The Giants’ habit of winning in the most nervous ways doesn’t need to be their demise

No one can take back any of the six wins the Giants left town with as they went their separate ways for the bye week. Brian Daboll gave the team six full days off: They met this Monday and do not have to return to the facility until next Monday, except for injured players, who will stay around to continue their rehab work.

No one can look at what the Giants accomplished in the first eight weeks of the season, break down the how and whys and request the Giants forfeit some of the victories.

But anyone can add up the 32 quarters played by the Giants and the 32 quarters played by their opponents and come up with this: The Giants are 6-2 despite outscoring their opponents by a total of just six points. The Giants were the only team in the league to have every game in the first seven weeks decided by one score — eight points or fewer — a stretch of close calls that ended in Week 8, when a 13-13 fourth-quarter tie dissolved into a 27-13 loss to the Seahawks in Seattle.

If style points and statistical dominance are requirements for a team to be taken seriously, the Giants should be considered a laughingstock. What has already transpired cannot be undone, though. Daboll was absolutely on the money when he was asked about the 6-2 record and said, “Those are in the past. Put money in the bank, so to speak.’’

Yes, the Giants have built up collateral they can use as the temperatures drop and the pressure mounts. They have banked six wins, and only a complete collapse will prevent them from, at the very least, battling late into the season for playoff contention. It actually will be difficult for the Giants to make a mess of this any time soon. Coming out of their bye, they have home games with the Texans and the Lions (combined record: 2-11-1), two games remaining with the Commanders (4-4) and one with the Colts (3-4-1). The Giants have to be really bad to fall out of it before Thanksgiving.

For this, Giants fans can be grateful. They hoped for the best when Joe Schoen was hired as the general manager, and many were on board when Schoen summoned Daboll from Buffalo, where they worked together, to try for a new and far more lucrative challenge with the Giants. After eight games, this is more than the fans could have hoped for. The second half of the season awaits, and the Giants are in the mix. Anyone who saw that coming has stronger than 20/20 vision.

The late fireworks that allowed the Giants to win three consecutive games after trailing in the fourth quarter cannot be relit on command, and the second half of the season is sure to be more taxing for a team that lives on the edge. Daboll says he is fine with this. Of course, what choice does he have anyway? It is not as if he is coaching to avoid building a big lead.

“I’d say most games come down in this league to one-score games — a lot of them, a high percentage of them,’’ Daboll said. “Usually the teams you’re playing are good. It’s a back-and-forth game. A lot of games are won that way. Obviously, you’re always looking to improve. Those chunk plays help you in moving the ball and scoring points — we’ll continue to look at that and figure out ways to try to improve that area.

“It’s not like you’re used to coaching in some colleges, and it’s over in the first quarter. These games are back and forth, and unfortunately [in Seattle], we left out a few plays. We hadn’t been making those mistakes. We’d given ourselves a chance. [That game] just got away from us.’’

At some point, the pattern of low-scoring and tight games is going to catch up with the Giants, right? At some point, averaging 20.4 points a game isn’t going to cut it, right? Or at some point, allowing 19.6 points a game is going to be good but not quite good enough, right? At some point, the Giants are going to have to take a lead in a game, expand that lead and walk away with a comfortable victory, right?

Maybe not.

Maybe this is what the Giants are in 2022 and this is what we will see the rest of the way. If so, can the Giants continue to thrive and win this way?

“As long as we just continue to do the important things,’’ safety Julian Love said, “which is take care of the football, take the football away, stop the run, get our running offense going, play complementary football. If we do all that — regardless of the score — we’re going to win games. That’s what it’s kind of been for us.

“Yeah, we want to be winning by more and all that stuff, but at the end of the day, if we win by one or we win by 30, a ‘W’ is a ‘W.’ That’s kind of been our mindset. Is it sustainable? Yeah, because it’s really based off of all the fundamentals of being successful at football. That’s kind of what Dabes harps on each day.’’

What Daboll has preached has been fully consumed by the players, which is why he is the front-runner for Coach of the Year honors. The hiring of veteran Wink Martindale to run the defense — which looks like a home run — and novice play-caller Mike Kafka as offensive coordinator were moves made by a first-time NFL head coach unafraid of being upstaged by a big personality (Martindale) and unselfish enough to hand the keys to his offense over to a rising star (Kafka).

“Just excited and happy for the coaching staff,’’ Schoen said. “I think they’ve done a hell of a job with the amount of players we’ve had come in and out of the building since the start of the season, whether it was due to injuries or just trying to upgrade. They continue to answer the bell and get those players ready.’’

Still the one

The Eagles are making a parody of parity as the NFL’s lone unbeaten team (7-0) going into their Thursday night game with the Texans in Houston. The Eagles’ point differential of 78 ranks second to the Bills (105), and through Week 8, those two teams should be viewed as the favorites to make it to Glendale, Ariz., for the Super Bowl.

The pressure on the Eagles mounts every week they remain undefeated. And it is not as if they are blowing past the competition in the in the NFC East. The Cowboys and Giants are 6-2, and any slip-up by the Eagles could dump them out of first place.

The Eagles are good, but being the last undefeated team is a surprise. How have they done it?

“Because we know that nothing matters, right?’’ coach Nick Sirianni said. “Dawg mentality is that nothing matters about what happened before. We’re ready to go today to get ready to go 1-0 this week. That’s something that it’s just a mindset that we have as an organization.

“…The common denominator of great teams is they focus on one day at a time and they don’t think about the past, they don’t think about the future. They think about where we are and how we’re going to go 1-0 this day, and completely focus on that. That’s the only way you get better. I think our guys are seeing that’s how you get better. The more you have success with that formula, the more buy-in there is.

“Again, when you have the guys that we have on our team and the leaders that we have on our team, that’s just how they go about business, and that’s contagious as well.’’

Asked and answered

Here are two questions that have come up recently that we will attempt to answer as accurately as possible:

How is it possible that the leading receiver on the Giants, Darius Slayton, has only 232 receiving yards?

This is how: The Giants are 30th in the league in passing, averaging just 159.1 yards per game. The Bills, the NFL’s top passing team, nearly doubles the Giants’ paltry output with an average of 307.7 yards. Slayton had zero receiving yards in the first two games, and a recent surge pushed him past Richie James (191) for the team lead. That is not saying much. Sterling Shepard, who did not make it out of the third game before going down with a season-ending knee injury, still ranks fourth on the team with 154 receiving yards. Kadarius Toney, the team’s 2021 first-round pick, incredibly, did not have any receiving yards in the two games he played before he got hurt and was traded to the Chiefs. Kenny Golladay has 22 receiving yards. Daniel Jones has a big enough arm to get the ball down the field, yet there is nothing doing for the Giants with the ball in the air. And it seems inconceivable the Giants can continue winning with this lack of production.

Are you more surprised the Giants did not trade for a wide receiver or for an inside linebacker or defensive lineman to help with the run defense?

Schoen was not interested in giving up a premium draft pick for anyone on the market this year, so he stood pat. There was no way he was going to part with a second-rounder for Chase Claypool, who went from the Steelers to the Bears for that draft compensation. It was more surprising Schoen did not bring in help for the defense in exchange for a third-day pick (rounds 4-7). The Giants are 26th in the league in run defense, allowing 137.3 yards per game, and that represents an upswing after their performance in Week 8, when the Giants limited Kenneth Walker to 51 yards and the Seahawks to 87 total rushing yards. The Giants would have liked to add a player capable of taking defensive snaps from Tae Crowder or Jaylon Smith, but did not find anyone — or anyone who Schoen felt was an upgrade and could be obtained for the right price.