With nothing left to do but go for broke, the Washington Redskins kept their playoff hopes alive for the second week in a row by beating their division rivals from New York 22-10 in the frigid Meadowlands last night. It was the type of win fans have hoped for throughout the past month in a half: a solid game from Portis, truly stout play from the offensive line, and, most importantly, a held lead.

Early on, it looked like the game might turn into a private battle between Eli Manning and Todd Collins to see how many incomplete passes each could throw. Collins missed on his first eight throws, but managed to thaw himself out as time went on to give the offense just enough of a passing game. Manning had the worst of it as the game wore on, ultimately throwing 34 incomplete passes. Not that the blame was Manning's entirely. By the end of the game, he seemed to running out of receivers (an injury to Jeremy Shockey - a broken fibula that will require surgery - being the worst).

Those receivers that remained upright suffered from a game-long case of the dropsies. Most of the reports today say that Manning's corps dropped eight passes last night. I think they're being statistically charitable, but, heck, that might be simply because so many of the drops were egregious unforced errors. Brandon Jacobs seemed to be the primary offender last night - he ran quite well (130 yards on 25 carries), but as a receiver, Eli would have been better off throwing to a bronze statue of Jacobs.

Still, Manning seems to play his best ball while under duress, and for a while in the second half, he went on one of those jags where he seemed to be finding everybody open. He went 6-9 during the third quarter, got his team into the end zone, and, with two nice gains on consecutive first downs, had his team rolling toward the red zone to start the fourth quarter. But right as the flashbacks to the previous game against the Giants started to rear up in the mind's eye, the defense stiffened to force the field goal try, which kicker Lawrence Tynes ended up missing.

Even though thirteen minutes remained to play, it felt like Washington had managed to weather the worst the Giants had to offer, and the score, happily, stood the rest of the way.

Washington now finds itself back at .500, and staring at an opportunity to control some of their own playoff destiny. Next week, Washington heads to Minnesota, the team that now stands directly in their way for the final wild card position, and they'll be no worse than one game behind them. If they take the win and the head-to-head tiebreak, they'll actually find themselves on decent footing for the postseason. Too bad Dallas lost yesterday! If the Cowboys can get a game ahead of the Packers again, they might be inclined to rest their starters when they come to D.C. in the final week of the season.

Obviously, Redskins fans should feel free to root for the Chicago Bears tonight, though I understand that the Bears will be starting Kyle Orton at quarterback, so, like they say, your mileage will vary.