How the Giants rose from the dead

Seven weeks ago, the Giants didn't look anything like a team capable or finding its way to Super Bowl XLVI. An ugly, 23-10 loss to the Redskins, which was the Giants' fifth defeat in six games, dropped them to 7-7.

The New York media, which makes us wise-ass Philly hacks look like a bunch of freaking bleeding hearts, couldn't find a pulse and confidently declared the Giants dead.

Eli Manning, the same Eli everyone is canonizing this week, threw three interceptions in that loss. The Giants' vaunted pass rush, the same pass rush that everyone thinks will make Tom Brady's life a living hell, managed to sack the very sackable Rex Grossman just once.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the graveyard. The Giants sprang back to life and - yada, yada, yada - they're one win away from their second Super Bowl parade in 4 years.

"There's always peaks and valleys in a season," Giants general manager Jerry Reese said this week. "Coach [Tom] Coughlin and I meet on Mondays and we talk about everything. We talk out loud. Nobody's feelings get hurt. We talk about what did we do good, what did we do bad? How can we improve? How can we win the next game?

"[After the Redskins game] we just keep talking about, let's play a good game. The offense would play good one week, then the defense would play good, then special teams would do something nice. But we couldn't put it all together. Finally, right there at the end of the regular season, we started to play some good games.

"I still think we can play a better game. The last few weeks, we've been playing pretty good games. That's our goal. We've gotten into a pretty good rhythm. And we're still playing."

The best team doesn't always win, the Daily News has learned. If they did, the Packers or the Saints would be getting ready to play the Patriots on Sunday, not the Giants. Get hot at the right time, get your foot in the playoff door, and anything can happen. On that, Andy Reid and Joe Banner are absolutely correct.

A week after losing to the Redskins, the Giants rebounded to beat their Meadowlands neighbor, the Jets, 29-14. Manning had another poor game, completing just nine of 27 passes. But the defense carried the day, sacking Mark Sanchez five times, forcing three turnovers and holding Sanchez to a puny 4.4 yards per attempt.

With the Giants clinging to an uneasy six-point lead with 2 minutes, 13 seconds left in the fourth quarter, defensive lineman Chris Canty sacked Sanchez in the end zone for a safety. After a failed onside kick by the Jets, running back Ahmad Bradshaw put the game on ice with a 19-yard touchdown run.

The Giants punched their playoff ticket the next week when they rolled over the Cowboys, 31-14, to win the NFC East. The Giants' pass rush had another big day, sacking Tony Romo six times.

After poor games against the Redskins and Jets, Manning found his stride against the Cowboys, completing 24 of 33 passes for 346 yards and throwing three touchdown passes and no interceptions.

"We just tried to continue on 1 day, one practice, one game at a time, knowing what we needed to do to get to the playoffs," defensive end Justin Tuck said. "After the Redskins game, we had one of the best weeks of practice we had all season. It was just amazing. All of the frustration, all of the disappointment [over losing to the Redskins], we were able to put it behind us and focus on the task at hand.

"I thought we went out and played one of our best games [against the Jets]. Lucky for us, we were able to keep putting our best games together every week since. And that's how we got here."

A defense that often was a sieve this season, giving up 27 or more points in seven of the first 14 games, including 87 points in back-to-back losses to the Saints and Packers, has been rock-solid since the loss to the Redskins.

In their last five games, the Giants have 20 sacks and 11 takeaways and have held opposing quarterbacks to a .578 completion percentage and 5.8 yards per attempt. They have allowed just 13.4 points per game since the Redskins loss.

"Communication," defensive coordinator Perry Fewell said, when asked to explain the much-improved play. "It sounds simple, but it's not easy. When your players stop listening, you're in trouble. The players never stopped listening. They wanted to get it right.

"We had a lot of young guys playing that didn't really have the experience that we needed. They sometimes didn't understand the concepts we were trying to teach and get across to them with our game plans. But they never shut us out from listening to what we were trying to accomplish. They kept believing in what we were trying to get done."

Wow. That sounds almost Castillo-ish.

Offensively, the Giants have been productive both running and throwing the football during their resurrection. Their two running backs, Bradshaw and Brandon Jacobs, seldom were healthy together during the regular season. But they're healthy now. A ground game that averaged a league-worst 89.2 yards per game during the regular season is averaging 117.3 in the playoffs.

And Manning is playing some of the best football of his career. Including the division-clinching win over the Cowboys, he's thrown 11 touchdown passes and just one interception in the last four games. He has a 103.1 playoff passer rating.

"It was combined group will," left tackle David Diehl said when asked to explain how the Giants have gone from 7-7 to the Super Bowl. "You look back to when we were 7-7, people were talking about coach Coughlin getting fired. Jobs on the line. [They were saying] this team doesn't have a chance. I think we used that as motivation for ourselves.

"When your back is up against the wall and you still have the opportunity to control your own destiny like we did, I think we banded together as a group and as a team and said, hey, enough's enough. If we were going to get it done, it was going to have to be the guys in the [locker] room. Because the people on the outside didn't believe it. But we believed in one another. We believed in what we were doing."

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