New York Giants: Be Realistic About Big Blue

Everyone anointed the Giants as the team to beat in the NFC after they started 5-0 by beating up on many bad teams in the schedule.

The team earned the benefit of the doubt by appearing in the postseason for four straight years with a Super Bowl championship to show for it so it's hard to quibbble about their start especially with the way they outscored those teams.

New Yorkers expected their NFC team to expose the Saints as frauds when their team came to the Bayou for the battle of undefeated teams. Instead, the joke is on the Giants.

Since the loss to the Saints, they played awful. They lost three straight after a blowout loss to the Eagles on Sunday, and those losses hasn't been pretty either.

The Cardinals handled the Giants with ease by passing the ball at will towards that soft defense, and the Eagles did whatever they wanted when it came to running and passing the ball.

Tom Coughlin ponders the questions that plague his team right now.

Where is the defense? What happened to Eli Manning? Why can't Brandon Jacobs and Ahmad Bradshaw run and break tackles?  Those three issues hurt the Giants right now.

When folks think about the G-Men, they think hard-hitting defense. This is not happening right now with them.

They can't blitz whatsoever, and opposing wide receivers torch the cornerbacks with no consequences of being pushed or punched.

The Giants dealt with injuries in September and October, but even then, everyone expected the team to not lose much with the depth they assembled. It hasn't happened at all.

Osi Umenyiora and Justin Tuck have underachieved lately for whatever reason. Maybe Umenyiora knew what he was doing when he left the team for a day this summer after a tiff with Giants defensive coordinator Bill Sheridan.

Sheridan looks like he is out of his league in running a defense so far, with the way the other teams run their offensive sets. What we see now would never happen if Rams coach Steve Spagnuolo ran this unit.

We thought Manning's problems of being inconsistent were over after a great playoff run in 2008 and a fine season last year, but that's not the case. To quote Giants general manager Jerry Resse, the Giants quarterback looks skittish.

He throws interceptions these days, and he fails to throw deep to his receivers. A fan told this bystander when we both watched the game at an appliance store on Sunday that Manning's knees affects his ability to run and search for his receiver.

If that's the case, then the Giants are in trouble period. They need to hope Manning plays through the pain and finds a way to produce.

Jacobs and Bradshaw failed to play at their top level so far in these first two months of the season. They don't run for many yardage, and they get stopped as soon as they run.

It's mind boggling to see how far they have fallen off. It looks like their careers may be coming to an end at this point.

They can't pinpoint what's going on, and Jacobs has been in denial about his play by being defensive when a Giants beat writer questioned his performance few weeks ago.

In a competitive conference, the Giants may have a hard time of making the playoffs at this point if they continue to stumble, and there's no guarantee it will get better with what's going on with the team.

One thought it was just one game after the Giants played awful against the Saints, but it's been three games in a row now. When a team plays badly for three games in a row, something is not right and it becomes a trend.

Maybe it's time for all of us to realize the Giants are not an elite team.