NY Giants Surprisingly Gain Ground in Latest MMQB's NFL Power Rankings Poll

The New York Giants might have added another brutal loss to their now 2-12 record which is dancing with the possibility of creating a worse finish than their 3-14 record last season.

However, somehow, they still haven't shown enough to be considered the most downtrodden franchise in the NFL, according to the latest MMQB power ranking poll.

New York actually managed to jump up one spot in the aftermath of Week 15, moving to No. 30, just ahead of their cross-market rivals in the New York Jets and the Las Vegas Raiders.

Really, at this point, there’s not much that can be said about the quality of football, so rankings compiler Conor Orr has been zeroing in on the other stories surrounding the Giants.

"I think Jaxson Dart has some interesting thoughts on how a narrative—specifically regarding his play—can get out of control and impact actual gameplay," Orr said this week.

"Officials will almost always assume he has sustained some kind of head trauma, which, while for his protection, is not the same course of action taken with almost any other quarterback."

Despite all the continued malfunctioning that seemed to come from the other two areas of the Giants' roster that powered their loss on Sunday, Dart was once again the main focal point in the fourth quarter, when he took a scary looking hit from Commanders defensive tackle Javon Kinlaw on a designed run up the middle during the team's second drive of the final frame.

While it didn't appear to those watching on television and from the bleachers that Dart had banged his head on the MetLife turf on the tail end of the play, it still prompted the officiating crew to send him out of the game and into the blue medical tent for a brief evaluation.

The Giants had to continue their possession with backup Jameis Winston coming in to relieve the rookie for a few plays, and the impact of his absence was clear.

The Commanders had committed a defensive pass interference infraction on the previous play that placed the Giants within a sniff of the goal line, but Winston couldn't get the ball into the endzone and gave the turn away on downs.

It was both a strange sequence of events for the first-year signal caller and a comeback killer for the Giants, who were fighting to create a rally from a two-score deficit and were knocking on the door of an important score with over 13 minutes of action left to be played.

They managed to force two intriguing turnovers on defense, one of them helping to score one more touchdown on their next possession to cut the Washington lead to eight points, but it wasn't enough to overcome their earlier deficiencies and late fizzling out on offense to snap their seven-game skid.

Beyond their latest embarrassing performance on the gridiron in front of their exhausted fans and their current standing in the draft order, it seems like the only thing keeping Orr from making the fateful decision to drop the Giants into the basement of the NFL was the more pitiful outings that the two teams underneath provided their organizations on Sunday.

The Jets, who hold just one extra victory than the Giants, saw their defense completely exposed by the Jacksonville Jaguars who are suddenly ascending in the AFC picture and piled on a heaping 48 points that served as the catalyst for the Jets to part ways with their defensive coordinator Steve Wilks and shed a poor light on their decisions to ship off their best players on that side of the ball at the deadline.

At the same time, the Raiders were the victims of a 31-0 goose egg effort on the road against the Philadelphia Eagles, who were desperate for a get-right game amid their own three-game losing streak to stay relevant near the top of the NFC postseason bracket.

The Raiders just look like a minor league team across all facets of the game, and they have an important meeting with the Giants in two weeks that could decide which franchise earns the top slot in the draft this coming April.

That is assuming the Giants lose the contest before that against the Minnesota Vikings, which seems very possible given the Vikings' hot streak and pride in finishing the year.

It'll be interesting to see whether the Giants can find some of that pride themselves to avoid landing in a rare position that they haven't been in since 1965, when they last owned the first selection in the draft, or if they will book it in to convince Orr to drop them into the title of the worst team in his league order before the season is finished.

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