NO illusions, no deception, no believing the standings and ignoring what’s in front of your own eyes. If mid-season were the end of the season, the Giants would be host of a wild-card playoff game. But it is November, not January, and there cannot be any feeling of security with a team like the Giants, no security with a team that cannot score.

“We can’t continue to win like this,” GM Ernie Accorsi declared earlier this week.

No illusions here. Where they are is not bad at all, but how they got there is alarming. At 5-3, one-half game behind the first-place Redskins in the NFC East, owners of the fourth-best record in the conference, the Giants on paper have positioned themselves for a serious late-season run. On the field, though, are the lingering, nagging reminders that half a team is not going anywhere.

Here’s a guarantee: If the Giants serve up the same offensive slop in the second half of the season, they will not make the playoffs. Their defense can carry them only so far, and cannot be expected to bludgeon the high-powered opponents remaining on the schedule the way they slapped around the lousy competition they’ve already encountered.

This is no knock on a proud, talented unit, but any defense that gets to brutalize the inept Buccaneers, Cardinals, Saints and then the Eagles not once, but twice, should look fearsome. The Giants were excellent against two quality offenses (the Patriots and Cowboys) and awful against the one superior offense they faced (a 50-21 debacle against the Redskins).

Everything changes after this week’s bye. The Giants take on, in succession, the highest-scoring team in the AFC (Colts) and the highest-scoring team in the entire league (Redskins). The Colts are averaging 28.3 points a game and in Peyton Manning, Marvin Harrison and Edgerrin James it’s quite possible the next great triad, following the aging Troy Aikman, Michael Irvin and Emmitt Smith, now resides in Indianapolis.

The Redskins are averaging 34.6 ppg and look a whole lot like one of those old AFL clubs that has no problem winning 37-31 games. Up ahead are meetings with the Rams, Vikings and Cowboys, three teams that have no trouble finding the end zone.

The Giants on defense set a goal of allowing no more than 17 points, but it’s unrealistic and unfair to believe that goal will become reality against such potent attacks. The days of 17-13, 16-15 and 13-10 victories are nearing an end. To squeeze out as much success as they have, the Giants on defense have allowed an average of 5.3 points in the second half of games. That’s an incredibly low total, a total that is certain to rise.

“I’m very concerned,” Accorsi said. “The thing I’m pleased about is we’re in there, the record puts us in it, but we’re going to have to score more points. Even if our defense continues to play the way they’re playing, it’s hard to hold those teams down. All you got to do is look at the scores. They score against anybody.”

And the Giants score big against nobody, other than the lowly Saints. In 99 possessions (excluding two end-of-game kneel-downs) the Giants on offense, by itself, managed to put together drives for eight touchdowns and eight field goals. That’s 80 points, an average of 10 per game, which is an indictment of Jim Fassel as the offensive mastermind and Kent Graham as the quarterback.

Graham’s rating of 82 is a career-best and puts him ahead of Aikman, Brett Favre and Randall Cunningham, and yet Graham is going to need to make many, many more plays. He and the entire offense cannot continue to think backwards, that protecting the ball and limiting turnovers is sufficient. Real offenses are threats and the Giants are not that.

This might have looked different had Gary Brown remained healthy to fuel the running game and rookie Joe Montgomery been healthy to gradually accept some of Brown’s load. “Our plan never had a chance to sail,” Accorsi said.

Fair enough. But this is no way to stage a playoff push. Accorsi admits he has “walked out of the stadium kind of rattled after almost every one of our wins” but is pleased that, unlike last season’s 3-7 record after 10 games, the Giants are in fine shape, in terms of where they are in the standings.

“There’s a lot to be happy about,” Accorsi said. “We’re resourceful, we’re competitive, we stay in games, we don’t quit. But we have to put more points up.”