John Harbaugh has already given the Giants something they haven't had in years — hope

· Yahoo Sports

NEW YORK — On the ride from the Meadowlands back into Manhattan, hours after the Giants had just decimated the Cowboys on national television, I heard an unfamiliar note in the radio host’s voice as he discussed the Giants: pride. 

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Bluster, defiance, outrage — these are your go-to emotions for New York sports radio. But this host — I beg your pardon, sir, I didn’t get your name but it was 2 a.m. and I was in an Uber — declared that under new head coach John Harbaugh, this is a team that Giants fans can be proud of, and he’s exactly right. The host then went on to say that this is a team that could go all the way, but we’ll chalk that part up to post-victory exuberance. 

The pride thing, though, that’s dead-on. Yes, all the usual “it’s just one game” caveats exist, but let’s be honest here — didn’t the Giants just feel like a different team on Sunday night? Disciplined, determined, opportunistic, relentless. Yes, Dallas didn’t exactly show up prepared — we’ll get to that in a moment — but the Giants took advantage of every opportunity presented to them, and seized a few that weren’t. 

“This was really special because these guys, these players, these guys who have believed from the beginning, they don't bat an eye,” Harbaugh said Sunday night. “They just try to do the right thing every single day. They try to be on point. And even when they're not on point, they're going to bounce back and make it right. Maybe there is a mistake. Maybe there is a false start. They find a way to make a play and erase the mistake and make it right and make it better.”

John Harbaugh of the New York Giants celebrates a touchdown with Isaiah Likely during the second quarter against the Dallas Cowboys.Elsa via Getty Images

This is a team that held Dallas — a trendy preseason Super Bowl favorite, and the favorite coming into Sunday night — to a three-and-out on the Cowboys’ opening series, and then immediately marched right back down the field to score a touchdown on the first series of the season.

This is a team that punted the ball away with 1:50 remaining on the clock, snagged a ridiculous interception on what should have been a throwaway, then raced to another touchdown in 29 seconds. 

This is a team that mounted two more eight-minute-plus touchdown drives in the second half, then held the ball for the final 5:21 of the game, utterly strangling the hope right out of the Cowboys. 

Score fast, score slow. Score running the same damn play five separate times on a single drive, as the Giants did in the fourth quarter with a Jaxson Dart-to-Devin Singletary flare-out into the left flat. Score with the kind of celebration that lights up social media, like Cam Skattebo’s first-quarter, physician-defying flip. 

For a franchise that had won a total of 13 games the last three seasons combined, Sunday night was nothing short of an epiphany. With a single game, Harbaugh has swept away years of futility and instilled a mindset of expectation and self-respect that extends from the field to the stands and back. 

“We have so much respect for Coach (Harbaugh), and this team will do whatever he says because we have all the faith that he's going to put us in the best situation,” Dart said Sunday night. “The identity of a team starts at the top. It starts with how he's conducted himself, with how he's created a tough team.”

That extends even to tackling his own players. Malik Nabers, so uncertain of his playing status on Sunday night that he didn’t even bring his family to the game, was in the middle of walkthroughs when Harbaugh, out of nowhere, tackled him. 

The message: you’re ready to take a hit. And he was; Nabers, coming off a torn ACL, had six receptions on nine targets for 69 yards. 

“It was all in fun. Got a lot of laughs,” Harbaugh joked on Monday. “Some guys gave me a sideways look. Some of the players were like, ‘What are you doing?’ So, it was good.”

This is unfamiliar territory for both the Giants and their fans as of late; the team hasn’t made the playoffs since the 2022 season. But before Big Blue Nation starts making February hotel reservations in Los Angeles, keep in mind that Dallas — particularly the woeful, overmatched Cowboy defense — deserves a Best Supporting Actor nomination for making the Giants look so good. 

“How you play this week is not going to be good enough to win next week,” Harbaugh said Monday. “How we played (Sunday) night will not win the game next Monday night. It won't be good enough. So, we've got to improve.”

If the Giants can in fact improve on their performance Sunday night — starting with a Monday night road game against the Rams — New York sports talk radio is going to be a lot of fun over the next few months.

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