Keidel: After Rough Patch, Giants Are Hitting Their Stride

By Jason Keidel
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So while one club from MetLife has lost life, another seems to have a growing pulse.

While Gang Green is gangrenous, Big Blue is quietly improving and nudging their way into the opaque playoff picture.

Sunday was no small victory for the Giants, who not only beat the hated Philadelphia Eagles, but also snuck into second place in the NFC East, two games behind the surprisingly resurgent Dallas Cowboys.

The victory framed the twin benefits of a much-needed win within the rugged division, but also showed the Giants' best player is back on track.

Odell Beckham Jr., the electric, eccentric wideout for the Giants, flashed his otherworldly talent while taming his erratic behavior. Just a month ago, Beckham was acting so unhinged that half of us -- including yours truly -- had him fitted for a padded room somewhere near your local asylum.

But to his everlasting credit, Beckham has stretched him famously short fuse, while his production has returned to his unprecedented standards.

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Since his woeful game at the Vikings on Oct. 10 -- nine targets, three catches for 23 yards -- Beckham has gone from implosion to explosion. In the four games since that Minnesota eyesore, Beckham has 41 catches, 373 yards and five touchdowns.

Not exactly the stratospheric standards he's established since landing like a meteor on the gridiron. But considering he had zero touchdowns in his first four games, Beckham is back to being the singular threat that made him a singular star.

Beckham turned his most inelegant moment -- assaulted by a kicker's net -- into an "SNL" skit, courting the mass of metal and mesh for weeks until he proposed on the sideline, on bended knee, and gleefully asserted that she accepted.

Campy? Over the top? Sure. But it speaks to a self-effacing side we hadn't seen in his brief-but-stellar career. Beckham had given us the sense that he was slowly morphing into his self-involved predecessors, from T.O. to Ochocinco, who were always around and smooching themselves when things went well, then pouted and buried their heads in the sand at the first whiff of adversity.

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Big Blue was teetering on disaster. When the played the Rams in London, there was talk that the Giants wasted their time canning Tom Coughlin just to hire his minion who was looking less like the offensive guru they expected and more like the ringleader of a circus spiraling down the drain of contention.

But at 5-3, ensconced in second place, only Dallas, Seattle and Atlanta have a better records in the wide-open NFC. (Minnesota, at 5-3, owns the tiebreaker.) The Giants aren't aesthetically pleasing, but we all know that being above .500 speaks for itself, that there's no greater NFL oxymoron than an "ugly win."

The gridiron gods are smiling, or at least smirking, at Big Blue. With eight games left, the Giants have a soft swath of opponents on the way. After a tough, Monday night game, at home, against the moody Bengals, they play Chicago and Cleveland, who are a combined 2-14. If they can sneak past the Bengals and beat the Bears and Browns, they would be 8-3.

The Giants must win those games if they want any dreams of January football, as they have an ornery slate the rest of the way, against the Steelers, Cowboys, Lions, Eagles and Redskins -- all of whom are .500 or better.

And, to quote the patron saint of the Meadowlands, Bill Parcells, the Giants are what their record says they are. And at the halfway mark of this NFL season, the Giants are in the playoff hunt, the lone club pumping any life into MetLife.

Follow Jason on Twitter at @JasonKeidel