The vibes this summer were as good as possible for the Giants coming off a franchise-record 14 losses.

With a completely revamped room of quarterbacks, training camp brought a fresh wave of leadership and play-making. And when the preseason came, the Giants went 3-0 for the first time under coach Brian Daboll with an NFL-best 107 points, including 34 points in a preseason opener for the first time in 21 years.

Wonderful.

But now comes the inflection point, the sink-or-swim portion of the program, if you will.

Are the Giants actually ready to win meaningful games? To tackle the gauntlet that is the NFC East? To withstand a brutal schedule and get off to a good start for once?

“We got to go beat Washington,” nose tackle and team captain Dexter Lawrence said when asked what makes the team know that this season will be different from the last. “That’s how I’m going to answer that one.”

The 2025 season begins on the road Sunday at the Commanders, who were in the NFC Championship Game last season. The Giants are looking to avoid losing their opener for the eighth time in the last nine seasons.

There are no more excuses for this regime. It’s time to win, or co-owner John Mara, who declared after last season that he’s “just about run out of patience,” can’t possibly justify retaining Daboll and general manager Joe Schoen for a fifth year.

“I like the players that we have, I like the coaches that we have,” said Daboll, who has consistently avoided putting his foot in his mouth when it comes to setting concrete expectations in the public eye. “We got to go out there and do it.”

But there’s even more at stake here for the future of the franchise.

If the Giants return to being a playoff contender, then all is well. If not? Well, not only will Daboll and Schoen’s jobs be in jeopardy, but so will first-round pick Jaxson Dart, because surely a new regime will prefer drafting its own quarterback.

That was the danger of not starting over after last season. Mara refused to endorse Daboll and Schoen for more than this year back in January, so now the pressure to perform is at an all-time high. Otherwise, an even more extensive rebuild could be coming in 2026.

To that end, it will be fascinating to see how long the Giants stick with quarterback Russell Wilson.

In a perfect world, the 14th-year veteran’s move to New York will prove to be as rejuvenating as he’s made it seem this summer, repeatedly calling it an honor to play for this iconic franchise. But will the 36-year-old’s performance on the field more so resemble the prime Wilson who went to back-to-back Super Bowls, or the declining quarterback whose teams went 23-32 over the last four years?

The answer might lie somewhere in the middle, and we’ll soon find out if it leads to enough wins to keep Dart off the field and developing behind the scenes.

“It’s been a great training camp, great OTAs — couldn’t be much better,” Wilson said. “I think that the biggest part of it is just us knowing that we’re ready to go. We’re locked in, we’re ready to play some football.”

Dart showed incredible moxie and play-making ability in the preseason, so don’t be surprised to see him on the field before the end of September if Wilson stumbles out of the gates. After all, he is Daboll’s guy, and the head coach certainly won’t go down this season without seeing what his handpicked quarterback can do.

Still, Daboll made changes this offseason seemingly in an effort to generate a faster start to the season.

Instead of calling the plays on offense like he did last year, he has ceded control of that back to offensive coordinator Mike Kafka.

Daboll also deployed his starting lineup for closer to three quarters of the preseason this year as opposed to only one quarter in the previous two preseasons. More subtlety, he has tweaked the practice schedule so that normal game weeks will feature practices on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday instead of Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday.

The head coach said in early August that he conducted extensive research on how various teams have handled the preseason and if there’s been any correlation to the regular season. Obviously, the Giants needed to make a change after the 2-5 starts in 2023 and 2024, especially considering they had three new quarterbacks to build chemistry.

But again, Daboll has remained even-keeled in public comments and obviously sees no reason to make any promises about what’s to come this season.

When I asked him this past Monday about his confidence level that the Giants can get off to a better start given the logistical tweaks, Daboll declined to reflect on the summer.

“We’re focused on this week, not much of what’s happened over the last month or last couple weeks,” he said. “We have a good challenge ahead of us, a big challenge ahead of us, against a team that made it to the NFC Championship game last year and played really good football. Our focus is on us doing the things that we need to do to be as ready as we can be.”

How ready are the Giants? We’ll find out on Sunday, finally, when 245 days will have passed since the team’s last meaningful game.

Giants Gameday

The Game: Giants (0-0) at Commanders (0-0), Northwest Stadium, Landover, Md., Sunday, 1 p.m. ET (FOX)

The Line: Washington by 6

History: The Giants lead the all-time series, 108-73-5, but the Commanders won both games last season. This will be their first Week 1 meeting since 2011.

Key Matchups:

Giants C John Michael Schmitz vs. Commanders DT Daron Payne: Schmitz needs to show improvement as a third-year center if this offensive line is going to make the Giants a playoff contender. Payne, a former first-rounder and 2022 Pro Bowler, is a stiff test on the interior right out of the gates.

Giants WR Darius Slayton vs. Commanders CB Marshon Lattimore: Malik Nabers had a season-high 18 targets, 127 receiving yards and a touchdown in Washington last year … and the Giants still lost. It’s important for Slayton to step up and be the effective complementary target that he has often proven to be. Lattimore was traded to the Commanders last November and is a four-time Pro Bowler.

Giants OLB Abdul Carter vs. Commanders LT Laremy Tunsil: Carter, the No. 3 overall pick in the draft, is set for his highly anticipated NFL debut against Washington’s new left tackle. Tunsil came over in March in a trade with the Texans and will be tough on the edge as a five-time Pro Bowler.

Giants CB Paulson Adebo vs. Commanders WR Terry McLaurin: It remains to be seen whether Adebo will travel with opposing teams’ best receivers this season, but the Giants should be matching up their top acquisition in free agency with McLaurin plenty in this game. Washington’s model of consistency has had more than 1,000 yards in five straight seasons.

Injury Report:

Giants: DOUBTFUL: LT Andrew Thomas (foot).

Commanders: None.

Giant Facts: The last shutout in the series came when the Giants won 36-0 in 2005. … Russell Wilson’s 99.8 career passer rating is the fifth-highest all-time among quarterbacks with at least 1,500 passing attempts. … Lawrence has produced 95 quarterback hits in his six-year career, which is the fourth-most in franchise history.

The Prediction: Commanders 24, Giants 20