We always hoped that we would get here, but we never thought it would happen like this.
New York Giants fans entered the season cautiously optimistic that John Harbaugh's arrival would give their team the chance to truly compete in the NFC East. That optimism was torn to shreds when both Jaxson Dart and Brian Burns suffered season-ending injuries in the span of a week.
But somehow, the Giants still find themselves atop the division at 3-1. Every team in the NFC East has its own problems that could keep it from making the playoffs, New York included. This division title race isn't the 17-game sprint that it was expected to be. It's a slugfest, and the Giants are a win away from giving themselves a massive upper hand.
With a win over the Washington Commanders in Week 5, Big Blue would have a 2-0 record within the division, a crucial tiebreaker in what should be a tightly contested title race.
Giants can make their playoff dreams feel real with a Week 5 win over Commanders
The NFL uses a long list of tiebreakers to determine division winners (12 of them, to be exact). At the top of the list are head-to-head record and record inside the division.
The Giants already beat the Dallas Cowboys in Week 1. If they beat the Commanders this weekend, they'll have a leg up on both teams in the head-to-head category, and they'll be the only team at 2-0 within the division.
If the G-Men can beat the Philadelphia Eagles later in the season, which feels much more likely after Lane Johnson's retirement and the Cam Jurgens trade, they'll guarantee that no team will have the head-to-head advantage over them.
In all likelihood, the Giants aren't going to win 12+ games this year. With the state of their roster and the opponents still left on their schedule, they'd be lucky to hit ten. But in this division, nine or ten wins might be enough to get the job done.
Unless the Eagles are somehow better without two of their starting offensive linemen, the Cowboys fix their defense, or the Commanders rediscover the 2024 version of Jayden Daniels, nobody is running away with this division. It could very well come down to those tiebreakers that we mentioned earlier.
If that's the case, the Giants can give themselves an obvious advantage with a win on Sunday afternoon.
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