In the Win Column

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.

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.