CLEVELAND _ When it comes to playing the winless Browns, forgettable is far more preferable than regrettable.
The Giants won. That's the most important element. Facing a team with a record worse than any opponent in franchise history, style points should not matter. The Giants may have stooped to near the Browns' level of play, but they never dipped below it and held on for a 27-13 win at FirstErengy Stadium on Sunday.
That said, this was not the way the Giants would like to head into the final five games that will define their season as a success or failure.
The Giants (8-3) have won six in a row for the first time since 2008. They remain two games behind the Cowboys (10-1) in the NFC East but have a two-game lead in the race for an NFC wild card. The schedule gets much more difficult in the final month, though. It begins with a trip to Pittsburgh next week followed by games against four other NFC playoff contenders: Dallas, Detroit, Philadelphia and Washington.
Even when the Giants appeared poised to put the game away early in the fourth quarter, they couldn't. Johnathan Hankins hit Browns QB Josh McCown and the ball fell right into the hands of Jason Pierre-Paul, who returned it 44 yards for a touchdown to make it 20-6 (Robbie Gould missed another extra point, his third in two games). But Cleveland answered with a 75-yard touchdown drive to close it to 20-13 with 8:17 left.
It wasn't until Odell Beckham Jr. caught a 5-yard TD pass in the end zone with 5:10 remaining that the Giants were able to exhale. Beckham, who left the game early with a thumb injury but returned, had six catches for 96 yards and a pair of scores.
Neither team scored until midway through the second quarter when Damon Harrison forced a fumble by Browns running back Isaiah Crowell that was recovered by Devon Kennard at the Cleveland 31. Two plays later, Eli Manning hit Dwayne Harris on a 13-yard fade in the left corner of the end zone for a 7-0 lead. For Harris, who was demoted from his job as a kickoff and punt returner this week, it was his first reception of the season.
Harris' special teams replacement, Bobby Rainey, muffed a punt shortly after the touchdown that allowed the Browns to get on the scoreboard with a 20-yard field goal. The Giants responded quickly with a 69-yard drive that included a 37-yard pass to Victor Cruz and a 32-yard touchdown pass to Beckham on a drag route in which he outran Joe Haden across the field, turned the corner, and won a footrace to the pylon with 1:13 left in the first half.
The Browns capped the second quarter with one of the strangest drives for a field goal. They used a 35-yard pass interference call against Eli Apple, nearly had a pass intercepted by Apple, converted from a second-and-30, pushed all the way to the Giants' 7, and then connected on a 25-yard kick to make it 14-6.
