After Sunday's win over the Chicago Bears, coach Ben McAdoo was purposefully ignorant of the team's five-game winning streak.
"It was good to get the win today. We only played once this week," he said, via comments distributed by the team. "We had a good week of preparation, a short week. It was nice to see it pay off here in the second half."
While McAdoo, like any other coach, does not want to get his team too high or too low, he may have an extraneous reason for ignoring the Giants' current hot streak: They've either been incredibly fortunate, or historically excellent in tight contests and he doesn't want to jinx it.
According to NFL Research, the team's margin of victory over their seven wins is just 27 points, which is the lowest MOV over that time span in NFL history. The Detroit Lions currently have a 24-point margin of victory over six games and will take on the Minnesota Vikings in a Thanksgiving afternoon matchup.
As we wrote in the game review Sunday, McAdoo's seven wins this year were all games the Giants would lose toward the end of the Tom Coughlin era -- but don't blame that on the future Hall of Fame coach. The Giants went out this offseason and acquired a pair of closers on defense -- Olivier Vernon and Damon Harrison -- and added a third top-tier corner in Janoris Jenkins. It is an incredible luxury to place Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie in the slot, especially late in games. Vernon flashed some of his muscle in the third and fourth quarters Sunday after the Giants were pushed around for a majority of the first half.
Fans will liken this to one of their recent Super Bowl runs -- both seasons where the Giants played well late in games and gutted out unexpected wins. Quarterback Eli Manning told a FOX sideline reporter Sunday that he didn't care how the wins were coming in, only that they kept coming.
Perhaps we are in line to see something special, as the team prepares to head to Cleveland this Sunday to take on the 0-11 Browns. McAdoo hopes it is not just extraordinary luck.
