Oddsmakers Give Giants a 5% Chance at Making the Playoffs
Playoffs? What playoffs?
That’s what the oddsmakers at FiveThirtyEight are asking when it comes to the New York Giants’ chances of somehow rebounding from an 0-4 start to their season to slip into the playoffs.
The site lists the Giants with a 5% chance of qualifying for the postseason and projects them to finish with a 4-12 record this year.
Those odds are notable considering the NFC East has been abysmal through four games, the four teams—Giants, Washington, Dallas, and Eagles—combining for a 3-12-1 record and that there is also an extra playoff spot this year to be had.
Truthfully, the oddsmakers aren’t revealing any groundbreaking news regarding the Giants' very slim playoff chances, even in a vastly watered-down division.
The Giants are on their third coaching staff since Tom Coughlin resigned after the 2015 season, a fact that cannot be overlooked because every time a new coaching staff comes in, there’s a very good chance he’s going to want his guys in the locker room. This process can sometimes take a couple of off-seasons to complete.
You can point to the lack of the off-season and preseason as well, but those excuses only carry so much weight, given that all the other teams went through the same situation. But what you can say is that not every other team went through a massive rebuild of its offensive line or its defense, though again, those excuses only take one so far.
And with the Giants, well, who saw the season-ending injury to running back Saquon Barkley coming, or the devastating toe injury by receiver Sterling Shepard on the horizon? If you don’t think those two injuries are still affecting this team, then think again.
But with all that said, the Giants are the victims of their own doing. Quarterback Daniel Jones’s turnovers continue to be a problem, and this year, they seem more pronounced as an argument could be made that they have cost the team a chance to win at least three of their four games this year.
There’s still a lot of football left to be played, so anything can happen. And the Giants defense, at least, has been showing some signs of life, which is encouraging,
Five percent might be better than the three percent odds given to the Jaguars and the less than one percent odds given to the Jets.
But let’s not get too excited over the Giants odds, as despite the state of the division is such where anyone can take it, the Giants best concentrate on fixing their own shortcomings first before thinking about conquering the NFC Least.
