The Giants have a new look coming out of the bye week.
There are fewer injured players roaming around the sidelines as a week off has helped give wounded members of the team a chance to get themselves back into condition to help the team on the field instead of by waving towels.
Brandon Jacobs, Justin Tuck and Chris Snee are all feeling fit as fiddles, while rookie cornerback Prince Amukamara is looking forward to getting his NFL career underway.
But, wait, there's more. Perenially injured wide receiver Ramses Barden is making a return after spending the first six games on the Physically Unable to Perform list and center David Baas is another week removed from the burner that forced him out of action against the Seahawks.
Very good news for the Giants on all fronts, especially if Amukamara is able to play sooner rather than later and push Antrel Rolle as far away from covering receivers man-to-man as humanly possible.
The Giants at full strength are a very talented team and they haven't been remotely close to it at any point this season.
It's only natural to look at all the players coming back to the field and say that the Giants are bound for great things because of the way they hung tough through the first six weeks to come up with four victories. There's a shred of truth to that, but it isn't anything to dwell on as the team moves forward.
Every team in the league deals with serious injuries, only the weak ones allow those injuries to be an excuse that stops them from winning games. What's more, the Giants benefitted from injuries almost as much as they were hampered by them.
The Rams didn't have their best receiver, running back or cornerback in Week Two and Mike Kafka's appearance in Week Three meant that the Eagles had no shot to swing the game back into their favor. The Bills were just as banged up as the Giants in their matchup, as were the Seahawks and, as you'll likely recall, the Seahawks won that game.
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Other teams also get the bye week bump to their rosters. The Eagles are getting healthy on both lines, something that could help them lift them back into the playoff race, so it isn't like the Giants are the only team looking better today than they did in their last game.
All that means that no one with the Giants can use the talent infusion as a reason to do anything different than they were doing when everyone was hurt (other than the aforementioned Rolle, who should thank his lucky stars that there's someone else to do that part of his job).
The second half is right around the corner and there's no time for excuses to take your eyes off the ball.
Josh Alper is a writer living in New York City. You can follow him on Twitter and he is also a contributor to Pro Football Talk.
