“Jet Blue” Offense Takes Off in Big D

26 10 2010
New York Giants Hakeem Nicks runs up the sidelines against the Dallas Cowboys during the first half in Cowboys Stadium October 25, 2010 in Arlington, Texas. UPI/Ian Halperin Photo via Newscom

This is shaping up to be one of the wackiest NFL seasons I have ever seen. Don’t believe me? Check out the standings through Week 7. As of today, the Tennessee Titans (5-2), the Kansas City Chiefs (4-2), the Chicago Bears (4-3) and the Seattle Seahawks (4-2) are in first place in their respective divisions. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers (4-2) are a half-game behind Atlanta in the NFC South. The combined record of all of these teams in 2009: 27-53.

Still don’t believe me? Okay, well consider the fact that even though we are almost at the halfway point of this NFL season, we really don’t have a single team that would be considered a clear-cut favorite in the NFC. Nobody. If I had a gun to my head and I was forced to pick two teams, if I absolutely HAD to, I would probably have to go with the Giants and the Falcons – but I’m still reluctant to say that. The combined 2009 record of both of these teams: 15-17.

To expound on that, let’s look at the current state of last year’s final four teams in the NFC – the Cowboys, Vikings, Saints and Cardinals. As of today, the combined record of those four teams is…10-15 (note that Dallas and Minnesota are responsible for skewing this stat with 9 of those 15 losses – the Saints and Cards are still .500 or better, but for the purposes of making my point, I had to lump them all together).

Basically, what I’m trying to say is really something that we already knew – in the National Football League, ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE. That is why it is so hard to predict what is going to happen in this league from one week to the next, much less predict what is going to happen an entire season in advance. Just look at the Cowboys. Anybody with a functioning brain pegged the Cowboys as one of the clear favorites to represent the NFC  in the Super Bowl this year and today, on October 26th, they are 1-5 and looking at 6-8 weeks of Jon Kitna as their starting quarterback. In other words, they’d be lucky to escape this season with more than 4 wins. The Saints just got throttled at home by the Cleveland Browns. Heck, the Oakland Raiders put up 59 points in one game. That is roughly 30% of the total amount of points they scored all of last season. In 16 games. That’s right, I did the math.

Last night’s Giants game was like a microcosm of this strange and unpredictable NFL season. For example, last night I almost shut off the TV 3 times in the first quarter! That was only one time shy of this season’s record of 4 times that I almost shut of the TV in the first quarter during the Week 2 game at Indianapolis. Only thing is, we won last night! And not only did we win but we scored 41 points. Yeah crazy, I know.

I honestly can’t remember the last game I watched where a team turned the ball over 5 times in one game (a -3 turnover margin) and managed to win that same game. With 41 points. I can’t remember the last game I watched where a team fell behind 20-7 in the 2nd quarter on the road, turned the ball over 3 times, had absolutely zero momentum, and then 8 minutes later carry a 24-20 lead into the locker room at halftime.

I have never been on an emotional roller coaster ride through only one half of football like the one I experience last night. I went from being optimistic to convinced the game was a rehash of Week 2 against Indy (at 10-0), back to being optimistic again (at 10-7), then even more optimistic (Romo’s injury), then on the verge of throwing the remote through the TV screen (at 20-7), and back to optimistic again at halftime. All of that happened in the course of 30 minutes of football. That is six very drastic changes in emotion in a 2 hour span.

And then, when we began the second half, as Ron Burgundy would say, things escalated pretty quickly. Manning found Manningham for a 25-yard score, Jacobs rumbled in from 30 yards out, and before you could even say “fractured clavicle”, it was 38-20. And I’m pretty sure Brick killed a guy with a trident somewhere along the way. This sudden outburst of 31 unanswered points could be attributed to the fact that the Cowboys either, a) simply had no clue how to cover any of our wide receivers (especially Hakeem Nicks) or b) just didn’t want to cover them anymore. It could also be attributed to the fact that Jon Kitna hadn’t played a single down in the NFL in 2 years and was over-throwing every receiver by at least 20 yards. I mean, I’m pretty sure that he threw one third-down pass to Miles Austin that he couldn’t have caught if he was standing on the top step of one of those 25-foot ladders the WWE uses in ladder matches.

