NFL Teams Betting - New York Giants - NFC East

The defending Super Bowl champs enter the NFL season with the majority of their core players still together, and the Giants' menacing defensive front and explosive passing game could catapult them to the forefront of championship contenders yet again this year. The Giants will play the NFLs toughest schedule, facing seven playoff teams from last year, including four division winners. Big Blue followed up its 2007 championship campaign with a 12-4 regular-season record, earning a division crown and first-round bye before falling to Philadelphia in the divisional round of the playoffs. The Giants appear primed for yet another title run, as the coach-quarterback duo of Tom Coughlin and Eli Manning have firmly cemented their place in the NFL record books.

It was as if lightning struck twice in the same spot on the same day four years apart. That’s how similar the Giants’ surprise 2011 championship season was to their incredible 2007 run.

And when it happened again, when they made it two Super Bowl championships in five seasons, the Giants should’ve been branded an NFL powerhouse and a franchise on the verge of becoming a dynasty. Instead, they have the same questions they left open the last time they were defending champions:

Are they on the verge of greatness? Or was the whole thing just a fluke?

That may be an insulting question to the defending champs, but it’s one they’re going to have to answer this season. Are they the team that was struggling at 7–7 just before Christmas, or the team that went on a 6–0 roll for the ages through Green Bay, San Francisco and then the Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI?

They return most of the starters from the team that won it all. They just need to prove that they were more than an average team that got hot at exactly the right time.