If there was any doubt in anyone’s mind, the Giants’ 44-24 victory over the St. Louis Rams at the Meadowlands yesterday confirmed it: Eli Manning has arrived, and the real strength of the 2005 Giants is offense, not defense.

The Giants have scored on their first possession in all four of their games, and this time out coach Tom Coughlin understood that they needed to score and keep scoring. The Giants scored on their first five possessions against the Rams yesterday, roughly the equivalent of a prize fighter scoring three knockdowns in the first two rounds. Like the recipient of a few haymakers, St. Louis seemed dazed and never really recovered. Just before the half, they had a chance to make it look good when quarterback Marc Bulger, throwing a blizzard of passes, moved them down to the Giants’ 23-yard line with six seconds left. The Rams missed a field goal try, and that was basically it.

Not that the game was ever truly in doubt. This was the game in which the Giants finally realized they had everything they needed to field a terrific offense. Plaxico Burress picked the Rams’ pockets even against brutal double coverage and recorded his best day as a Giant, catching 10 passes for 204 yards and two touchdowns. With every vital reception hauled in by the tall, speedy Burress, it should have become more and more obvious to New York fans that he is the kind of deep threat the Giants have lacked for years. It should also have been obvious, though, that the Giants will at least have to find someone capable of taking the pressure off Burress and that Amani Toomer – whose touchdown reception yesterday was his first since 2003 – is not the one.

The Rams’ safeties, Michael Hawthorne and Adam Archuleta, were incapable of offering the support needed to contain Burress, but the teams the Giants will have to defeat to win the division – the Eagles, Redskins, and Cowboys – can. One cure for double coverage is a tight end who can beat a safety over the middle and then run him over, and early in the third quarter, the Giants remembered they had one when Jeremy Shockey elbowed Archuleta away from a Manning bullet to haul in a 31-yard touchdown.

Next week’s bye will the Manning and the Giants an extra week to plan for their Week 6 matchup with the Cowboys in Dallas. When that game begins, don’t be surprised to see the Giants start out by throwing to Shockey and making Roy Williams, the Cowboys strong side safety, so tight-end conscious that Manning is able to slip a big gainer to a wide open wideout.

Right now, the Giants, on offense, are clicking on all cylinders, averaging well over 30 points a game. Most important, Manning and the receiving unit are making opposing defenses so concerned about the pass that Tiki Barber is more effective than ever. (His yards per carry average for the season jumped from 4.1 to 4.5 just on the strength of the 128 yards on 24 carries he accumulated in yesterday’s game.) Barber’s effectiveness is dependent on Manning’s ability to spread opposing defenses, and Eli’s right on the verge of being one of the best passers in the league at doing this.

The league has not yet recognized exactly how good Manning is because a mediocre pass completion percentage (53.7% after four games) pulls down his overall NFL passer rating. But as I’ve often maintained, pass completion percentage is largely irrelevant – the only two statistics that really matter are yards per throw and interception percentage. In the first, Manning, whose yards per pass stat has risen every week, is now at approaching superstar status at 8.0, and in the latter he is just 1.6% per 100 throws, which is Bart Starr-type impressive. His ratio of nine touchdown passes to two interceptions is one of the best in the league. (In case you’re wondering, big brother Peyton is averaging 7.5 yards per throw and has just six touchdowns against two interceptions.)

When he arrives in Bill Parcells’s building, Manning will be facing the best defensive coach he’s been up against this year, but it’s doubtful that the inconsistent Cowboys have the tools to stop him. Right now, the best Manning in the NFL is named Eli.

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We’re just 60 minutes of playing time into the Brooks Bollinger era – who’d have thought we’d be hearing those words when the season started? – and so far there’s absolutely nothing to comment on. The Jets’ offense line is beat up, Curtis Martin looks shot, and Bollinger, starting his first game for Gang Green, looked as lost as Dick Cheney in the French Quarter.

Bollinger was okay when it came to handing the ball off (as he did on eight of the Jets’ first nine plays from scrimmage in yesterday’s 13-3 loss to the Baltimore Ravens), which is to say he didn’t fumble. But that’s about it.

Late in the second quarter, with Baltimore holding what looked to be an insurmountable 6-0 lead, Bollinger faked a handoff to Curtis Martin and then tripped over his running back’s foot and fell down. Color man Dan Dierdorf, searching for something complimentary to say, could only come up with, “Well, at least he realized he wasn’t still in college [where the play would have been whistled dead] and got right back up.”

I suppose this is no small thing, given the amount of time Bollinger actually spent on the turf, having been sacked five times and knocked down on four other occasions. The Jets defense, for their part, couldn’t manage a single sack on the Ravens’ mediocre backup quarterback, Anthony Wright, though they did pick off one of his passes, which is more than the Ravens could do to Bollinger.

It was evident from the first series of downs that coach Herman Edwards didn’t feel confident enough with Bollinger’s knowledge of the team’s offense to take any chances, which the Ravens’ defense quickly understood. On the very first series, they installed free safety Will Demps as an inside pass rusher, deciding to take their chances with downfield throws which never came, at least not until the fourth quarter, when the Ravens were up by 10 points.

On each series of downs, it seemed they put an extra man up to the line of scrimmage until, early in the second quarter, I counted at least 15 Baltimore defensive players up on the line, including three Ray Lewises. On virtually every pass play, Bollinger looked like General Custer in one of those Custer’s Last Stand paintings they used to hang in bars.

The only good news for the Jets is that Bollinger, when allowed to do so late in the game, exhibited a pretty good throwing arm. He’s bound to improve once he learns more than, say, four plays in the offensive scheme. The bad news, though, is that next week the Jets play the unbeaten Tampa Bay Bucs, who have a defense even better than Baltimore’s. This probably cancels out the good news.

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