The final score (41-35 for those of you who actually followed through on their threat to turn the game off early and then slept through most of today) made the game seem a lot closer than it actually was. I was never once afraid that the Cowboys would come back at any point in the 4th quarter, mostly because I knew the Giants defense had eased off the throttle a little bit and also because I knew that there was no way Jon Kitna was going to pull a Brett Favre on us. Would I have liked the Giants to show a little bit more of a “killer instinct” late in the game and blitz Kitna into oblivion until the final gun? Yes, but it didn’t happen. It’s something we’ll have to work on during our bye week.

For now though, I’d be a liar if I didn’t say that I’m pretty damn content with where our New York Football Giants stand. At 5-2, we now hold sole possession of first place in the NFC East, a spot that we cannot relinquish even during our bye next week. We currently have the #2 total defense in the NFL in yards allowed, as well as the #2 total offense in the NFL in yards gained (at one point during last night’s game, we had 407 total yards to only 78 for Dallas). This stat doesn’t mean a whole lot right now, because the #1 team in both of those categories is the San Diego Chargers and they’re 2-5, still it’s nice to know. Eli Manning is tied for the league-lead in touchdown passes with 14 and is fifth in the league in completion percentage at 65.7. Ahmad Bradshaw leads the NFL in rushing yards with 708, ahead of both Adrian Peterson and Chris Johnson, and Hakeem Nicks is tied for the league-lead in touchdown catches with 8.

As great as all of those numbers are though, the only one that matters right now is the one in the column with the “W” on top. Wins. As long as we can keep adding to that number, we’ll be fine. For now though, we’ll take it one week at a time.

 

*Giants Fact of the Week*: The Giants have started the season 5-2 or better every year since 2004.


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One For the Ages

30 12 2009
Carolina Panthers v New York Giants

Last week was a busy week for two reasons: Christmas. Shopping. For those reasons, I couldn’t turn out a column after last Monday night’s 45-12 throttling of the Washington Redskins on Monday Night Football. Had I written something, I likely would have gushed about how good the offense and the defense looked and how I could see this season turning around. I may have even written about how I thought this team might make a pretty surprising run in the playoffs and how I thought that there were a lot of similarities to the 2007 team that won the Super Bowl. I probably would have written all of those things, and a lot more. Then, after Sunday’s game, I would have looked back at last week’s column and been very embarrassed. I would have been almost as embarrassed as the Giants were by the Carolina Panthers Sunday afternoon in the last game they will ever play at Giants Stadium, their home for the last 34 years and 283 games.

A few weeks ago, after the wild Sunday night shootout against the Eagles, I wrote that I would not be disappointed if that was the last game I would ever watch in Giants Stadium. Then I got greedy. I knew I just had to be there on Sunday, I had to be there for the last hurrah, when the curtain came down on the place that I have grown to love over the last 15 years. Now, my final memory of Giants Stadium is going to be the Giants getting spanked by a team that had absolutely nothing to play for, on a day that we had everything to play for. It’s going to be a memory of our defense getting torched for 206 yards by a second-string running back (mind you, I know Stewart can be a starter on just about any other team in the league) and for 3 touchdowns by a second-string quarterback. It’s going to be a memory of Brandon Jacobs getting mercilessly booed as he walked off the field and towards the locker room with about 8 minutes to go and the Giants down 41-9. Were the boo’s warranted? Certainly. Jacobs racked up a whopping 1 yard on 6 carries. The workhorse who helped carry the Giants to a Super Bowl title 2 years ago, now looks like he has suddenly aged a decade. His explosiveness has all but disappeared, he no longer puts his shoulder down and runs over defenders and for the most part, he looks like he is running with ankle weights on. He has not crossed the 100-yard mark once all season, he only has 5 touchdowns (one-third of his total from last season) and unless he has a monster game against Minnesota next week, he will fall short of 1,000 yards for the first time since 2006, when he was Tiki Barber’s backup.

Needless to say, the lackluster running game has been the root of several of the Giants problems this season, but not all of them. Not in the least. It certainly hasn’t affected the passing game. Manning has had no problems finding the open receiver this season (you know, when they actually decide to catch the ball) and he is having, by far, the best statistical season of his career. His 27 touchdown passes are a career high and he will likely pass the 4,000 yard mark next week, making him only the third Giants quarterback to do so in franchise history. He needs a little over 200 yards to set the Giants all-time single season mark currently held by Kerry Collins who set it in 2002.

What the lack of a run game has done to the Giants this season is fail to establish a rhythm that has been so vital to our offense in the past few seasons. Being able to balance a successful passing game with a steady running game is the key to success in the National Football League, and the Giants just couldn’t find that balance for most of this season. Not enough big runs from Jacobs and Bradshaw to jump start a scoring drive and not enough big plays to galvanize the team and give the offense some momentum when the team sorely needs it.

