Week Three… 3 – 0

Another short post as I’m two weeks from getting this cast off. October 6th is the day and there’s some PT after that, but at least I won’t have to type using 2 keyboards. Oh, and I chose that picture because that dude looks like he stores a rabid fox under his helmet. I swear if I were an O lineman I'd have pants made out of that by halftime after ripping some out on every play.

To this point in the season the Bungles are the 30th ranked offensive team, the 24th ranked in team defense and still the undisputed leaders in players serving some measure of legal sentence. And when they met in New York this weekend, they gave the Giants all the trouble they could handle. Eli and the gals showed some real gumption this week scoring a late touchdown only to have the hapless Bung squad kick a game tying field goal. As always the coin toss is the only real drama in NFL overtime and the Giants won, thus won the game. And don’t give me some crap about “all the Bengals had to do was stop them!” It won’t wash. *Since the kickoff was moved back to the 30 yard line nearly 1/3 of overtime games have been won on the first possession by the team that received the ball first. But regardless of my blather, the Giants are 3-0 and it’s not looking good for me… yet.

From this point out the Giants go 5-8 and miss the playoffs. This is the bye-week for the Sisters of the Accidental Title, so let’s get back at it in a couple of weeks. That’ll give my arm a bit of healing. Oh, and just to make sure it’s out there, Patriot Nation is in serious distress this week after the Fins ripped us up one side and down the other. It was ugly in its highest form.

Source: Ivars Peterson‘s Math "Trek, Football's Overtime Bias"

Two and… oh, it’ll get a lot harder after the bye-week

This is going to have to be in two parts as I broke my arm and I can't type well with one hand yet (insert one handed typing joke here). I do however know I have a responsibility to taunt Giants fans even after a win. I intend to make my bones stronger gaining sustenance by drinking your tears after week 17 while your team is golfing. so here's part one:

Am I worried that I’ll have to, at some point acknowledge I was wrong and the Giants will make the playoffs? Am I nervous that they’ll cement a playoff berth and sully my reputation for knowing more about football than you? The answer of course is not on Tom Caughlin’s bright pink face.

This week saw the Giants travel to fun-city USA, St. Louis to face the Rams. A team that would finish its first two games scoring a combined…16 points. Wait. I need to double check that. YUP! 16 points scored by a supposed professional football franchise. A team that’s success dissolved faster than Georgia Frontiere’s hay day as a Miami stripper (it’s true, look it up). At any rate a quick recap…

5 minutes into the 4th quarter the Rams were making it a game with a 45 yard TD pass torching the Giants vaunted defense. It made the score 13 to 20 and a game we had! Of course this is St. Louis after all and after the Giants scored and that’s all it takes to break a loser’s sprit. An answering TD followed by Marc “I have no” Bulger interception and it was salted away. Nice job Rams! Nice to see you used Stephen Jackson 13 times to run the ball. Great use of (potentially) the best back in the game.

Sorry guys. Check back tomorrow for the exciting conclusion…

Week One: Weak One

Tell me you didn’t get through the first quarter of week one’s Giants Redskins game and think, “Man, are the Giants that good or are the Skins that bad?”

In the second quarter you were thinking “OK, they missed a couple of opportunities in close but, MAN they look good from 20 to 20!”

In the second half, if you stayed awake, you saw what could be called uninspired football at best… at worst how bad both of those teams really are and a glimpse into an uncertain future for the paper champions. Giants’ fans, be honest now; that game should have been 28 to 7 and for all intents and purposes over. It wasn’t though. It wasn’t because Jeremy Shockey couldn’t get open in the… WAIT! Sorry about that. I just remembered you guys jettisoned you’re only real red zone receiving threat. But at least the oldest player in the NFL, 44 year old John Carney, was there to boot 3 field goals.

The silver lining for haters of all things Manning was that we were treated to our favorite face. Eli’s Missississy Sad Face when one of his receivers made a mistake and cut an end-zone route short almost resulting in a pick. See, against a real team that will be an interception and JC won’t get his chance to pop a pooch for 3. But they did win however unimpressive it was and that gets them one game closer to the post-season.

Week two sees the Giants travel to St. Louis to play the Rams and that should prove a bigger challenge. They’ll face a team that thinks it’s a good idea to throw BEYOND the first down marker on 3rd and whatever. Imagine that!

Long Year Coming in NY

Giants: No Playoffs. Book it. Done.

A modest prediction

The fact that Eli Manning has a Super Bowl title almost ruins the prestige of the highest honor of American football. Hell, Mark Rypien and Jeff Hostetler have one. The NFL barely escaped further degradation of the title of World Champions when the Falcons and Seahawks fell short in their one and only shots. All this proves of course is the blind squirrel indeed does find a nut every so often and sometime that nut is named after the *most overrated football mind of our time.

That’s why the Giants will join the likes of The 2003 Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the 2003 Oakland Raiders, the 2004 Carolina Panthers and the 2005 Philadelphia Eagles among others as one off Super Bowl contenders that failed to make the playoffs the following season.

Yeah, that’s right. The Super Bowl Champion New York Giants will fail to make the playoffs. What could I possibly be basing this on, you ask? We could certainly start with Osi Umenyiora’s season ending surgery and the departure of Michael Strahan. We could base it on the fact that the demonstrative windbag and woefully overrated Jeremy Shockey was unceremoniously let go before the season began. We could mention that the upright and punishing running style of Brandon Jacobs puts a shelf life of about 8 weeks on his season. This list could go on for days, however there is only one real reason the Giants won’t make the playoffs. They’re just not that good.

B..b…b…but last year’s playoffs!!!

Ah, yes where they ran into those perennial buzz saw Buccaneers and dispatched them easily, then took it to the Cowboys in Texas Stadium. You know the Cowboys right? That’s the team that hasn’t won a playoff game since when, the fabled Barry Switzer era? Let’s just say that team is not living up to expectations and shuffle along from there.

B…b…b…but the Packers game!

When the Giants were sent to the Super Bowl by playing a tough game and by Bret Favre’s heroic choke? Leaving the only post-season game the Giants truly outplayed their opponent. Super Bowl XLII (or 42 for the Roman numeral illiterate) saw a team that both overestimated their ability to chuck the ball all over the place and underestimated a hungry opponent. The Giants saved their best game for last and that’s to their credit. In virtually every facet of the game they had a pretty tight grasp, and still needed the most remarkable play in Super Bowl history to give them a chance at the lead. One can watch the David Tyree play a thousand times and wonder how, first that slack-jawed yokel got away from the most pressure he’d seen all day then how the hell DT stuck that ball to his helmet. It nearly shut down the entire region of New England for a month. It still stings fans of the most hated team in the NFL.

So again I conclude, the Giants simply are not a very good team. They are a team that got hot at the right time last year and since then lost some pretty serious players. But look on the bright side Giants fans – Eli will still pout like Mr. Missississy when he throws a pick, and that’ll be enough for it to become as funny to you as it is to the rest of America.



*Yes, Vince Lombardi is the most overrated football mind of the modern era. I’ll elaborate on that as the season progresses.