The Giants are rolling into Philadelphia with something nobody would have predicted seven weeks ago: a chance to keep stretching out in the NFC East, and they’re doing it as the favorites. That alone tells you how strange this season has become. The Eagles sit at 2-6, the kind of place the Giants have lived five times in the last decade, while the Giants have climbed into the spot Philadelphia used to own.
And this isn’t just another division game. The Giants are going down the Jersey Turnpike with a real shot to widen the gap between themselves and the rest of the East before they see the Commanders next Thursday. The door is open, and it keeps swinging wider.
At the center of it all is J.J. McCarthy, the Giants’ third starting quarterback of the season, who has already changed the feel of this team.
He’s coming off one of the best road wins the franchise has had in a long time, the overtime victory in Houston, and he did it against a Texans defense that made his performance look even better. Now comes a much tougher test: a desperate Eagles team, a defense run by Vic Fangio, and a road environment that should tell the Giants plenty about how real this run is.
Fangio had plenty to say about McCarthy this week.
“The quarterback has come in, in a short period of time and really done a nice job. For them to get him for a sixth-round pick is a steal.”
It was actually a fifth-round pick for the Michigan quarterback, who not long ago was being projected as a first-rounder by the Vikings. Either way, Fangio’s point was clear: the Giants got a bargain.
He also broke down what he sees on offense.
“They’ve got a really good offense. They’ve got skill at the receiving position.
They did a nice job of raiding the Ravens, not only for John, but for [Isaiah] Likely and [Patrick] Ricard. They’ve got a lot of the Ravens-type offense they had when Greg Roman was there, and they’ve intermixed Kansas City-type passing in there with [offensive coordinator] Matt Nagy.
They’ve got it going right now.”
That’s the challenge for the Eagles now, and for Fangio too. The Giants have found life with McCarthy in a way that has reminded people of what Jaxson Dart gave them as a rookie last season.
The sample is tiny - just five quarters - but it’s been enough to change the mood around the team. Against the Saints, McCarthy threw caution aside and nearly dragged the Giants all the way back.
Against the Texans, he kept it going.
It’s still early, and nobody is pretending otherwise. Quarterbacks can change in a hurry, and not always for the better.
But in this short stretch, McCarthy has already shown the kind of spark the Giants were hoping for when Harbaugh handed him the job. That’s part of why the team suddenly looks like it can talk about the trade deadline in a way nobody expected, even as the rest of the division keeps stumbling.
The Eagles, meanwhile, are trying to stop a six-game losing streak that has started to feel almost Biblical in Philadelphia. They were supposed to be chasing another NFC title.
Instead, the division picture has gone sideways, with the Cowboys also stuck in the mud at a combined 5-11 with Philadelphia. Even the quarterback situation has turned into a scramble, with Joe Milton, the ex-Patriot and ex-Cowboy, now in position to try to give the Eagles a lift after Jalen Hurt was lost for the season.
There’s no shortage of irony here. The Giants are the team on the rise, the Eagles are the team trying to steady the ship, and the whole thing has flipped fast enough to make your head spin. The Giants have even been mentioned in the kind of trade chatter that would have sounded absurd not long ago, with Jonathan Taylor’s name in the mix as a possible target.
For now, though, it comes back to McCarthy, 23 years old and already carrying the kind of hope Giants fans thought they saw in Dart last season. If this keeps going, he could end up looking like one of the biggest in-season pickups the franchise has ever made.
The opportunity is right there. The Giants just have to make sure the Eagles don’t shut the door on Sunday.
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