The BBV staff is split on Sunday’s outcome
The New York Giants finally snapped their 10-game losing streak last week. Now they’ll travel to finish the season against the Philadelphia Eagles.
Bad and weird things always seem to happen to the Giants at Lincoln Financial Field. Will they get a front-row seat of Saquon Barkley setting the single-season rushing record? Will the Giants (somehow) win the game and potentially drop all the way down to 8th overall in the draft order?
The Eagles outclass the Giants in every metric but defensive sacks, but they’re still just 3-point favorites thanks to uncertainty regarding the status of Jalen Hurts and whether the starters will even play.
Can the Giants finish with a win?
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Tony DelGenio
It sounds likely that the Eagles will sit Saquon Barkley, Jalen Hurts, and many of their other starters and play backups instead. The Giants field a team right now whose starters are mainly backups (including some positions where the starter is playing). So flip a coin. Analysis of this game is a futile exercise.
The Giants never win in Philadelphia. In the 2022 season, though, they almost beat the Eagles’ starters with their backups, including Davis Webb at QB hitting Kenny Golladay with his only Giants TD reception, in a game Philly needed. In 2023, Tyrod Taylor almost brought them back in the second half in Philly on Christmas Day. The Giants could drop as low as 9th in the draft with a win, I believe. That means they’ll probably break their losing streak at the Linc and grab a victory, saving Brian Daboll’s and Joe Schoen’s jobs.
Pick: Giants
Chris Pflum
I don’t think there’s any way the Giants win this game if it actually mattered. However, the Eagles don’t have much incentive to actually try and win. A win would be nice for some psychological momentum heading into Super Wild Card Weekend, but given that their bye week was way back in Week 5, rest could be more valuable. The Eagles had 23 players on their injury report this week, 16 of which were listed as “rest”. That should give us a pretty good indication of their intentions this week.
The Giants coaching staff and front office, however could be competing for their jobs. I’m not expecting a repeat of last week, but I expect them to be able to do enough to beat an Eagles squad that’s more concerned with playoff wins than beating a 3-win team.
And, as I mentioned the other day, the Giants are going to need to pay a price to get out of Quarterback Hell. It isn’t just going to “happen”, and one last win that hurts them in the long run by making that ticket out of irrelevance as expensive as possible is exactly the Giants’ speed.
Pick: Giants
Nick Falato
The Giants dropped a 45-spot on the desperate Indianapolis Colts to snap their 10-game winning streak. The win slipped the Giants out of the number-one overall pick to conclude this disastrous 2024 season. They’re set to face a Philadelphia Eagles team benching their starters, including Saquon Barkley, who is just 101 yards short of history. New York now only has a 2% chance to earn the first overall pick.
It’s been over a decade since the Giants seized victory in the City of Cheesesteak. Still, their very — all too — recent discovery of competant football is likely to carry into Week 18 against the Eagles backups. I have the Giants winning.
Pick: Giants
James Hickey
As this is the final pick of the season, let me add my two cents about the first major choice for the franchise in the offseason: do Joe Schoen and Brian Daboll come back for another year? I understand arguments for getting rid of and keeping both; I do not get splitting them. Schoen has not done enough in his job to make me believe he should be allowed to choose a second choice. And handcuffing a new GM with Daboll with makes even less sense.
My choice is to bring back both and that is more an endorsement of Daboll then Schoen. Do I think Daboll has had a great year this year? No. But I argue his coaching last year was better then his first year when he won coach of the year. My most important reason is that he has not lost the locker room in the last two years despite the losing—just look at the comments of Darius Slayton and Kayvon Thibodeaux this week.
Schoen, to me, is the more complicated argument. By his own words, he acknowledge his moves after the first year were a mistake. Yes, Evan Neal is a major miss and the narrative around Thibodeaux will be the media and fans always wanting more. Plus, the offensive line is still—to be charitable—unsettled. The pros are what appears to be a really good draft last year and a cap situation that gives them plenty of options to improve the team and its depth this offseason. So yes, I would bring both back.
As for Week 18, I do not think the Giants will win this week for this simple reason: the Eagles have a deeper, better team then the Giants right now. And the Eagles can not bench everyone, so some of their starters will play. The Philly backups will not lay down like dogs as the Colts did last week.
Pick: Eagles
David Hartman
Giants fans were waiting for this. The team had lost so many games that it found itself in pole position for the first pick in the 2025 NFL draft. The Colts were coming to town, and they needed the game to keep their slim playoff hopes alive. The Giants were coming off two straight blowout losses, and ten straight defeats in total. They also were 0-8 at home. There’s no way they were winning, right? Right??
Naturally, and to the dismay of the vast majority of Big Blue faithful, the Giants scored almost 3x their normal output and ran the Colts out of the building, 45-33. With the win, New York dropped to fourth position for next year’s draft, based on the strength-of-schedule of the four teams that are now tied for the league’s worst record (3-13).
The Giants are in very real danger of tacking on a fourth win in the season’s final game this Sunday, and dropping even further in the draft order. While fans (and ownership/management) might obsess over that, the players don’t. In fact, it’s the opposite. Their incentive is to play their best. They’re playing for their livelihood, be it their next contract, or just making a team next season.
The Eagles have wrapped up the NFC East and the conference’s No. 2 seed, and have absolutely nothing to play for. They will be resting multiple starters including Jalen Hurts and Saquon Barkley, among others. They might not even play backup QB Kenny Pickett, who is dealing with an injury.
It would behoove the Giants to lose, but that’s not how this works in the real world. I don’t see New York’s brass telling Malik Nabers that his toe injury requires him to sit. Or telling Drew Lock (coming off what was probably the best game of his life, and that includes high school) that he needs to rest because of the shoulder injury that sidelined him a few weeks ago. Whichever Giants players are on the field will try to win.
That said, I think Philly’s starters that suit up and their backups will have just enough to prevail at home, thus bringing the Giants’ 2024 nightmare season to a merciful and less damaging end.
Pick: Eagles
Valentine’s View
Fans might not want to hear it, but I think the Giants are going to win another game on Sunday and further damage their positioning for 2025 NFL Draft. The Eagles are resting most of their key players and might be down to Tanner McKee as their starting quarterback.
Wide receiver Malik Nabers has made it clear that he is playing. Brian Burns is playing. Anothger victory won’t help the Giants get a quarterback, but it might help Brian Daboll keep his job.
The game is meaningless in the standings, but it will mean something to Giants and players and coaches. That might be enough.
Pick: Giants
