MMQB Power Rankings: New York Giants Take Baby Step Forward

The Giants are still winless, but of the three winless teams, they've been the most competitive, which is good enough for the MMQB team to give the Giants a slight promotion in this week's power rankings.

In this, head coach Joe Judge’s first season as Giants head coach, the team’s progress has been all about taking baby steps toward being a cohesive team.

So even though the Giants came up short in their effort against the Dallas Cowboys last week, much like their just missed efforts against the Bears in Week 2 and the Rams in Week 4, a bounce here, and a successful field goal fake there, and the Giants might very well have a much better record than their current 0-5 mark.

Regardless, the gang over at MMQB saw the Giants valiant effort—they haven’t quit despite the odds continuing to be stacked against them, and despite the many new and exciting ways they seem to find to lose games—as having taken baby steps forward, which is revealed in this week’s power rankings where the Giants rose from No. 31 to No. 29.

The head-scratcher was the meltdown against the 49ers. The Giants might be 0-5, but in two of those losses, they drove deep into opponent territory with a chance to win or tie in the final minute, and on Sunday, they lost on a last-second kick—set up by an exceptional catch—in Dallas. They’re undermanned, but it feels like they’re going to steal a few games in 2020.

As Bill Parcells once said, you are what your record says you are, and the Giants are an 0-5 team. But unlike the other two winless teams in the NFL (Jets and Falcons), the Giants seem a lot closer to being ready to win if they can ever figure out how to stop hurting themselves.

This weekend, the Giants will try to figure that out against a 1-4 Washington Football team, a game in which the Giants are currently a 2.5-point favorite, the first time this year they've been favored to win a game.