In perhaps their first “signature” win of the season, the Giants did what they should have done yesterday: beat the Washington Redskins at the Meadowlands. The mark in the win column made sense, but virtually nothing else about the game did. The two eastern division rivals were both 4-2 at the kickoff, and given the Giants’ edge in versatility and firepower plus the home field advantage, a 3-5 point victory would have made sense.

The Redskins had been on an offensive roll, with quarterback Mark Brunell having thrown six touchdown passes against just two interceptions in Washington’s last two games, while the Giants overrated defense was 31st in the league in yards allowed. Given how the Redskins’ strengths seemed to match well against the Giants’ weaknesses, and given Joe Gibbs’s history of exploiting such circumstances, you would have expected Washington to light up the scoreboard, even in defeat.

Instead, Tiki Barber, on the game’s first play from scrimmage, took a handoff, ran to his left, cut to the outside, went 59 yards to set up a field goal, and just like that, the game was over. The last 33 points were practically window dressing.

The fact that no Gibbs-led team has ever been shutout in a regular season game is essentially irrelevant here; the point is not how badly the Redskins were whipped, but how quickly. A glib explanation for the one-sidedness of the game – or, at least the one offered by Fox’s innocuous commentators – is that the Giants were fired up to dedicate the game to their recently deceased owner, Wellington Mara. But that seems dubious. If the Giants had been flat, Mara’s death could just have easily served as an excuse for lackluster performance. Anyway, the 36-0 score seemed to have less to do with the Giants being good than with the Redskins being bad, and the score didn’t really represent what either team is capable of.

Nonetheless, it was a coffin nail for the Skins, who must now look to the toughest part of their schedule without having answered any of the major questions surrounding the team since spring practice. Let’s get one thing out of the way right now: The Redskins do not have a quarterback controversy, they have a quarterback problem. Patrick Ramsey is big and young with a great arm and is dumber than Jessica Simpson on Quaaludes. Mark Brunell has been a better quarterback than Ramsey will ever be, but he’s 34, and his offensive stats this year benefit mightily from last week’s 52-17 thrashing of perhaps the worst defensive team in modern NFL history, the San Francisco 49ers.

Oddly enough, the Giants, who have suffered numerous defensive lapses throughout the young season, are the first team to figure out that the left-handed Brunell can no longer throw when flushed out of the pocket – in this game by Michael Strahan, about nine times – and forced to roll to his right. The Giants are also the first to take advantage of the disparity between Washington’s north-south run blocking schemes and the talents of running back Clinton Portis, who is a classic shoulders-squared east-west kind of guy.

Portis gained just nine yards on four carries and was never a factor in the game; three times the Giants, utilizing the run-blitz, hit him before he could square his shoulders and turn upfield.

In truth, no one was much of a factor for the Redskins offense, which produced just 38 yards rushing and a paltry 125 total on the day. Brunell was only 11 of 28 for 65 yards. Some of his passes were taken awry by the Meadowlands’ swirling winds, but most of his incompletions were forced by the Giants pass rush, which registered five sacks and four other knockdowns.

Eli Manning, for his part, managed just one more completion than Brunell in three more attempts. The difference was that Manning produced 146 yards to Brunell’s 65. Manning also seemed to lose at least six passes to the winds.

Before the game, everyone was saying that the Giants needed a decisive win to establish their identity, and they got it. But strangely enough, the win didn’t tell us that much about where the Giants really are.

Barber is a terrific running back, maybe the most underrated in the league, and it was good to see him touch the ball 24 times (Only the second time this year he’s had that many, having totaled just 107 attempts in the previous six games). But his 206 yards of rushing was a fluke, and his 59- and 58-yard runs against Washington are probably the longest he’ll muster this year.

It’s difficult to say whether the game was a step forward or backward for Manning – we’ll say forward for now, since the Giants won. But his passes, particularly those when the Giants had the ball in the red zone, were, except for a 12-yard touchdown strike to the curiously underused Jeremy Shockey, all over the place.

If Tom Coughlin thinks the Giants are going to win the NFC on running and defense, he’s in for a rude shock as the season progresses, though probably not in the next two weeks, when the Giants play what ought to be two laughers. Next week, they take on the college All-Stars in San Francisco, then return home to host the horrendous Minnesota Vikings. These are the kinds of games the Giants have stumbled over in recent years when they appeared to be building steam, and their ability to dominate these two teams will tell us much about how serious they really are. After all, the Giants killed seasons just as promising as this one in 2003 and 2004 with total collapses down the stretch.

After the Eagles’ crash and burn in Denver yesterday, the Giants’ path to the top of the NFC East has suddenly opened up. Big Blue should host the Eagles at the Meadowlands on November 20 at least one full game in the lead with enough momentum to make a run for the home field advantage in the playoffs. The operative word here is “should.”

Mr. Barra is the author of “The Last Coach: A Life of Paul ‘Bear’ Bryant.”