Jon Runyan didn’t spend Tuesday polishing up the Giants’ 3-1-1 start. He peeled back the record and pointed at the part that matters most: this team has been living on the edge, and the margin for comfort is a lot thinner than the standings say.
“A couple plays here and there, I feel like we could also be 1-4,” Runyan said in his Tuesday media session.
That line lands because it matches what the tape and the box scores have been saying all along. New York has won enough to sit in first place, and that matters.
But the Giants also haven’t exactly bullied anyone into submission. They’ve survived, scraped, and leaned on late-game finishes more than they’ve dictated games from start to finish.
Through five games, the numbers tell the same story. The Giants have scored 109 points and allowed 106. That’s a plus-three margin, which is fine for a team sitting on a winning record, but it’s not the profile of a club regularly putting people away.
Their results fit that picture. New York beat Dallas 28-20, topped Tennessee 12-7, handled Arizona 36-24 and took a 28-6 loss to the Rams that does most of the damage to the overall scoring margin. Then came Sunday’s 27-27 tie at Washington, a game the Giants had to rescue with three fourth-quarter touchdowns just to avoid a loss.
That comeback deserves credit. So does the fact that it was necessary in the first place.
Runyan’s point wasn’t that the Giants are frauds or that the wins don’t count. It was something more useful: the team still has a lot of work to do.
A few breaks, he said, and the early-season story looks very different. That’s not doom.
It’s a warning.
There’s also context here that matters. John Harbaugh has kept the group competitive without Jaxson Dart and Brian Burns, both currently on injured reserve. Those absences matter, and they should be part of any honest read on how the Giants have held up through five games.
But the injuries don’t erase the areas the healthy players can control. That’s where the focus should stay heading into the Saints game.
The standard ought to be cleaner possession football, not another last-minute rescue act. Avoiding an offensive giveaway and preserving a scoring chance are habits this team can repeat.
Banking on another frantic finish is not.
There’s a reasonable case for giving this group extra credit for its toughness. Closing tight games is part of winning, and Harbaugh does have a roster missing important pieces. Nobody should confuse that with a mandate for style points every week.
Still, the answer can’t be to get conservative just because the record looks nice. The offense still has to press for opportunities without gifting the opponent short fields. Playing careful and playing scared are two different things.
Five games won’t define what this team is in December. One lopsided loss can warp a point differential, and roster changes can shift the outlook quickly. That’s why Runyan’s comment carries weight: it keeps the Giants honest about what they can sharpen now before the results turn on them later.
They host New Orleans next with a division lead to protect. The best way to do that is with cleaner football, not by assuming the Giants will keep getting one more lifeline after another.
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Theo Johnson and John Michael Schmitz are among the names being discussed as possible trade candidates if the Giants decide to balance present success against future roster needs. Johnsons role has thinned enough to make him part of the conversation, while Schmitz has seen his standing change after opening the year as the center, and both situations speak to how complicated this deadline could be for a team trying to stay in first place without losing sight of what comes next. [Read more 🡒]