I’m not going to say much about Sunday’s game, mostly because there really isn’t anything to say about it. It was the epitome of all that has gone wrong for the Giants this season. The defense failed to make big plays when they needed to. It seemed like last week’s defensive game plan, which worked so well against Jason Campbell and the Redskins, was not replicated on Sunday, as the Giants only sacked Matt Moore once, on the Panthers first offensive play from scrimmage. If you take a few steps back, Sunday’s game was quite simple to understand, mostly because it happened so quickly. The Giants opening drive, which ate up almost 8 minutes of the clock, looked almost exactly like their opening drive in Washington last week. When Manningham fumbled on the Carolina 17 yard line after converting a huge 3rd down, the momentum that the Giants had seemingly tried to build up with that march slipped away, and from that point on it looked as if the Giants were going through the motions. One of the amazing things about football is that entire outcome of a single game can be changed by a single play. It is often the littlest things that can swing the momentum and which can either bury a team or give them a second life. On Sunday, the Giants were buried early. Perhaps even before the fans knew it, and certainly before the players knew it, proving that anything is possible on any given Sunday.

Carolina Panthers v New York Giants

Was it tough to head out to Giants Stadium for one final Sunday, hoping for a heroic, season-saving effort from the Giants and a final push for the playoffs, only to see one of the worst performances in the stadium’s history? Yes, it was admittedly difficult. However, there was a sort of poetic beauty in being able to witness Sunday’s game. Everything served as a type of closure, from the boo’s, to the guy over in section 319 who threw all of his food at the field when the Giants fell behind 24-0 at halftime. I’ll be the first to admit that with all the games I’ve seen at Giants Stadium over the years, I’ve been pretty lucky. I’ve seen a lot of good games, and even a handful of great games, but I haven’t witnessed to many stinkers like the one I saw on Sunday. Actually, it’s safe to say that Sunday’s game was the worst I have ever attended at Giants Stadium, or anywhere else for that matter. So bad that I probably will have to amend the column that I wrote a few months ago detailing the top 5 worst games of the Eli Manning Era to include it. When you look at it that way, it even begins to make some kind of sense. Maybe not fully, and not yet, but in time I’m sure I’ll see it for what it is.

On Sunday, Big Blue will travel to Minnesota to take on Brett Favre and the Vikings. The Vikes have already clinched a playoff spot, which is lucky for them considering the nosedive they’ve been locked in since the beginning of the month. They’ve dropped 3 of their last 4 games, including a gut-wrenching 36-30 overtime loss to the Bears on Monday night. The 11-4 Vikings suddenly have something to play for, as a loss by them and an Eagles win over Dallas would drop Minnesota down to the 3rd seed in the NFC, giving the Eagles the coveted first-round bye. As for the Giants, it’s a much different story. By Week 5, many Giants fans looked at this game on the schedule anticipating that it wouldn’t mean anything, much like last year’s Week 17 matchup against the Vikings. After all, we were 5-0, and most of us thought that we would have our playoff position readily secured by now. Well, it turns out that we were half-right, as Heatmiser would say. The game means about as much as an exhibition game to the Giants, but not for reasons that we had anticipated back when we were 5-0. The Giants will miss the playoffs this year for the first time since I was a senior in high school and I still believed that prom would be just like American Pie, only in real life. Instead, we will try to play spoiler and help out the Eagles, because after all,  they’ve helped us out so much this season (outscoring us 85-55 in two games). It’s the least we could do. To be perfectly honest with you, I’d much rather see the Eagles win the NFC than the Cowboys, a team we beat twice. It would hurt much less to know that the team that caused us the most torment this season turned out to be the second best team in the NFC.

With The Minnesota game being played on January 3rd, this past Sunday’s game against Carolina served not only as the last game at Giants Stadium, but also the last game of the decade. Although the decade ended on a bitter note for Big Blue, nobody can deny that it was one hell of a decade to be a Giants fan. With two Super Bowl appearances, one Super Bowl title, 3 division titles and 6 playoff appearances, it was arguably one of the most successful decades in Giants history, and I’m proud to have been a part of it. As we say goodbye to another decade and welcome in 2010 in just a few days, here’s to hoping that 2010-2019 will be even better for the New York Football Giants. Who knows, maybe it will even start with a win on Sunday.


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Shootout!

