A ‘simple’ 19-step guide to the Giants’ since-dashed playoff hopes

Week 15’s loss to the Titans sealed it.

2018 is already an improvement for the New York Giants. With five wins, they’re guaranteed a better record than last fall’s historically awful performance.

And it can get better. In only 12 simple steps, the Giants could not only be a playoff team, but an NFC East champion. With 19 steps, they could finagle a spot in as a Wild Card team. That’s right, the 5-8 Giants are still in this thing.

Well, technically. Until Week 15, when a 17-0 loss to the Titans shut down the club’s extremely complex road to an unlikely playoff berth.

Sunday’s result wasn’t especially surprising. Winning the NFC East would have required New York to be perfect while each one of its divisional foes grinds to a stop. Betting on the Giants was an offering to the lesser gods of chaos, a prayer for the carefully engineered playbooks of the Cowboys and Eagles to fall apart as if bound with porcelain staples. Earning a Wild Card bid is slightly easier, but still doesn’t leave much margin for error.

So how would Eli Manning and Co. have done it? Here’s their step-by-step guide.

For the Giants to win the NFC East

Steps 1-4. The Giants have to win out. This is non-negotiable. The Giants’ tiebreakers are so awful that there’s no way they could sneak into a Wild Card bid at 7-9, even if the Vikings, Packers, Eagles, Falcons, Buccaneers, and Panthers all finish the season with six wins. If Dallas finishes its season on a four-game losing streak, it would still hold the tiebreaker over a seven-win Giants team thanks to a superior NFC East record. New York can’t mess around.

That includes:

• a win over Washington in Week 14. Washington’s starting quarterback is Mark Sanchez. This will not be especially difficult.

UPDATE 12/9: Complete! Sanchez was awful and the Giants led 34-0 at halftime. The game also introduced us to New York’s current successor to Manning, Kyle Lauletta. His major league debut saw him complete zero passes in five attempts with an interception.

...

Not great!

• a win over Tennessee in Week 15. The Titans beat the Patriots by 24. They also lost to the Bills and suffered a 28-point defeat against the Colts. So, this is a possibility.

UPDATE 12/16. I have bad news...

• a win over Indianapolis in Week 16. The Colts had a five-game winning streak earlier this season. They also have a 6-0 loss to the Jaguars on their resume, so ... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
• a win over Dallas in Week 17. The good news is this game is at home. The bad news is the Cowboys won the first matchup between these teams by limiting New York to a season-low 255 yards of offense. Manning hasn’t thrown multiple touchdown passes against Dallas since September 2016.

Hooo boy. Everyone the Giants play from Week 14 out is currently in contention for a playoff spot. There’s not a Raiders or a Jets in the bunch. But not only does New York need those four wins, it needs several other breaks as well.

Step 5: The Eagles beat the Cowboys in Week 14. The bad part about NFC East rivalry games for the Giants is that someone in their division has to win that week. When in doubt, cheer against the Cowboys.

UPDATE 12/9: The Cowboys just beat the Eagles in overtime thanks to this play:

So the NFC East is out of reach.

Step 6: The Rams beat the Eagles in Week 15. Pretty likely!

Step 7: Washington loses to the Jaguars in Week 15. See Sanchez, Mark.

`: Nope. Josh Johnson just won a football game as a starting quarterback for the first time EVER.

Step 8: The Colts beat the Cowboys in Week 15. A tough request, but the game is in Indianapolis, where the Colts are 4-0 in their last four games. Granted, those wins came over Jacksonville, Buffalo, Tennessee, and Miami, but still. Wins!

Step 9: The Texans beat the Eagles in Week 16. Damn, the Eagles’ schedule gets pretty tough at the end, doesn’t it?

Step 10: The Buccaneers beat the Cowboys in Week 16. OK. So here’s where things get dicey for the Giants [CORRECTION: Things got dicey for the Giants sometime around the Ben McAdoo hiring]. New York is 0-1 against Dallas this fall and 0-4 against its divisional rivals. The Cowboys are 3-1 against divisional foes. In order to win the NFC East, Eli Manning has to win out and Jerry Jones’ team needs to finish the year on a four-game losing streak.

Which means the Buccaneers have to beat the Cowboys in Dallas. If the Cowboys win this, or any of their final four games, they’ll shut the Giants out of the division race. So this game, unlikely as it is, could be the fork that splits the two paths for an 8-8 New York team to make the playoffs in the NFC.

Step 11: The Titans beat Washington in Week 16. If New York goes 4-0 over its last four games and Washington wins more than one game, there would be no way for the Giants to overtake their DC rivals in the NFC East standings. That means the only Washington win that would be beneficial to New York is a Week 17 victory over Philadelphia.

