Tom Coughlin’s Giants are far from the worst team in the National Football League, but they are, without question, the most wildly inconsistent team in the league, and often it’s hard to tell the difference between inconsistent and worst. Last Sunday, the two seemed interchangeable in the Giants’ devastating 30–7 loss to the New Orleans Saints. It was the Giants’ worst performance of the season, which is saying a lot, and their most utterly baffling. The Saints are a better team than the Giants, but they aren’t that much better, or at least they shouldn’t be that much better, and the Giants were playing at home under desperate circumstances.

After a much publicized team meeting the day before, the Giants came out fired up and swinging: Eli Manning hit on his first six passes, including a perfectly thrown ball which Plaxico Burress took in stride for a 55-yard touchdown play when Saints cornerback Fred Thomas slipped and fell. The play was a knockdown punch, and when the Saints got up from the canvas, the fight was over. The rest of the afternoon was a stunner. Manning completed just three of his next 19 passes and gained only 19 yards in the air; Burress didn’t catch another ball; the Giants netted just 87 total yards on their last 39 plays, lost two fumbles, collected seven penalties (to the Saints two), and never ran a single play from the New Orleans side of the field.

And that was on the offensive side of the ball. On defense, they gave up 360 total yards — 218 more than they gained on offense — and allowed two New Orleans backs, Reggie Bush and Deuce McAllister, to gain more than 100 yards, the first time that has happened against the Giants in 16 seasons.

How can a team with this much talent and so much at stake show up for its biggest game of the year with nothing? And against a team with which, just a few short weeks ago, it seemed to be on an even track. Well, attitude says a lot, and attitude reflects leadership.

After the game, Tiki Barber — who was not a factor, carrying for 71 yards and only once gaining as much as 11 — signed autographs, smiled, and shrugged off the loss, saying, “It’s just another game.” This is how the greatest running back in Giants history left the stadium on Christmas Eve following his final appearance in front of the home crowd. I don’t think Tiki and Coughlin will be exchanging Christmas cards next year.

If they do, here’s hoping the envelope to Coughlin is addressed somewhere out of the New York area. This confused, demoralized, finger-pointing bunch of should-be-All-Pros reflect their coach to a T — or rather, to an X and an O. Last week at a press conference, Coughlin announced it was time for each of his players to look in the mirror and ask the person staring back who he really is. I think the Giants players did just that, and the mirror answered, “Tom Coughlin.” It’s time this team found its reflection in a more stable football mind.

In what is surely the ugliest irony of the 2006 season, the Giants go into the final week with distant playoff chances. I can’t help but think that even the staunchest of Giants fans shudders at the thought of his team in the postseason and is secretly thinking the best way to start 2007 would be for Joe Gibbs’s Redskins to put the Giants out of their misery quickly.

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Watching the Jets slog through their wet, Christmas night thriller over Miami, I couldn’t help but wonder how many Jets could take jobs away from Giants in an open tryout. Offhand, I guess the Giants have more talent than the Jets at 13 of the 22 starting positions, with at least three others up for grabs. To say that Eric Mangini has done a great job with less than spectacular material is an understatement; the truth is that a couple of weeks ago, Jets fans would have been more than happy with the possibility that the team might finish at 8–8. That’s certainly where they should be. When Mike Nugent’s chip shot field goal split the uprights with seconds left in Monday’s game, it left New York’s finest with exactly one more point scored on offense for the season than allowed on defense. Now, just as we saw it coming a month ago, the Jets — on their own home field — merely have to beat the worst team in pro football to not only make the playoffs, but close out the season with an astounding 10–6 record.

No matter what happens in the playoffs, the game against the Raiders will come as a late, much deserved Christmas present — about the only thing that’s come easy to this team since opening day. Once again, in contrast to the Giants, the Jets won by not doing things wrong: just one penalty (and that on the special teams),one lost fumble (in a game played in a driving rain), and just one sack allowed on Chad Pennington to three on Miami’s quarterbacks.

As with several of the Jets’ wins this season, the victory over Miami seemed lucky because most of the Jets aren’t physically impressive and usually appear overmatched. That’s what we see; what isn’t so obvious is the edge the Jets gain over their opponents by seldom making self-destructive mistakes. They really aren’t that good, but what Mangini has developed in them is consistency. Branch Rickey was right when he said luck is the residue of design — to which Eric Mangini might add that luck is also the residue of consistency.

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