Win Out and We’re In: The Giants Road to the Playoffs, Revised

Two weeks ago, our sights were set on winning the NFC East. In my post on December 8th, I wrote:

“The Wild Card is much more complicated and less likely. We can cross that bridge if and when we get there, but for now let’s focus on winning the NFC East.”

Well fans, we are standing on the bridge. Let’s cross it.

The Giants still control their own destiny but only for the Wild Card. Win out and we are in.

The division is still possible but it requires a Dallas or Washington loss next week, which is possible of course, but we know it’s never going to happen. At least, we can’t count on it. I wouldn’t recommend even watching those games, because they only end up adding insult to injury—thanks a lot Cleveland and Pittsburg!

The new goal is to win two games in a row, and what ever else happens is icing on the cake. Division or Wild Card, our playoff picture is practically the same, with the exception of one home game. So losing to Atlanta is not the end of the world.

Granted, that doesn’t really help all of us who wasted three hours of our lives yesterday watching the Giants march up and down the field only to come away with nothing. Zero points!

But, look at the rest of the NFL. These types of games are happening to good teams every week. It happened to the Falcons just last week against the Panthers. We did it to the Saints and Green Bay, and they bounced back. Even the Patriots are vulnerable. They destroyed Houston. They made them look like a last place team, and then they lost at home to the 49ers, after falling behind 28 to nothing.

We could worry about our loss, but what’s the point? Win out and we’re in.

To make sure this was actually the case, my father and I considered all the scenarios and tiebreakers at length last night. Then, my brother sent us a link to the ESPN NFL Playoff Machine. All you do is plug in who you want/need to win and it calculates the playoff seeds for you. Genius! Gotta love computers. My dad and I were glad to see our predictions were correct, but this would have saved a lot of time. Have fun and forget about yesterday’s game. Win out and we’re in.