The Giants are one win from matching the New Orleans Saints’ victory total of 2006, with three games to go. So why doesn’t this team feel anywhere near as dangerous or special?

The numbers indicate that the Giants can run the football (ranked seventh in rushing yards) and play some defense (seventh in yards allowed, first in sacks). And critical shortcomings from recent seasons, such as scoring in the red zone (84.4% scoring rate) and penalty yards (a very respectable eighth in the NFL), appear to have been overcome. There have been injuries to one of the team’s top pass rushers (Mathias Kiwanuka), the top two runners (Brandon Jacobs, who’s back, and Derrick Ward, who is out for the season), and just last week, both starting safeties were hurt, leaving a seventh-rounder and an un-drafted free agent as the last line of defense against Donovan McNabb. And yet, things keep rolling, bumpy track or not. The Philadelphia Eagles didn’t complete a pass longer than 19 yards in the game and the Giants won.

Quarterback Eli Manning, if nothing else, has been the anti-LBJ, seemingly immune to whitehot criticism. He has shown resilience and responded with some nice resolve during the past few weeks, even as his job has dangled in the balance. Unlike last year’s most maligned quarterback on a winning team — Chicago’s Rex Grossman — Manning doesn’t appear afraid to fail.

On top of that, it’s hard to overlook any team that has gone 6–1 on the road.

Certainly, similar elements have been paramount to championship teams of the recent past. But despite the endorsement of NBC analyst Cris Collinsworth — he called the Giants “dangerous” in the promotion for their Sunday-night game with the Washington Redskins — this club appears to scare few people league-wide, even with their seemingly impressive resume.

“They have some guys on defense and a pretty good running game,” said an offensive assistant of a recent Giants opponent. “But I just think they are beatable. [They are] good, not great at all. They have won some games, but I am not sure how they are doing it exactly.”

The Giants’ four losses have come to three teams that would be in the playoffs if they began today: the Dallas Cowboys (twice), the Green Bay Packers, and the Minnesota Vikings. Three of those losses have also been at home. Like the old boss, Bill Parcells, said, “You are what your record is.”

But he said it with a talented team that was under-performing in his mind. This year’s Giants outfit, in comparison, might instead be a fairly talented team that’s winning ugly and doing it in strange fashion. The memories and wounds of the blowout losses — especially the 41–17 thrashing by the Vikings in Week 12 — appear fresher and weigh more heavily than ugly and close wins against the Lions, Bears, and Eagles, in which the opponents had ample chances to take control of the games. Credit the Giants for making just enough plays and finishing off those opponents — but the team’s fear factor has remained low throughout the season.

If there appears to be a more reliable side of the ball, it has been the defense. In the past nine games, only three teams have had much in the way of success throwing the ball against them, including the Cowboys and Lions, two of the better passing teams in the NFL. The pass rush has kicked it up a notch after a lull, recording 16 sacks in the past four games.

“That’s what I will say about them: Their defense keeps them in games,” the NFC assistant said. “They’ll make plays and come after you.”

As it stands, the Giants likely would travel to either Seattle or Tampa for a first-round game against the Seahawks or Buccaneers. Each has only one loss at home this season.

Clearly, winning on the road is something the great teams do. The Giants could go 7–1 with a win over the Buffalo Bills next week — something only 13 teams have done since 1997. In the past nine seasons, 17 of the 18 Super Bowl teams have had a regular-season mark of at least 5–3 (last year’s Indianapolis Colts were 4–4) and 11 of those teams were 6–2 or better. “It doesn’t make a difference if you are on the road or you are at home,” Manning said yesterday. “It is just about execution, finishing drives, and not making the mistakes and that is what we have done some in the home games.” Perhaps the flashpoint of the Giants’ season was in the first matchup against the Redskins. They turned a 17–0 deficit — on the road, naturally — into a big victory that was culminated by a four-play, goal-line stand. A win this week gives the Giants a playoff spot. But more than that, it could give the team the added benefit of a quality victory near the end of the season.

“Whether you win this week or not, I think we still have to have the mindset that we have to improve our offensive game from my standpoint, get better at scoring points, our execution, and getting rid of the bad plays,” Manning said.

Comparing teams of the past and present is tricky, inaccurate business. But one obvious truth is that win totals don’t mean squat once the playoffs roll around. The Bears won 13 games in 2001 but flamed out in their first playoff game, losing by two touchdowns at home. The next season, the 12–4 Green Bay Packers had winning streaks of seven and four games, but they lost to Michael Vick and the Atlanta Falcons at home. And, of course, Steve Smith and the Carolina Panthers undressed the 11-win Giants of 2005. “I haven’t analyzed any of that type of thing (in terms of a commonality between playoff teams of the past and this one),” head coach Tom Coughlin said. “The most important thing I think is that we continue to have this spirit of trying to play better and trying to do our job better and just focus on giving great effort, being as prepared as we possibly can, and then being able to execute on the field.

“That is the spirit and the attitude that I am looking for,” he added.

That’s the spirit that last year’s Saints had, and that this year’s Giants, to date, appear to lack.

Mr. Edholm, a senior editor at Pro Football Weekly, can be reached at eedholm@pfwmedia.