Cam And Carolina Must Beware Of Eli And The Giants

To everyone's surprise this season the NFC has been dominated by Cam Newton's Carolina Panthers. In 2014 Carolina repeated as division champs in a putrid division with a sub .500 record. This offseason the seemingly shaky Panthers took a serious blow when their bona fide number one receiver Kelvin Benjamin went down for the year with an ACL injury. Carolina was supposed to take a step back this season, or at the very most, maintain their previous level of mediocrity. Fortunately for Panthers fans across the nation, through a once again consistently dominant defense, a hard nosed run game and a franchise quarterback finally realizing his MVP potential, Carolina is 11-0 and the unquestioned class of the NFC.

With the five games left on their remaining schedule it's pretty much a foregone that the Panthers will grab the top seed in their conference and the road to Santa Clara will go through Carolina. Other major contenders in the NFC like Arizona, Minnesota and Green Bay are all worthy challengers, but I'm not convinced that any of those teams have what it takes to beat the Panthers in Carolina. Carolina is a bit too rough and rugged for Arizona and Green Bay, as well as having another dimension to their offense in the big-play passing game that Minnesota simply doesn't have, but there is a boogeyman lurking in the darkness that cannot be disregarded as a potential spoiler to Carolina's dream season, the New York Football Giants.

A little over a month before the first playoff game of the 2015 season, New York is exactly where they want to be, fighting tooth and nail for a playoff spot in a painfully mediocre NFC East. For the Giants, the playoffs won't begin on January 9th or January 10th, they begin this Sunday in a match-up with their cross-hall rival New York Jets and continue through the month in match-ups with NFC contenders Carolina and Arizona finally ending with a showdown in early January with division rival Washington which is bound to be interesting.

If the Giants can get into the dance, their opponent on wildcard weekend probably won't be anything to write home about. It's incredibly likely that New York will find itself playing at home against the 5 seed Green Bay Packers, a deeply flawed team in need of some real changes this off-season. Is it possible that Eli and the Giants could go into Arizona or Minnesota and Eli is able to make one more big play than his adversary at quarterback? Is it possible that Tom Coughlin's defense makes one more stop or one more big play than the guys on the other side? I would say that the answer to both questions is a resounding yes.

Thankfully, I won't have to speculate for long about what a potential Panthers-Giants game would look like because we're going to see it next week when New York has the chance to end another unbeaten streak as Cam and crew take a trip up to Metlife Stadium. Tom Coughlin's teams in the past have personified mental toughness, they are the embodiment of the principals of their two-time Super Bowl winning coach and they have a chance to prove that again on December 20th. I think that the Giants will be ready to match Carolina's physicality and I feel as though Eli Manning with the help of Odell Beckham Jr is capable of making a few more explosive plays than Cam and his group of receivers giving Carolina its first loss of the season setting up a potential rematch down the road.

Whatever happens with these two teams over the next couple of months is sure to be interesting, but only time will tell if this hunch I have is either sheer insanity, or wholly justified.