#The Giants are legit after beating Seahawks

No more qualifiers. Not now. Not after this. No more Mondays spent sheepishly apologizing for the rundown neighborhood in which they live. Not now. Not after this. No more jokes about being the best of the NFC Least. Nope. Not now. Not after this.

The Giants made their bones Sunday afternoon.

They earned their bona fides.

The Giants announced themselves as legit. Forget the fact the record is still unsightly, at 5-7. Forget the fact that there’s still a quarter of a season left to go, that there’s still so much that could happen, that there’s still a string of difficult opponents lined up for them the next few weeks.

After this? After walking into Seattle and not just beating the Seahawks 17-12, but dominating them? After spending most of the day making Russell Wilson — who not long ago was being mentioned alongside Patrick Mahomes and Aaron Rodgers as an MVP favorite — look so foolish, so inept, as if he’d just discovered football a couple of days ago?

Maybe the Giants got their sea legs the last few weeks by feasting on the dregs of the East and by simply refusing to lose to a terrible Bengals team in Cincinnati. How they got here doesn’t matter. They are here now. They get another week, at least, in first place. They earn the East’s first victory against a team with a winning record.

“These guys,” coach Joe Judge said, “deserve to be here. They deserve all of this.”

They announced themselves, and declared something else, too:

If they can really finish this improbable tale off, if they can bull their way and will their way to the division title and into the NFC playoffs — no matter what the final numbers look like on either side of the hyphen — then good luck to whichever wild-card team with a gaudy record comes waltzing into MetLife Stadium on either Saturday, Jan. 9 or Sunday, Jan. 10.

That team can look at how the Seahawks looked Sunday, at how it felt like the Giants were playing 13-on-9 most of the day, both sides of the ball. It didn’t matter that Daniel Jones was in street clothes, that his backup, Colt McCoy, was the one doing just enough to guide a couple of third-quarter touchdown drives.

The Giants weren’t bothered by that, same as they weren’t bothered by losing Saquon Barkley in September, same as they weren’t bothered by losing a string of heartache specials on the way to 1-7, same as they’ve never been bothered by the abject disrespect aimed at all four members of the NFC East. If that hasn’t quite amused them, necessarily, it’s certainly fueled them.

“We played sound, disciplined football,” safety Jabrill Peppers said. “We played 60 minutes of our brand of football.”

And look at them now.

“These guys do everything we’ve asked them to do and they’ve done it as well as they can and you see the results,” Judge said. “We have a very special group of guys who have bought in. It’s a tough group. We kept responding.”

The Seahawks came sprinting out of the gate but didn’t quite sniff the end zone on that opening drive, and that was an early sign. The Seahawks came a couple of inches away from going up 10-0 just before the half when they blocked a punt but couldn’t secure the ball before it bled over the end line, and you might notice that those missing five points turned out to be sort of important.

The Giants? They didn’t care. They scored those two touchdowns in the third quarter. They harassed Wilson all day, made him see pressure that wasn’t there and ignore pressure that was — made him see a whole bunch of damned ghosts, truth be told. Then made one last stand with the ball in Wilson’s hands, needing to keep him out of the end zone to make the day complete. He never got close.

“That’s one of the best quarterbacks in the world over there,” Judge said.

Just not this week. Not this time. Not against this team. And the Giants could fly home to Jersey, airplane optional.

“We’ve got to keep stacking them,” Peppers said. “We’ve got another great team coming in next week. Have to have a good week of practice. Focus on Arizona. Go to work.”

No asterisks needed when they report to practice. No explanations. No rationalizations. The Giants are no longer the biggest midget in a bite-sized division. They are no longer defined merely by the company they keep. They’re legit. They’re good. They’re in first place for another week, and you’d better believe they deserve to be there.