Maybe fictional journalist Ron Burgundy actually was referring to the 2023 Giants when he delivered one of the most quotable lines of the movie “Anchorman.”

“Boy, that escalated quickly,” Will Ferrell’s character said in a newsroom while recalling a fight he and his colleagues had with a rival news team. “I mean, that really got out of hand fast.”

Four games into the first season after restoring pride to fans by ending a decade-long playoff victory drought, the Giants look a lot like the franchise that owned a share of the NFL’s worst record over the five-season period from 2017-21.

Their minus-76 point differential during a 1-3 start is the worst in the league by a healthy margin.

“When you get down 1-3, you start to question yourself,” outside linebacker Kayvon Thibodeaux said Monday night after an embarrassing 24-3 loss to the Seahawks. “Everybody has questions and thoughts of, ‘What’s the problem? What are the answers? How do we find them?’ The answer is simple: You be critical, you work harder and you keep the belief. That’s the only way to get this ship in the right direction.”

Here’s another question worth asking: How did it get so bad so quickly for the Giants?

With a nucleus of 17 starters returning under the same offensive, defensive and special teams coordinators, plus some splashy offseason additions to upgrade the talent pool, the Giants seemed poised to take a step forward. Instead it’s been a massive leap backward.

“Every year is a new year,” head coach Brian Daboll said. “I’ve said that since the start of OTAs. There’s a lot of things that have to go right each game to be successful, and right now we’re not there yet. We’re certainly working to be there.”

Daboll sang the same tune last year when things were rolling, so it seems he believes it. But for fans — and even players — the poor start hits like a sledgehammer.

“I don’t think any of us expected to perform this way,” receiver Darius Slayton said, “so definitely some surprise there.”

Here is look at why things have spiraled on the Giants:

1️⃣ Bad offensive line investments

New regime, same old story.

The Giants allowed 11 sacks — their most since before the stat was official in 1952 — to the Seahawks. Daniel Jones is the NFL’s most-pressured quarterback (79).

The attempt to rebuild the offensive line after Super Bowl XLVI has now consumed three general managers, five head coaches, seven offensive line coaches, five assistant offensive line coaches, 17 draft picks (including four first-rounders, three seconds and two thirds) and hundreds of millions of free-agent dollars.

General manager Joe Schoen’s early returns are discouraging. With Andrew Thomas sidelined, four current starters were added by Schoen.

• Through 21 games, Evan Neal (first-round draft pick) is tracking to perform worse at right tackle in every statistical measure by Pro Football Focus than Jerry Reese signature-draft-bust Ereck Flowers at left tackle in 2015-16.

• Josh Ezeudu (third-round pick) couldn’t win a starting job at guard in a training-camp competition slanted in his favor and now looks predictably overmatched as a fill-in left tackle. He stared off into space — as if searching for answers — as teammates stopped by to offer encouragement for 20 minutes in the post-game locker room.

• Marcus McKethan (fifth-round pick) missed his entire rookie season with a torn ACL and has allowed two sacks in his first three career starts.

• Mark Glowinski (three-year, $18.3 million contract) lost his starting job Week 1, lost his backup job Week 2 and has been relegated to the No. 5 option at guard.

• John Michael Schmitz (second-round pick) graded No. 33 of 36 eligible centers by PFF and now is sidelined by a lower body injury.

2️⃣ Ahead of ‘schedule’ … or not

If this was the start of last season, the panic meter would be much lower, with much fault attributed to the mess left behind by general manager Dave Gettleman.

Schoen, Daboll (NFL Coach of the Year), offensive coordinator Mike Kafka (interviewed for four head coach vacancies) and defensive coordinator Wink Martindale (interviewed for one head coach vacancy and received the Pro Football Writers’ Association’s Dr. Z Award for lifetime achievement as an assistant coach) were labeled as magicians when the undermanned Giants started 6-1 on the way to 9-7-1 last season.

The Giants caught a break by playing just four games (of a possible 11) outside of their division against teams that reached the playoffs. Coaching made a difference over similarly matched opponents by going 8-4-1 in one-score games.

By overachieving in Year 1, the Giants inadvertently changed the terms and expectations for their rebuild. A few key players even broke from the Daboll-issued gag order and mentioned chasing a Super Bowl before the season started.

So far this season, the Giants have played three games against playoff opponents from last season. Two more are on tap in the next two weeks. From there, the schedule slows down — the only 2022 playoff opponents remaining on the schedule are divisional rivals Philadelphia (twice) and Dallas (one) — but it might be too late to recover by then.

3️⃣ Career years are hard to duplicate

The previously turnover-prone Jones led the NFL with a 1.1 interception percentage last season, Saquon Barkley stayed healthy and rushed for a career-best 1,312 yards, Dexter Lawrence broke out with 7.5 sacks and 24 quarterback pressures (more than three times any other zero-technique-aligned defensive tackle in the league) and Andrew Thomas developed into an All-Pro left tackle.

Now? Jones owns the second-worst interception rate in the league (4.6 percent), Lawrence is searching for his first sack and has just one tackle for loss, and Barkley (two games missed) and Thomas (three) are sidelined by injuries — as was part of their respective journeys prior to last season.

What if the new coaching staff didn’t unlock the secrets within each of those players? What if they all just had well-timed career years before signing new contracts?

4️⃣ Uncut gems

The front office’s remarkably high hit rate on practice-squad steals and post-draft street free agents who made notable impacts on minimum or near-minimum contracts — Isaiah Hodgins, Jaylon Smith, Fabian Moreau, Jason Pinnock, Nick McCloud, Ryder Anderson, Tony Jefferson and Jarrad Davis as examples — was going to be impossible to replicate.

