In the Win Column

‘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.

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.

- 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?