Step 12: Washington beats the Eagles in Week 17. The Eagles finish 7-9. Washington finishes 7-9. The Giants don’t have to worry about tiebreakers they’d wind up losing. That same week, the Cowboys lose to the Giants to fall to 7-9 (see step 4). New York, at 8-8, is your NFC East champion.

But that’s not the only way for the team to earn a 17th game.

For the Giants to earn a Wild Card spot

Even if the Cowboys find a way to win one of their final four games, the Giants will still have a path to the postseason. It’s just a lot more complicated with a larger array of teams competing for what looks like one Wild Card spot behind the Seattle Seahawks.

For the sake of simplicity, let’s assume the surging Seahawks are safe to get to the eight wins they’d need to fend off the Giants — remaining games against the 49ers and Cardinals look like extremely winnable games. If that’s the case, New York would need a whole lot more to break in its favor. The Giants would need everything from the previous steps 1-4 to take place, and then:

Step 5: The Seahawks beat the Vikings in Week 14. Seattle is good! This is reasonable.

Step 6: The Packers beat the Falcons in Week 14. New York needs Atlanta to lose one more game to give the club at least nine losses. It will also likely need the Falcons to beat the Panthers in Week 16, but we’ll get to that.

UPDATE 12/9: Yep.

Step 7: The Cowboys beat the Eagles in Week 14. If we’re assuming the Cowboys are going to win the East, they may has well chart a course that creates the most damage for the Giants’ rivals.

UPDATE 12/9: Yep. This happened, too.

Step 8: The Cardinals beat the Lions in Week 14. It doesn’t necessarily have to be (and probably won’t be) the Cardinals, but someone has to stop the Lions from winning out, because a three-way tie between Tampa Bay, New York, and Detroit at 8-8 would send the Buccaneers to the postseason.

UPDATE 12/9: The Lions won Sunday, but any loss in their final three weeks will still essentially eliminate them from playoff contention.

Step 9: The Bears beat the Packers in Week 15. Green Bay has to lose once. It could come against Atlanta, the Jets, or the Lions — but it’s most likely going to come in a road trip to division-leading Chicago on Dec. 16.

Step 10: The Saints beat the Panthers in Week 15.

Step 11: The Falcons beat the Panthers in Week 16.

Step 12: The Saints beat the Panthers, again, in Week 17.

Carolina already beat New York this season, so the Giants either need a better final record or a three-way tie involving the Buccaneers to earn a Wild Card bid. Neither seems especially likely, so let’s defer to the former and give Carolina, at best, a 1-3 finish and a 7-9 2018 record.

Step 13: The Rams beat the Eagles in Week 15. The Eagles’ final four games include three teams currently leading their divisions. This is decidedly not good for a 6-6 Philadelphia team.

Step 14: The Jaguars beat Washington in Week 15.

Step 15: The Texans beat the Eagles in Week 16. That’ll do it for Philadelphia’s hopes of a Super Bowl repeat.

Step 16: The Lions beat the Vikings in Week 16. New York needs a 1-3 finish from Minnesota to pass the Vikings in the Wild Card race. Games against the Seahawks and Bears are good signs for the Giants, but they’ll also have to hope the Vikes lose to either Detroit or Miami in December.

Step 17: The Titans beat Washington in Week 16.

Step 18: The Bears beat the Vikings in Week 17.

Step 19: The Packers beat the Lions OR the Falcons beat the Buccaneers in Week 17. In this scenario, a three-way tie between Detroit, Tampa, and New York would break in the Buccaneers’ favor. If steps 1-18 have already happened, then the Giants’ playoff hopes would hinge on one of these two teams losing on the last Sunday of the season.

That gets the Giants to 8-8 and in position for a return to the postseason. Of course, if either of these unlikely paths winds up leading New York to the pink sand shores of a playoff bid, there’s only one final, logical step for the Giants to take.

Step 13 or 20: A very Giants future. Not wanting to head into 2019 with a lame-duck quarterback who just led the team to the playoffs, the Giants offer Manning a four-year, $120 million extension. Manning stops chuckling to himself just long enough to sign the deal. In order to protect that investment, the franchise drafts an offensive lineman with its first-round picks in 2019 and 2020. Neither is on the roster for Manning’s final season in 2022.

Just think; our world is, at most, 19 steps away from New York’s destiny of ignoring first-round quarterback prospects while paying Eli Manning the GDP of a small island nation during the season in which he turns 40 years old. For this reason, we are all Giants fans this December.