But do the Giants have even one player who fits the bill this season? Maybe veteran offensive guard Justin Pugh — signed to the practice squad — will become one.

5️⃣ Rookie blues

The preseason hype around the Giants wasn’t just built off last season. It was fueled in April.

Almost every draft analyst raved about Schoen’s draft class — and that was before sixth-round pick cornerback Tre Hawkins won a starting job in training camp.

Well, after four games, Deonte Banks (12 tackles, three passes defended), Schmitz (No. 33 of 36 centers), Jalin Hyatt (four catches for 99 yards), Eric Gray (zero carries, one fumbled punt), Hawkins (benched in Week 4), Jordon Riley (one tackle) and Gervarrius Owens (zero games played) are off to inauspicious starts.

The 2022 draft class was snake-bitten by injury as rookies, but Thibodeaux had some monster moments and Neal as well as fourth-round tight end Daniel Bellinger were consistent starters.

6️⃣ Chemistry

The Giants lost two of their most well-respected locker-room voices in the offseason: center Nick Gates and safety Julian Love (whose sure tackling also has been missed by a defense that has missed 39 tackles).

The galvanizing us-against-the-world rallying cry against doubters disappeared among too many believers, too (though it might return after the 1-3 start).

The Giants have 10 co-captains, but who is really speaking up when things go bad? Lawrence and newcomer Isaiah Simmons each mentioned postgame Monday night that players can’t have their feelings “hurt” by “tough coaching.” It certainly hinted at the start of a disconnect.

“Not pointing any fingers by any means,” Simmons said. “I’ve been on not-so-good teams before. I don’t have that feeling here, that this is not a good team. We have the pieces to pull everything together and go where we want to go.”

Freeze dance

Did you notice what happened after each of Thibodeaux’s two sacks Monday? Both were on third down.

That’s where the similarities end.

Thibodeaux’s first sack forced a punt in a scoreless game, so he popped to his feet, put his hands together in the prayer sign, rolled his arms and shook his hips.

Thibodeaux’s second sack forced a field goal that left the Seahawks ahead, 24-3, with 5:29 remaining. He rolled off of Geno Smith’s body with no hoopla.

For a player whose maturity and sense of awareness of the moment was called into question a few times last season — most notably when he celebrated a sack by doing snow angels as Colts quarterback Nick Foles writhed in pain only a few feet away — Thibodeaux struck the right chord by recognizing the gloomy big picture outweighed his individual highlight in the fourth quarter.

“Humble and hungry,” Thibodeaux said when asked about the psyche of the team. “That’s all you can be at this point. We put ourselves behind the curve in the first quarter of the season, but it’s a long season.”

Thibodeaux had by far his best game of the first four, registering two more quarterback hurries and a batted pass to go with the two sacks. He played 45 of 55 defensive snaps.

Want to catch a game? The Giants schedule with links to buy tickets can be found here.

Asked and answered

Here are two questions that have come up recently that we will attempt to answer as accurately as possible:

If the Giants end up as one of the worst teams in the NFL, what is the cost of parting ways with Daniel Jones to draft USC’s Caleb Williams or North Carolina’s Drake Maye?

I inadvertently set Giants Twitter ablaze Tuesday morning by saying the Giants committed to Jones (four years, $160 million) and thus “they can’t turn around and draft Williams.”

First, the odds of the Giants finishing with the No. 1 or No. 2 pick are not great. They have a more talented roster and/or more established coaches than some of the winless and one-win teams — especially the Bears and Panthers — and their front-loaded schedule lightens up beginning in Week 7.

Second, there is no saying the Giants will prefer Williams to Maye. In fact, one NFL personnel executive told Post Sports+ before the season that some teams definitely will prefer Maye’s complete resume — physical tools plus on-field intangibles plus character, etc. — when all is said and done.

Third, “can’t” might be too strong of a word. They technically “could.”

But there is a common misperception about getting out of Jones’ contract extension. It’s not a two-year deal with options.

If the Giants wanted to move on from Jones before next season, the dead-cap charge would be $69.3 million, compared to $47.1 million to keep him around, according to Spotrac. The NFL record for one player’s dead cap belongs to the Falcons, who traded Matt Ryan and ate $40.525 million.

The window for a break-up is before the 2025 season, but it’s still not a clean split. Jones would count for $22.2 million in dead money, but $19.4 million would be saved.

A rookie quarterback contract in its second year is not going to count that much against the cap, so, in the end, the combined amount spent on a quarterback change in 2025 would be less than Jones’ $41.6 million cap charge. The Giants paid $23 million to Eli Manning to be a backup for 14 games in 2019.

If somehow the Giants are in a position to draft Williams or Maye because Jones underperformed, we will see if Schoen is as ready to admit a big-money mistake as the coaching staff has been to make lineup changes without regard to salaries or draft status.

But, for now, Giants fans’ time is better spent dreaming of Marvin Harrison Jr., the Ohio State wide receiver.

Why isn’t Darren Waller dominating like advertised?

Training camp can provide a lot of fool’s gold.

Waller, 31, looked unstoppable, especially in the red zone, all summer, but he has just 15 catches for 153 yards in four games. Almost all of his damage came in the comeback win against the Cardinals; he has been a non-factor in the three losses.

Maybe Waller’s summer renaissance was less about him and more about how the Giants can’t cover a tight end for the umpteenth season in a row. The numbers so far: The Cowboys’ Jake Ferguson (two catches for 11 yards), Cardinals’ Zach Ertz (6-56), 49ers’ George Kittle (7-90) and Seahawks’ Noah Fant (2-63).

“I see the guys that we have and I see the type of vision that we were able to have coming from the spring and the excitement that we had on offense, and I just don’t know [what’s wrong],” Waller said after the game. “I don’t have a lot of words right now.”