Defensive end Chris Baker openly disagreed with the defensive coordinator, but in the end, he, Su’a Cravens and the Redskins came through with a 29-27 victory. (Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post)

Who’s running this team, anyhow? At moments, you got the sense that Coach Jay Gruden and his staff were just barely holding the Washington Redskins together. It was hard to tell exactly who was in charge, who made the crucial decisions in a two-point victory over the New York Giants. Call it a group effort. What mattered was that they did hold it together — for now.

This wasn’t exactly a save-the-season triumph that had Gruden singing “Happy Goo Lah,” or whatever his favorite song is. It was more of a delaying action. It was a 29-27 eke-out that was equal parts chaotic, frustrating and admirable and by no means conclusive. They had to settle for five field goals, and if not for their squandering and lame-brained opponents, who generously donated a couple of fatal penalties and two fourth-quarter interceptions from Eli Manning, they would be 0-3. Still it was an NFC East division victory on the road, and those are hard to come by. They held together when there was every reason to come apart, when they were torn by inner conflict and shredded by injuries that required veterans to improvise at different positions and young guys to play over their heads.

“We had many reasons and many a time we could’ve hung our heads and said, ‘Here we go again,’ ” Gruden said. “We know how it feels to be on the other side.”

There was defensive end Chris Baker, screaming at defensive coordinator Joe Barry on the sideline over what goal-line defenses he was calling. “He called one thing that he thought was best, and I had my feelings on what we should have been in,” Baker said frankly.

[Barry and McVay make the tweaks, are rewarded with a win]

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There was tight end Vernon Davis, gesturing at the sideline and demanding the coaches to stick with the running game during what turned out to be the game-winning drive. “Again!” Davis insisted, tired of the cute calls and determined to keep stomach-punching the Giants. So the coaches obliged him.

“We kind of wanted to throw it,” Gruden said, “but they wanted to run it.”

A head coach creates the team culture, and this is Gruden’s culture, for better or worse: one in which the players feel free to game plan and scream about calls and the coaches pacify them by making adjustments. It’s an interesting experiment — to say the least. And you have to hand it to Gruden for making it work at MetLife Stadium on Sunday, when so many things seemed to be falling apart and going wrong and a 0-3 start would have meant almost certain doom to the entire season.

Gruden is an interesting if as yet unproven coach whose signature seems to be an open-door accessibility and casualness yet who has plenty of iron in him. He doesn’t seem to mind argument and controversy, at least on the surface.

“I can’t make 63 guys and 20 coaches happy every day,” he said earlier in the week. “We’re not all going to be smiling and singing ‘Happy Goo Lah’ or whatever the heck the song is. There’s going to be some upset people.”

He seems to be willing to live with this and the other consequences of being a “players’ coach.” It’s a style that comes with a certain amount of risk. As Brian Billick once noted, “The things you’re applauded for are the exact same things they’ll run you out of town for.”

It all seemed to roll off Gruden, the chatter about discord in the locker room all week, the leaks that players were underwhelmed with the play calls and early performance of quarterback Kirk Cousins and unhappy with Barry’s game plans and lack of in-game flexibility. Former Redskins linebacker Keenan Robinson contributed to the tense, toxic atmosphere by saying, “Once they get down, they start pointing fingers. . . . People started talking. That’s how you get dissension in the locker room.”

But it’s unclear whether this team truly has dissension or whether it is simply an unfinished outfit that’s still trying to find its personality. Gruden seems to accept that his players have every right to feel frustrated over their ineffectualness in scoring position: They have scored just three touchdowns in 14 trips to the red zone in three games. “We need to be better,” Cousins said. “There’s no other way to say it. We got down there so many times.”

Their pass-heavy scheme is tantalizingly flashy but can inexplicably get too cute: They were just 7 for 16 on third downs against the Giants. What does it do to a team psychologically to know that it can’t pick up short yards on third down? What signal does it send that they don’t have a reliable way to power through a third and two? What does it tell the opposition?

This is a team that is still figuring out its run-pass mix — its play-calling is less a matter of philosophy than uncertainty and lack of faith. You could see that on Washington’s final drive, when Matt Jones ripped off a couple of long runs — only to get stuffed on third and three.

When the Redskins do practice balance, it seems more for form’s sake than real conviction or enthusiasm for the running game. It’s just something they do to keep the opponent honest — they’re not fully weaponized yet.

Yet they’re also a team with so many intriguing features and aggressive young difference makers, the Jamison Crowders and Quinton Dunbars. They move the ball consistently and have undeniable big-strike ability — and a taste for dazzle, like that pass from Tress Way to Dunbar on a fake punt. “I almost had to take heart medicine,” defensive end Ricky Jean Francois said.

Above all, they have an interesting resilience, and they fight. They had three reserves on the field in the defensive backfield in the final quarter, when they managed to snag those two interceptions from Manning.

It’s unclear who or what managed to pull those performances out of them in the end. On Saturday night, DeAngelo Hall called a players-only meeting. “We’re not leaving New York without a victory,” he told them. He repeated it again on the sidelines, even after leaving with a badly injured knee. When they might have splintered, instead they did the opposite.

“We did the biggest thing,” Francois said. “Which was to stay together. It can only get better from here.”

For more by Sally Jenkins, visit washingtonpost.com/jenkins.