Dreaming of Giants’ ideal day — because just getting here was impossible

Look, it’s still a pipe dream’s pipe dream, a crazy notion, a fantasy that exists, and should exist, only on the fringes of our imagination. OK? We haven’t all lost our minds or our sense of order.

Still, these are two absolute realities as Sunday dawns:

1. It is Dec. 15.

2. The Giants are not eliminated from the NFL playoffs.

And that is a reality that didn’t seem remotely possible five weeks ago — as the Giants were coming off a bye at 1-7, when they had started to sell off their team for parts, when the talk had fervently turned to the future.

Now, yes, the 4-1 record the Giants have assembled in the five weeks since come with a stew pot stuffed with qualifiers: The 49ers are awful, the Buccaneers looked worse when it was Ryan Fitzpatrick slinging the ball who knows where, the Bears played a backup quarterback because they didn’t feel they needed to play the starter, and the Redskins, quite possibly, are the worst team in the NFL right now. All true. All fair.

And, yes, the last time the Giants played a game like the one they play Sunday, when they were able to prove this playoff talk isn’t a fable but for real, they fell on their faces and gagged away a lead at Philadelphia three weeks ago. Again: true. Again: fair.

It doesn’t change the fact that Sunday afternoon, just past 1 o’clock, the Giants and the Titans will play a football game at MetLife Stadium that is of critical importance to Tennessee — that much isn’t at all surprising — and to the Giants. And that part is downright fascinating.

“You can’t fake football,” Giants coach Pat Shurmur said this week. “There’s no ‘fool’s gold’ in my mind. You put a ball down in front of all those people and you’re on the field with 10 other guys, and you’ve got a job to do — you can’t fake that.

“I don’t care when you’re playing it, whether it’s the first game of the year, the middle of the year, the end of the year, I think we all want to go out and perform well.”

Performing well Sunday is one part of the equation, and that standard will be a little harder to attain with Odell Beckham Jr. sitting out a second straight game. Still, Eli Manning will be handing the ball off an awful lot to No. 26, Saquon Barkley. That should open the field up a little for Manning to find his other receivers. And if the defense can just summon a little something extra …

Look, all you want this time of the year is a chance. Most of the prognosticating sites, who use old-fashioned tools like arithmetic and probability, still post the Giants’ chances at just better 1 percent to not only run the table but get the help necessary to pull off what would be a most improbable — if not impossible — task.

Still … you could see things working out this way in your heart of hearts, couldn’t you?

1. Barkley taking one to the house early, the Giants turning the Titans over, maybe taking a quick 10-0 lead …

2. … then, your attention wanders to the out-of-town scoreboard, and the early games: You’re telling me you can’t see the Bears, in Chicago, stepping on the necks of the hated Packers early …

3. … and the Dolphins, who believe in miracles more than anyone right now, feasting on the growing negativity in Minnesota, picking off Kirk Cousins early …

4. … and the Jaguars pulverizing the Redskins in Jacksonville …

… and then, after the Giants hang on for the victory, late, is it that hard to envision …

5. … the Rams running it up on the Eagles on Sunday night in L.A. …

6. … and the Saints doing the same to the free-falling Panthers on Monday night in Charlotte? 

No. That still doesn’t guarantee a thing, even if all of those ducks fall in a row. But it would buy you another meaningful week. It would buy you a meaningful Dec. 23, in Indianapolis. You wouldn’t sign up for that right now? Is there any other way to root?