PHILADELPHIA — You either are otherwise you are usually not.
Kayvon Thibodeaux says he’s.
A history guy, that’s.
So then, what does the 23-year-old outside linebacker take into consideration a little bit of Giants history that he is a component of. Not a big part, mind you.
But definitely involved.
Ever since Thibodeaux has been suiting up for the Giants, he and his team have lost to the Eagles.
Last 12 months was the primary time in franchise annals that the Giants lost three games in a single season to the identical team. Two of those losses got here at Lincoln Financial Field and are on Thibodeaux’s résumé.
The losing on the Linc reaches back, back, back — to 2013.
It’s 10 consecutive losses for the Giants of their least-favorite road venue.
“I wouldn’t say it’s irrelevant,” Thibodeaux said of the litany of losing. “I’d just say we got to attempt to win. The history is the history, but we write our own.’’
Do they? Can they?
It’s over again unto the breach dear friends, over again because the Giants, on Christmas Day, of all days, enterprise into the Linc to finally get their first have a look at the Eagles, so late — Week 16 — that you simply may need wondered if the NFL schedule-makers simply forgot to incorporate this one-sided NFC East rivalry on the 2023 docket.
No such luck for the Giants.
Gone is the three-game winning streak with undrafted rookie Tommy DeVito starting at quarterback and, with last week’s humdrum 24-6 loss in Latest Orleans, gone are the ever-so-slight probabilities the Giants needed to make a run to plow into contention for the playoffs.
It’s now about ending up the ultimate three regular-season games and, wouldn’t you understand it, two of them come against the Eagles.
Figure this will probably be a crazed holiday cauldron for DeVito and the Giants to navigate.
If DeVito can take care of all of the hostility and lead his team to an upset victory, he might as well add “For the Birds’’ to associate with the “Tommy Cutlets’’ and “Passing Paisano’’ trademarks he has already applied for.
The trend is overwhelmingly depressing for the Giants, losers of 4 straight and 25 of the last 31 games on this series.
“We hate saying that we hate answering the questions, ‘How would it not feel to win in Philly or to beat Philly,’ ” Saquon Barkley (1-8 against the Eagles) said. “We’re sick and uninterested in it. The one way we’re going to change that’s by going on the market and winning a game. For some reason, that’s been a team, and Dallas, those have been the 2 teams that we struggle to beat during the last couple of years, the last decade to be honest and if we wish to get to where we wish to be, those are teams we got to start out beating and that’s just the facts.’’
Do the recent struggles of the Eagles tilt this game in any way toward the Giants?
Last 12 months’s NFC Super Bowl representative rolled to 10-1 before hitting the skids in losses to the 49ers, Cowboys and last week’s stunning last-second loss in Seattle.
Despite their still-gaudy record of 10-4, the Eagles have scored only 18 more points than their opponents.
So, this may very well be a vulnerable team waiting for the Giants. Or, this may very well be the get-well treatment the Eagles have to get back on course, going against the outfit they sometimes don’t have any trouble beating.
The last time these teams tangled, it was a 38-7 rout for the Eagles in last 12 months’s NFC divisional playoff game.
“It’s not tiring, it’s just you desire to beat them that rather more,” tight end Daniel Bellinger said. “They keep beating us and I need to work out why, so that they stop, so we are able to take the upper hand and eventually just say ‘Alright, we got them.’ ’’
Will the Giants have the option to say that, ever again?