EAST RUTHERFORD Ryan Connelly NFL Jersey , N.J. (AP) — It’s hard to say whether the New York Giants are engaging in wishful thinking or there is something to their optimism these days.The reality is the Giants have a 1-4 record heading into Thursday night’s game against the Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles (2-3) and they are facing long odds in a bid to make the playoffs in coach Pat Shurmur’s first season.The struggling Eagles have beaten New York in their last three meetings and seven of the last eight. The Giants are coming off an excruciating last-second 33-31 loss to Carolina on a 63-yard field goal by Graham Gano, and now they have to rebound with three days of preparation.But the Giants believe there is reason for hope. Their offense scored 30 points for the first time since the end of the 2015 season. The team rallied from an 11-point fourth-quarter deficit to take a lead with just over a minute to play, only to be denied by a near-record kick. And they did all this despite dealing with some ill-chosen words by star receiver Odell Beckham Jr., about Eli Manning and the team’s heart in the days leading up to the game.“Very optimistic,” Beckham said Tuesday when asked about the team. “I’ve always said, it’s a long season, and we have an opportunity to come in here in a big Ryan Connelly NFL Draft , big division game and be able to reshape our season. We know what we have in front of us, short week, just coming off of a tough loss, so we’re all just trying to get our minds wrapped around what the game plan is, how we can come out and best beat Philly.”The Eagles tend to bring out some of the best in the Giants. Despite winning only three games last season, they lost two games to Philadelphia by eight points, with the first coming on a last-second 61-yard field goal by Jake Elliott. The second was 34-29 in a game New York trailed by two points entering the final quarter.The Giants also could be getting some key players back. Linebacker and leading pass rusher Olivier Vernon Ryan Connelly Buffalo Bills Jersey , who has yet to play because of a high ankle sprain,is very close to ready. Tight end Evan Engram, who missed the last two games with a sprained knee, was going to test his knee in practice on Tuesday. Both were limited.Engram watched the telecast of the game in Charlotte this past weekend and was encouraged.“There was a point in that game where maybe last year or the old DNA of this team would’ve given up or would’ve tapped out,” Engram said.Rookie halfback Saquon Barkley said the Giants scored 30 and left points on the field.“We got to continue to keep growing, continue to keep working and to be able to put up 30 points,” Barkley said. “I think that game showed it was the toughness Youth Phil Simms Jerseys , the grit, the passion that we played with as a team, and obviously the outcome wasn’t the way we wanted to be, but you could learn a lot of things from that game and take that game a long way.”NOTES: PK Aldrick Rosas, perfect on field goals and PATs this season, did not practice again because of a sore quad. The Giants have signed Marshall Koehn to their practice squad. He was in training camp. He was working for Randy’s Flooring in Coralville, Iowa when the Giants called Monday. “I looked at my phone because I was making a delivery and there were two calls from my dad Phil Simms Jerseys Stitched , two from my mom and two more my agent. Everyone was freaking out.” Needless to say, he found his way to New Jersey. The Giants can wait until 4 p.m. on game day to active Koehn if needed. … LB Connor Barwin(knee) and WR Russell Shepard (neck) also did not practice. Barwin has been dealing with a knee issue all season.__ Eli Manning recognizes that the numbers in a playbook aren’t the only important statistics.Manning wants children, including his three daughters, to have a strong set of financial skills.“I think it’s so important for kids to understand what it means to save, to have a budget, to be smart about spending money,” the Giants’ 15th-year quarterback says. “I think the more you can introduce financial literacy to students at an early age Youth Doug Kotar Jerseys , the more it’ll prevent them from making mistakes when they’re a young adult.”Manning and Giants rookie Saquon Barkley spoke to more than 100 local high school students about the importance of managing their finances before facing off in a head-to-head competition playing the latest version of Financial Football, a free video game designed to educate users on smart money decisions. Financial Football was created in a partnership between the NFL and Visa. The game challenges players to answer multiple choice and true or false questions to advance down the field in order to score a touchdown.With one in five teenagers in the United States lacking basic financial skills, Visa has teamed with 49 state governments and the District of Columbia to issue copies of the game to middle and high school students across the country.The free video game is available through iOS and Android apps and financialfootball.com.“It’s a fun interactive game for both adults and kids,” Manning says. “You get to play a game, but also answer questions and learn about your finances. It’s good for kids to start learning about the importance of financial literacy and to start saving their money.”“Involving football for the kids is a way for them to learn more interactively. Some of it is asking questions they might not know the answer to, but it might trigger their curiosity. It starts a conversation and I think it will help them down the line.”https://financialfootball.com/downloads