Twelve games into the 2006 season, the Jets are the essence of mediocrity. Going into yesterday’s game with the Green Bay Packers, they were 17th in the league in points scored on offense and 14th in points allowed on defense. After beating the Packers 38–10,they have now scored exactly three more points than they’ve allowed. If you open the dictionary to the word “mediocre,” it would show a team picture of the 2006 Jets.

Fortunately for the Jets and their fans, they seem to own a dictionary and are playing like they really think they are playoff contenders. They have now put together back-to-back wins against two bad teams, the Houston Texans and the Packers, winning the games by a combined 45 points. I repeat, they have beaten two bad teams, but when you were 4–12 the season before, it doesn’t matter if you’re playing the high school team in “Friday Night Lights”— beating any two teams by 45 points, especially, NFL teams, is pretty impressive.

Actually, a better place to look the Jets up in the dictionary might be “overachiever.” Since the humiliating 41–0 loss to Jacksonville on October 8, the Jets have won four of six, and if they hadn’t blown that October 29 game at Cleveland, they would now be in contention for the lead in the AFC East. They’re not going to take the division, but a playoff berth is more than a distant hope.

Among the Jets’ last four regular season opponents — Buffalo, Miami, Minnesota, and Oakland — there isn’t a team with a winning record in the bunch. Next week they play Buffalo at the Meadowlands; they finish with Oakland, also at Giants Stadium. They should win both games. The dangerous ones come in between — Minnesota on December 17 and Miami on Christmas night, both on the road. If the Jets win one of those two, they’ll probably be in the playoffs.

Let’s have no illusions that the Jets are as good as the final score against the Packers would indicate, but they may not have to be to make it to the postseason. They don’t have a killer passing attack; Chad Pennington has thrown exactly as many interceptions this season, 13, as TD passes. They don’t have an ace running back, though Cedric Houston did a creditable impression of Curtis Martin yesterday with 105 yards on 22 carries and two touchdowns. They don’t have any monster defensive players, but since losing to Jacksonville they’ve gone seven games without giving up more than 24 points and four in a row without giving up more than 14.

But once again, the Jets demonstrated that the things they don’t do can win games. Against the Packers, they didn’t commit many penalties (just three inconsequential flags for 20 yards), didn’t lose a fumble, and didn’t give up a sack on Pennington. Tom Coughlin and the Giants should take some pages from Eric Mangini’s playbook.

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One of the pages in that book, I’m sure, would read, “Don’t beat yourself on stupid penalties.” Yesterday at the Meadowlands, the Giants found yet a new way to lose a football game: the cheap shot. The Giants cheap shot themselves in the foot.

For the ninth time in 12 games, they drew more penalties than their opponent, though this time it was close — nine for New York (for 94 yards) to seven for Dallas (54 yards). The Giants’ preferred method of getting the officials to go flag waving has been the false start penalty. Yesterday they changed not the error of their ways but the way of their errors, drawing four personal fouls, two of which gave the Cowboys key first downs and a third which set up an important fourth quarter touchdown for Dallas running back Marion Barber.

To be sure, two of them were questionable, and one was positively outrageous. That’s what happens when you get a reputation; you’ll recall that last week against Tennessee, Frank Walker’s out of bounds cheap-shot on Vince Young gave Tennessee a vital first down during their fourth-quarter comeback.

Yesterday’s game exploded several myths about the Giants. The first is that they couldn’t get motivated for a big game. In fact, I’ve never seen a Coughlin-coached Giants squad more revved up than they were when they came out of the tunnel yesterday, and the fouls were more than likely a result of being too worked up.

The second myth was that New York’s problems are solely the result of Eli Manning. The Giants have found ways to lose games without Manning’s help, and yesterday they did it again. The kid has taken so much flak during their four-game losing streak that he deserves a pat for his performance against Dallas, even though the Giants lost. Eli was superb, hitting on 24 of 36 passes for 270 yards and two touchdowns with no interceptions, leading the Giants on a gutsy 63-yard fourth quarter drive for a touchdown that should have won the game.

Really, you couldn’t expect Eli to do much better than that, and he won his duel with the much-celebrated Cowboys passer, Tony Romo, who gained 257 yards on 34 throws with no touchdowns and two interceptions. In fact, until the Giants blew a coverage on Dallas tight end Jason Witten late in the fourth quarter for a 42-yard bomb which set up the winning field goal, Romo looked pretty much like Drew Bledsoe, the quarterback the Giants chased out of the lineup when they beat the Cowboys 36–22 on October 23.

The Giants’ problem isn’t lack of emotion, and it isn’t Eli Manning. It’s a lack of focus in key moments and a lack of discipline — not shined shoes and coatsand-ties on the team plane kind of discipline, but a lack of attention to fundamentals. Every week it’s something new with this team — a new bolt that comes loose, a different cannon that someone forgot to tie down. With the playoffs looking like an uphill struggle, they can spend the last four games searching for something to salvage.

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