A big reason why the New York Giants decided to "fire" Tom Coughlin at the end of the 2015 season is because the team is stuck in an horribly long playoff drought. Well, it's horribly long for them.

The Giants have missed the playoffs for four straight seasons, which is the longest streak for the team in more than 35 years.

The last time the Giants missed the playoffs in at least four straight seasons came during an 18-year drought that started four decades ago. From 1963 until 1981, the team didn't make the postseason a single time.

Don't look for the Giants' current streak to match that one though. As a matter of fact, the Giants' playoff drought isn't even going to last another season, at least according to Eli Manning.

During a football camp in New Jersey this week, Manning was asked if he thought the Giants would be a playoff team in 2016.

"Yeah, definitely," Manning told the New York Post.

That's basically the closest thing to a Joe Namath-like guarantee that you're ever going to get from Manning, who usually does his best to avoid giving bulletin board material to other teams.

The old Eli Manning probably would've said, "Well, there's a bunch of good teams in the NFC East this year, so we'll see what happens," but he didn't say that. Instead, we got the uncensored version of Eli and he sounds pretty confident about what the Giants can accomplish in 2016 under new head coach Ben McAdoo.

So why's Manning so confident this year?

"We added some great players in the offseason. We were aggressive in free agency, but still have a lot of our core guys, especially on offense, back and I think we made some good moves on defense," Manning said. "We're getting some guys back healthy. It's just a matter of, hey, the talent is there, can we put it together, can we find a way to win the games and play our best football when we need to?"

The Giants went nuts in free agency on defense, adding defensive end Olivier Vernon, cornerback Janoris Jenkins, and defensive tackle Damon Harrison. The Giants also used their first-round pick on a defensive player (Eli Apple).

"I guess I'm always optimistic, always feel good about our squad," Manning said.

According to Manning, one of the big things that could slow the Giants down in 2016 is something that's out of their control: Injuries.

"You don't know what the injury situation is going to be and how you'll respond in critical situations in games," Manning said. "That's something it's hard to know until you're in those fourth quarters. Does the level of play rise or does it go get uptight or nervous? Hopefully we have guys who know how to make the plays and rise to the occasion."

It's no accident that Manning mentioned the team's fourth quarter play, something that was ugly in 2015. The Giants blew five leads in the final two minutes in 2015, which was the most by any NFL team since 2001. If the Giants had been able to hold just three of those leads, their playoff drought likely would've ended last year.

That didn't happen though, and Coughlin was let go as a result of the team's continuous struggles.

Anyway, if Manning's right and the Giants are going to make the playoffs, that means every other NFC East team can just go ahead and forget about 2016, and that's mainly because the division has only been good for one playoff team lately. In the six seasons since 2010, the NFC East has only produced one playoff team per season.