16 12 2009

‘Tis the season for giving, and the Giants were in the holiday spirit on Sunday night. They gave and they gave and they gave to the Eagles until their little hearts could give no more. If Sunday night’s shootout between the Giants and Eagles ends up being the last game I ever watch inside Giants Stadium, the only way I can picture it being any better is if the Giants came out on the winning end of that 45-38 circus that I witnessed from section 128, row 31. Before I talk about the game and why it turned out the way that it did, let me get a few things out of the way first. I go to a pretty fair amount of Giants games, I’d say around 4 or 5 each year. Never, ever have I been to a game that was as much of an emotional see-saw as Sunday night’s game. Even last year’s Sunday night finale against the Panthers for home field advantage in the NFC, when we overcame a 21-10 deficit to win 34-28 in overtime, could match it. From the opening drive of the game, you could immediately tell that it was going to be a unique night. There are a few reasons why this was evident:

1) It was a Sunday night game. Even though it was raining all day leading up to the game (luckily the rain subsided about an hour before kickoff) Giants fans were out tailgating in full force from about 3 in the afternoon, proving that not even the most miserable weather can stop people from drinking outside in a parking lot for 5 hours. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: night games are a very different animal. Everyone is at least 30 times more rowdy and loud and obnoxious and innocent taunts are about 100,000 times more likely to quickly escalate to full-blown fist fights. Night games are special, night games are dangerous.

2) Combine the fact that it was a night game with the fact that it was a divisional game against the hated rival Eagles, and it’s like mixing Mentos with Diet Coke. It goes without saying that there is no love lost between New York and Philadelphia. If anything, the rivalry between the two cities has escalated ten-fold since the World Series. We hate each other, and we’re not afraid to let it show. About 80,000 people let it show on Sunday night.

3) To top it all off, this game was for first place in the NFC East. With the Cowboys losing to San Diego earlier in the day, the winner of Sunday night’s game would take over first place in the division. Although a Giants win would have pulled them into a three-way tie with the Eagles and Cowboys at 8-5, they would have held the tiebreaker over both teams (winning head-to-head both times against Dallas and having a better division record than Philly). Needless to say, this was an extremely important game and everyone in that stadium the other night was fully aware of it.

So, as I was saying, we could all feel that this was going to be a special night. I was positive that it was, at least until McNabb marched the Eagles down the field on the opening drive like he was playing against the practice squad. After Brent Celek turned his 92nd catch of the drive into a touchdown and it was 7-0, I was more than a little apprehensive. When Brandon Jacobs coughed up the ball at the Eagles’ 44-yard line on the ensuing possession and Sheldon Brown ran it back 60 yards for the touchdown to make it 14-0 with less than 6 minutes gone by, the only thing I could think of was November 1st.

Giants vs. Eagles

Like I said though, this was not going to be just another ordinary game. Sure enough, the Giants answered, and after an electrifying 68 yard touchdown pass from Manning to Hakeem Nicks (a play that came after Nicks dropped two consecutive passes and was bailed out both times by a pass interference call on Eagles corner Quentin Mikell) the Giants cut the Philadelphia lead to 14-10. The game would continue like this for pretty much the rest of its duration. Just when it looked like the Eagles had extended their lead for good, Eli would lead Big Blue right back into the game. The momentum was passed back and forth more times than Snookie on an episode of Jersey Shore.

When the Giants finally took the lead in the middle of the third quarter on a 61 yard touchdown pass to Domenik Hixon, Giants Stadium erupted in a way that I haven’t seen in a long time. The play started out as short pass that Hixon turned into the second big play of the game for the Giants, when he broke several tackles en route to his second electrifying touchdown in as many weeks. When Lawrence Tynes’ extra point sailed through the uprights in the east end zone to give us a 31-30 lead, the place went bonkers. In fact, if you didn’t know any better you would think that Oprah just gave every single person in the stadium a new car. There was the whole deal: awkward man hugs, way too many high-fives, my brother slumped in his seat like he was just assassinated, and far too many old men dancing to Notorious B.I.G. So basically, it was everything I love about football.

A few commercials and a kickoff later, and McNabb found DeSean Jackson for a 60 yard touchdown pass that looked so easy I could have sworn that the play was blown dead and I just hadn’t heard the whistle. No such luck. Eagles 37, Giants 31. I haven’t gone from utterly ecstatic to utterly devastated that quickly since that one Christmas morning 15 years ago when I found a letter from Santa on the dining room table and then realized that his handwriting was exactly the same as my mom’s.

