by the Falcons and Ravens knocked them out.
Two ways to look at that: Did the Cowboys give the Giants a thread of hope? Or just prolong
their agony?
The Giants sounded like a team that was eliminated, talking about wanting to win because a 9-7
record would be better than 8-8.
"Worst-case scenario, and we're here," linebacker Chase Blackburn said. "I figured we'd respond
better than we did. We've been a team in the past that really has responded when our backs are
against the wall, but we can't continue to rely on that. We can't continue to think we're going to
turn the switch on and off."
The loss leaves them with a week to figure out how things have slipped away from holding first
place in the division to being eliminated from contention for that title, to figure out how they
went from a 52-27 win over the Saints two short weeks ago to urchins begging for handouts
around the league.
"We're a very long way from being the team that played New Orleans," Coughlin said.
That lack of consistency had the Giants baffled from top to bottom.