Stop with Giants are back talk

Sunday afternoon served as a coronation for the New York Football Giants. They qualified for the NFL playoffs for the first time in five years after a 38-10 victory over the hapless Indianapolis Colts at MetLife Stadium.

The way the Giants and their fans celebrated this feat, one would think there would be a Canyon of Heroes parade awaiting this team this past week. Fortunately, Mayor Eric Adams has higher standards than Giants fans, as he did not bother having a parade. A parade should only happen when the Giants win the Super Bowl.

We might as well tell Giants fans right here that making the playoffs should not be the bar despite a five-year absence. This franchise is not back just because they made the playoffs. Any bad team can make the playoffs once in a blue moon.

The Giants will be back when they contend for the NFC East and Super Bowl championships on a year-in and year-out basis, such as when the Giants won the Super Bowl in 2007. There was a period during that era when they contended. This should be the bar. This should be the goal.

The Giants were a model franchise for most of the Tom Coughlin era until Odell Beckham Jr. came in and destroyed this franchise with his losing attitude and his petulant behavior. It took six years for this franchise to gain its footing. They are at ground zero. They are in somewhat of a good place now, but the job is not done yet.

Only in Giant land can a 9-6-1 mediocre record can be deemed a success these days. But don’t let that record fool you. If the Giants did not get help on a ref call where a pass interference should have been called against them and which would have had the Washington Commanders tie the game and go to overtime, they might have been on the outside looking in. So this record can be a bit misleading.

Even if they finished the season with 10 wins, it’s misleading, because the Philadelphia Eagles likely may not play their starters against the Giants on Sunday despite their attempt to win the NFC East and get home-field advantage.

Mediocrity shouldn’t be good enough when better is expected. This is an organization that used to contend for championships. We shouldn’t judge a once-proud franchise on a curve after what has happened over the last few years.

No one here is saying the Giants had a bad season. They built a foundation, but there is so much work to do.

The Giants need to beat the Dallas Cowboys and Eagles to show that they are really back. They are 0-2 against the Cowboys and 0-1 against the Eagles. Even if the Giants win on Sunday against Philadelphia, it will mean nothing since the Eagles may not play their best players.

The Cowboys and Eagles don’t respect the Giants. Why should they, when they have beaten them all the time for the last 10 years and counting? This becomes too easy for them.

We hailed Brian Daboll as the Giants head coach. It’s fine that he had a great campaign, but you know what? Ben McAdoo had a great campaign in his first season as head coach, and he fell apart in his second season to the point where he got fired. Joe Judge was thought to be a good coach in the making during his first season, and then he fell apart in his second season. The late Jim Fassel had some good years, but then he lost control of his players.

Daboll is far from finishing his story as head coach. For one thing, he needs to coach at least six or seven years to show that he has made it as a Giants head coach. This means elevating his team into a perennially NFC East contender and Super Bowl contender. This means developing players on a yearly basis. He needs to have two Super Bowl championships to have his Giants tenure be a success.

The reality is that we don’t really know about him after one year.

The same can be said for Giants general manager Joe Schoen. We won’t know much about him until after three years. Until then, he is winning with the roster of Dave Gettleman’s players. It’s hard to judge his first draft, and it’s going to be hard to judge his next year’s draft, too. In Year 3, we should have an idea.

Once we get an answer on Daboll and Schoen over an extended period of time, then you can be the judge and determine if the Giants are back.

The Giants benefited this season as a byproduct of a mediocre league. It had nothing to do with how much they improved or the culture that the new management created.

We really don’t know if the Giants are back or not.

While it’s good the Giants made the playoffs, so much work has to be done before anyone can say they are back for good.

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