The rest is history. Leonard Weaver from 1 yard out to make it 45-31. The Giants add the obligatory late game touchdown to pull within 7, followed by the obligatory onside kick attempt and the inevitable kick that goes out of bounds. Game, set and match, Giants are in third place. So how did we get to that point, and what is there to look forward to as we head into the home stretch of this anything-but-ordinary 2009 season? I’m glad you asked. Let’s hear the bad news first, and then the good news, since that’s the way I like to do it and this is my column.

The Negatives

- Too many dropped passes. There were drops on Sunday night and then there were drops. You know, the kind of drops where your only reaction is to put both of your hands on top of your head and remark more than once about how you “can’t believe it”. I can’t even tell you how many times this happened on Sunday night. Hakeem Nicks did it. Mario Manningham did it. Heck, even Michael Boley dropped an interception that would have been a sure touchdown in the third quarter. Fortunately, Nicks was bailed out by Quentin Mikell three times on one drive (two pass interference calls and one awful missed tackle on his touchdown), but for the most part the Giants receivers were catching like they were wearing boxing gloves on Sunday night. It got so bad that I was waiting for someone to come out with glue on their hands like the kid from Little Giants.

Philadelphia Eagles Donovan McNabb reacts after a touchdown in the fourth quarter against the New York Giants at Giants Stadium

- Missed tackles. The tackling also could not get any worse. Our linebackers and secondary dove at Eagles receivers like they were trying to pull a flag out of their pants, not make an actual tackle. On his 72 yard punt return in the second quarter that give Philly a 24-10 lead, DeSean Jackson actually ran backwards for a few steps to avoid tacklers before accelerating down the near sideline. He backpeddled, changed direction, and still managed to avoid even being touched. Enough said.

- The secondary. Listen, I could fill up a whole 3,000 word column about the Giants secondary, so I’ll save my time (and yours) by saying that everytime McNabb took a seven-step drop and threw the ball downfield, my hands went right to the top of my head as if I knew that someone in a white and green jersey was going to be wide open. Almost 90% of the time, I was exactly right. The worst of this was the aforementioned backbreaking touchdown pass to Jackson. Almost as bad as that: on a 3rd and 20 on the final drive of the first half, with the Giants trailing 24-17 and trying to hang within a score heading into halftime, McNabb found Jackson for a 44 yard gain in the middle of the field to the Giants’ 24 that led to Michael Vick’s 1 yard touchdown run and a 30-17 lead. There is no way that NFL receivers should be that wide open that often. Yet somehow, it happened on Sunday night.

The Positives

- Eli Manning. He did everything he had to do to win. You could not possibly ask of anything else from a quarterback. He put 38 points on the board. In the NFL, when you score 38 points and outgain your opponent 512-374, you’re supposed to win the game. His defense let him down, and that’s it. His numbers (27/38, 391 yards, 3 TDs) marked a career-high in passing yards, breaking the mark he set a few weeks ago against Atlanta, and prove that he kept the Giants in the game and gave them a chance to win up to the very last moment. That’s all you can ask of him.

- Run defense. Although we got absolutely shredded through the air, we held the Eagles backs to only 77 yards on the ground. Furthermore, Jacobs and Bradshaw combined for 133 yards on the ground. Even if it’s not the best we’ve seen from the two, they both picked up a few big first downs and did what they had to do to open up the passing lanes for Manning.

- The future. With three games left in the 2009 season and a 7-6 record, one would assume that the future is looking bleak for Big Blue. However, we know better than to count anyone out yet. After all, this is the NFL. With the Giants only one game behind the Cowboys, it is more than possible for us to sneak past Dallas in the final weeks to grab the final wild card spot in the NFC. The Cowboys will play the Saints, Redskins and Eagles in their final three games, starting Saturday night in New Orleans, and we all know that there is no such thing as a sure thing for the Dallas Cowboys in the month of December. Even the Redskins will be a test for Dallas. Two losses for the Cowboys in the their next three and two wins for the Giants will give us a playoff birth at 9-7. The Giants last three opponents: Washington, Carolina and Minnesota.

Clearly the playoffs are not yet out of the question. So the question is, can we start covering some receivers?


