The New York Giants are 1-7, in the basement of the NFC East and find themselves in a race for the No. 1 overall pick in the 2021 NFL Draft.

From the outside looking in, they’re an awful football team simply flailing away and continuing a recent trend of losing. That has led to mass frustration among Big Blue fans and has allowed certain pundits to use them as a punch line.

But when you dig down a little deeper and set emotions aside, you might be surprised to discover that the glass is actually half full.

In black and white on paper, these Giants are no better than their Pat Shurmur or Ben McAdoo counterparts. But there are many different shades of gray and each one represents a reason to be optimistic about head coach Joe Judge and his team.

First and foremost is Judge himself; a man who is clearly coaching his rear-end off on a weekly basis and keeping his team both engaged and competitive in a situation where most would quit (see: McAdoo and Shurmur’s teams).

Week in and week out the Giants find themselves battling to the bitter end, often against teams that should be way out of their league. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are a prime example — no one envisioned the Giants keeping that game within two scores, let alone taking it down to the final second.

“I’m proud of the way our players played tonight. I’ve seen a lot of improved football, seen a lot of fight from our guys throughout the season. I continuously see an improved team on the field at all positions and guys playing for each other for 60 minutes,” Judge told reporters on Monday night.

If you care to watch closely, you will see what Judge sees. The team is making improvements each and every week and the mistakes they do make are quickly ironed out. The problem with a young team — one of the NFL’s youngest teams — is that there’s a lot to iron out.

And they’ve had a lot stacked against them. Daniel Jones is a second-year quarterback who didn’t even have 16 games under his belt entering the season and is already onto his second coaching staff and system. The team lost superstar running back Saquon Barkley to a torn ACL early, are thin at a variety of key positions and lacked the proper offseason to gel thanks to COVID-19.

They shouldn’t be this competitive by all accounts and measures, which is really a testament to how close they may be. In fact, that competitiveness is what makes this team so much more frustrating — if they were just getting stomped weekly the line of thinking would be, “well, they’re one of the youngest teams in the league with a rookie head coach and second-year quarterback. It’s going to take time.”

But they’re not getting stomped. These Giants are fighting tooth and nail, and they’re coming close. Unfortunately, that comes at a price — the criticism of what “should be” with a focus on what’s going wrong instead of what’s going right.

Perspective is everything and if you’re willing to adjust yours for just a moment, you might see all the reasons to be optimistic about Joe Judge and the future of the New York Football Giants.