Neither the Giants nor the Lions looked like a playoff team yesterday at Detroit’s Ford Field, but despite sloppy play for much of the afternoon, the Giants won a game that makes them the clear front-runners in the NFC wildcard race.

The Giants’ 16–10 win improves their record to 7–3 and gives them a one-game lead in the standings — plus the tiebreaker edge — over the Lions, who remain in second place for the two NFC wild-card spots.

But while the Giants’ victory was an important win that halts any talk that they’re heading for another second-half slide, it wasn’t pretty. The game featured 14 penalties and six fumbles, and after taking a 16–3 fourth-quarter lead, the Giants very nearly allowed the Lions to come back and win.

The game also featured two significant injuries: Linebacker Mathias Kiwanuka is probably out for the season after breaking his leg when defensive end Osi Umenyiora fell on it, and running back Brandon Jacobs limped off the field clutching his hamstring and did not return.

The player of the game for the Giants was defensive end Michael Strahan, who sacked Lions quarterback Jon Kitna three times. Kitna had been sacked 37 times heading into yesterday’s game, by far the most of any quarterback in the NFL, and the Giants knew their defensive game plan would need to revolve around pressuring Kitna.

Strahan’s three sacks, however, were the only ones the Giants recorded all game, and for much of the day Kitna was effective at finding holes in the Giants’ secondary, completing 28 of 43 passes for 377 yards. But the Giants intercepted Kitna three times, all late in the game, to prevent the Lions from coming back.

For the first 50 minutes of football, the Giants never looked like they needed to worry about the Lions. The Giants took a 3–0 lead on a first-quarter field goal and expanded the lead to 10–0 just before halftime with a 10-yard touchdown pass from Eli Manning to Brandon Jacobs. That score finished an 11-play, 80-yard drive, and when two second-half drives yielded two field goals, the Giants had a 16–3 lead, and appeared to have the game in hand.

But late in the fourth quarter the Giants started playing a prevent defense, and that’s when Kitna went to work. It took the Lions just four plays — and took just 1:18 off the clock — to go 82 yards and score, with the Lions’ 6-foot-4-inch wide receiver Calvin Johnson out-leaping the Giants’ 5-foot-8-inch defensive back Kevin Dockery in the end zone to haul in a 35-yard touchdown pass, cutting the deficit to 16–10. When the Giants went three-and-out on the ensuing possession, the Lions got the ball back with 2:25 left in the game in a position where a touchdown and extra point would win it.

When Justin Tuck was then called for roughing the passer, stopping the clock and giving Detroit 15 yards and a first down, many Giants fans no doubt thought they were watching the start of the collapse. Two plays later, the Lions ran the exact same play they had previously run on the touchdown pass to Johnson, but this time the receiver was the 5-foot-10-inch Shaun McDonald instead of Johnson, and the 6-foot-3-inch Giants defensive back James Butler intercepted. The Lions got the ball back one last time, but Giants cornerback Sam Madison sealed the game with an interception of his own.

The biggest question facing the Giants Monday is how long Jacobs’s hamstring injury will keep him out. Before he got hurt, Jacobs was having an outstanding game, with 11 carries for 54 yards and four catches for 49 yards. Running back Derrick Ward missed yesterday’s game and has been banged up for most of the season, and the Giants can’t afford to lose Jacobs, too.

The Giants also can’t afford to continue the sloppy, disorganized way their offense so often runs. A week ago the Giants had three delay-of-game penalties. Yesterday a five-yard penalty for too many players in the huddle turned a third-and-1 into a third-and-6, and a false start penalty turned another third-and-1 into a third-and-6. On both occasions, the Giants couldn’t convert on the next play and had to punt.

But while the Giants aren’t a great team, they are a good team. Detroit hadn’t lost at home all year until the Giants came to town, and that makes yesterday’s win, no matter how sloppy it looked, a reason for optimism. Last week’s loss to the Cowboys hurt the Giants in the NFC East race, but six NFC teams will make the playoffs, and with six games left in the season, the Giants are in an excellent position to be one of them.