Safety Xavier McKinney made the victory-sealing stop for the New York Giants on Sunday wearing one red glove and one red mitten, the latter as a means to play after shattering three fingers on his left hand on Nov. 2.

“I didn’t know when I was going to come back or if I was going to be able to,” McKinney said after tackling Minnesota Vikings tight end T.J. Hockenson for a 3-yard gain on a fourth-and-8 snap with 1:44 to play in the Giants’ 31-24 playoff win. “I wasn’t sure. I could only control what I could control, which was rehab and getting better and getting back out there as fast as I could. I couldn’t imagine today and what happened.”

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The Giants’ Super Wild-Card Weekend victory was McKinney’s second game since he got hurt in a “Can-Am accident” while vacationing in Mexico during New York’s bye week.

McKinney told Steve Serby of the New York Post that he came “close to losing three of my fingers.”

“When we were doing surgery, actually the doc told me afterwards, he was like he wasn’t sure how he was even going to be able to get all the pieces back together because there was so many,” McKinney said. “My fingers were shattered.”

The injury caused McKinney to miss seven games. The Giants went 2-4-1 in that span after starting the season by winning six of eight games with McKinney in the lineup.

By beating the Vikings, New York advanced to a second-round matchup with the Philadelphia Eagles, which defeated the Giants in two NFC East games during the regular season. McKinney missed both.

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“It was tough to be on the sideline for every game that I was hurt, so it was no different than all the other games that I missed,” McKinney said on Wednesday about the worst of the losses while he was out – a 48-22 setback against Philadelphia on Dec. 11. “We know we’ve got a new opportunity going into this game. We’ve been preaching all week: We only get one chance; we only get one shot. Obviously, now if you lose, you’re out, so I think everybody knows the magnitude of that, so we’re just thinking of it that way and taking it day-by-day. Just trying to make sure we prepare the right way and make sure that we’re ready on Saturday.”

Against the Eagles, McKinney will be trying to stop quarterback Jalen Hurts, his teammate at Alabama in the 2017 and 2018 seasons.

Hurts appeared to be a leading contender for the NFL’s 2022 Most Valuable Player Award before he missed two games with a sprained throwing shoulder. The Eagles had a 13-1 record when Hurts went out of the lineup and lost the two games he missed. Hurts returned in the regular-season finale to help deliver a victory that secured the No. 1 seed and a first-round bye in the NFC playoffs for Philadelphia.

“I’ve played with him before, so I know how much he brings to the table,” McKinney said. “I know how competitive he is as a player, as a person, and I know how great of a quarterback he is and the leader that he is, so it’s going to be a challenge for us. We all know that. Just him being out there for them, obviously, elevates their game a lot, and it makes them that much better. …

“He’s a guy that inspired me when I was at Bama. Just being on the team and seeing how he worked and how he did things, went about things, so it’s not surprising the jumps that he’s made, the progression that he’s made. And usually when you go to Bama, you see a lot of guys, we can make those jumps, and we can progress and get better as we go.”

The Giants and Eagles will square off at 7:15 p.m. CST Saturday at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia.

“Underdog means nothing,” McKinney said of New York’s status entering the contest. “Like I said, you’ve got to go out there and play regardless of being excited, underdog, it doesn’t matter. In this league anything can happen. Obviously in the playoffs, anything can happen, so really nobody’s an underdog in the playoffs because you all got there. You’re the top teams, so there’s no underdogs. You’ve got to go out there and play, compete, and we’ll be looking to do that, and we’ll be looking to win.”

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Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.