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Falcon Punch

23 11 2009

As I descended down the escalator by Gate B yesterday after the game, I overheard a Giants fan behind me say, “That was probably the most depressing win I’ve ever seen.” Now, I don’t entirely agree with him. I don’t think there is such a thing as a depressing win in the NFL. With a short 16-game season, any kind of win, whether it be a pretty win, an ugly win or even an accidental win, is a good win. Having said that (anyone who has seen the latest episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm knows why I had to throw that in), I could see where that fan was coming from. I wouldn’t call yesterday’s win a depressing one, or even an ugly one for that matter. Maybe “discouraging”. Perhaps even a little “unconvincing”. When the game-winning field goal sailed off Lawrence Tynes’ foot and through the uprights with 11:06 to go in overtime, I celebrated loudly along with whoever else had decided not to leave the stadium when the Giants took a 31-17 lead.

The truth is, the game shouldn’t even have come down to Lawrence Tynes and it definitely should not have come down to an overtime period because like I said earlier, the Giants had a 31-17 lead. How did a two touchdown lead turn into an overtime coin toss in the span of 12 minutes? Well, it happened in very similar fashion to how we lost the game against San Diego. Instead of stepping up and making a big defensive stop or two in the fourth quarter, the defense instead folded like an origami swan. Matt Ryan took the Falcons down the field for two consecutive touchdown drives that looked about as difficult for Atlanta as heating up a Pop-Tart.

I don’t typically use phrases like “dinking and dunking” because I’m not Ron Jaworski, but that’s exactly what the Falcons did on their back-to-back 12 play drives in the fourth quarter. They played it safe and kept everything in the middle of the field, which is ironically exactly what the Giants defense did. By guarding against the big play (a 70-yard touchdown pass to Roddy White or something along those lines) and trying to keep the clock running, they ultimately ignored the short to medium 10-15 yard passes over the middle and stayed away from Atlanta tight end Tony Gonzalez like he was a leper, even when he scored the game-tying touchdown with 28 seconds left.

Call me psychic if you want, but I knew that this game was going into overtime when the Falcons scored to cut the Big Blue lead to 31-24. It’s not that I’m a cynic or that my Gatorade cooler is half-empty, it’s just that if I’ve seen this once, I’ve seen it a hundred times. The Giants are just about the only team that can make a two touchdown lead feel like they’re losing. Giants fans shouldn’t have to sit on the edge of their La-Z-Boys or uncomfortable plastic stadium seats when the score is 31-17 with 12:08 to play in the fourth quarter, yet that’s exactly what I was doing yesterday. Luckily, yesterday’s overtime drama didn’t last too long, but it was just long enough for my Overtime Anxiety Syndrome to kick in. I seem to be a magnet for overtime games lately, as yesterday was the third one I’ve been to in the past two seasons, but before I could start chewing on my hat like it was a 14 oz. NY Strip, Eli Manning stepped up just like he had been doing all day and completed a 29-yard strike down the far sideline to Mario Manningham to set up the Giants on the Falcons’ 23-yard line. A few plays later, as we held our collective breath, Tynes tucked one inside the right upright and the Giants had snapped their 4-game losing streak. The first win in 42 days.

The performances that stood out the most to me yesterday were the ones turned in by Eli Manning (25/39, 384 yards, 3 TDs), Mario Manningham (6 rec., 126 yards) and Kevin Boss (5 rec., 76 yards, 2 TDs). Our fearless leader put forth his second thoroughly impressive game in a row, and aside from an interception on the opening drive of the game, he was nearly perfect. His 384 yards marked a career-high total and the first time he had ever thrown for over 300 yards at Giants Stadium, a pretty odd statistic, considering he’s in his 5th full season and has started almost 50 games there. He stepped up and made big throws in big situations, including huge 51-yard pass to Steve Smith (4 rec., 79 yards) that led to the Brandon Jacobs touchdown run early in the 3rd quarter which gave the Giants a 24-14 lead and answered the Falcons previous touchdown drive to start the second half. As for Mario Manningham, my love affair with his athleticism grows by the week and he made some catches yesterday that made me forget all about Amani Toomer’s sideline acrobatics and Plaxico Burress’s one-handed grabs. He is going to be a phenomenal wide receiver one day, and I feel like we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg right now, as far as his potential in the NFL.

All in all, the Giants picked up a sorely needed win yesterday that may have been the spark that they need to rejuvenate their season. Having said that, there are still several kinks that still need to be smoothed out on the defensive side of the ball. We’ll be able to tell for sure on Thanksgiving night in Denver, but for now, a nice overtime victory works well to help me forget the fact that I picked up Jason Snelling for my fantasy team to replace Michael Turner and then left him on the bench and watched as he scored two touchdowns yesterday. That’s life.

Read more: http://giants.gearupforsports.com/blog/#ixzz0XjCcoIHj


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