Big Blue Notes

NFC Champion New York Giants.

I do like the sound of that.  At the beginning of the season I said the Giants had many question marks.  As a result, I believed if everything did not go well they could finish as low as 4-12, but if everything went well they could go 11-5.  They did finish 10-6 and are on their way to Super Bowl XLII!

What a tense game.  I can not tell you how excited I am for this team.  The defense has come together very well and played another excellent game (with the exception of the ninety yard touchdown pass).  Eli Manning has stepped up and become the quarterback the team needed him to be and Tom Coughlin will be on the Giants' sidelines for the next several years after getting this team this far.  In each of their three playoff victories, the Giants did what was needed to win.  There wasn't a lot of glamorous stats, they just won. 

There's so much credit to go around it's hard to know where to start.  Tom Coughlin deserves a lot of credit for changing the way he handles this team.  From being a "shut up and do as your told" coach, he is now listening to his players and taking their input into consideration when making decisions.  There have been calls, even in this playoff run, where I disagreed with him, but he has gotten his team to the Super Bowl and those results speak for themselves.

Eli Manning has taken a lot of crap from a lot of people about his play.  Criticism was certainly just, but there were people who had given up on him.  In the three biggest games of his life he has played his best football.  He hasn't put up his best stats, but he has played his best football.  That deserves respect, something Eli Manning has never gotten from his supporters nor his detractors.  I have been critical of our quarterback like many fans have.  I saw physical talent, but always worried about his toughness.  I won't worry any more.  Winning three playoff games on the road, the last in conditions not suited for any sport aside from ice fishing, is plenty tough.

Corey Webster was drafted three years ago to be a ballhawking defensive back.  He was a letdown.  He began the season as a starter only to lose his job.  In the playoffs, he stepped up and he shut down Joey Galloway and Terrell Owens and made what might have been the biggest play of the season in picking off Brett Favre in overtime.  Yes he gave up the ninety yarder to Donald Driver, but he got up and finished the game strong and in the end truly redeemed himself.  He might very well be the MVP of the playoffs for the Giants.

There are a lot more names to go over and I will in future blogs.  As far as the game itself yesterday, I can only say that the Giants thoroughly outplayed the Packers and overcame a lot of big plays, bad calls and missed kicks to come out ahead.  Plaxico Burress owned All-Pro corner Al Harris.  The Giants defense shut down Ryan Grant as a runner and a receiver.  The Packers had no success on screen passes.  Big Blue came out ready, willing and able to beat the home team and I give credit to Tom Coughlin and the veterans on this team in that regard.  The weather was never much a factor for the visiting Giants who were concerned about one thing:  winning the game.

I must say that the Giants overcame a lot to win yesterday.  They overcame the Packers, the Arctic weather and the officiating.

I hate to darken this celebratory post with negative thoughts, but I cannot overlook what happened in last night's game from an NFL standpoint.

First, let's talk about the thoughtlessness of scheduling this game at night.  For the sake of better television ratings, the NFL disregarded the well being of the people in the stands and the players on the field.  24 below?  Who cares!  Look at our advertising revenue!

Worse still was the officiating.  If you do not believe the NFL puts its thumb on the scales to weigh the game in favor of a given team at a given time, you did not watch the game last night or the Chargers-Colts game last week.

Last night:

On a Packer third down incomple in the first half, the refs flagged the Giants for illegal contact, a phantom call.  On the previous Giants possession (three incomplete passes) Giants receivers were looking for flags for the same infraction, none were thrown.  I didn't have a problem with the non-calls as there was no blatant pass interference.  Were the Packer defenders a hair early?  Maybe, maybe not, but they did nothing that merited a flag.  The problem occurs when the Giant defender is flagged for doing the same thing.  That penalty turned an incomplete third down pass into a first down for Green Bay which led to a field goal.

In the third quarter, the Packers were stopped on a third down play.  After the play, a flag is thrown against Sam Madison for a personal foul.  The drive is extended and the Packers score a touchdown.  Madison and a Packer were going at each other much in the same way Plaxico Burress and Al Harris were.  No flags were thrown against Harris for shoving and head butting Burress.

On a Giants third down with 3:30 remaining in the fourth quarter, KGB was clearly offsides as he got to Manning a split second after the ball did from his end spot.  No call.

Now I know Packers fans were booing the officiating too, but the Packer penalties were obvious.  Al Harris' interception that was overturned when he got flagged for holding was obvious.  He grabbed Burress, threw him to the ground and that's why he was in a position to intercept that pass.

The roughing the passer call was also legitimate. The Packer defender rammed Manning well after the Giant quarterback had gotten rid of the ball.

The offsides calls on the Green Bay defensive line at the goal line were all due to the Packer linemen jumping in anticipation of the snap.  Those penalties didn't really hurt the Packers as the Giants already had a first and goal at the one yard line, so what's half the distance going to do?

These plays are fresh in my mind because they happened last night.  But this sort of thing has gone on forever in the NFL and it shouldn't.  The Dallas Cowboys in the 1970's got a ton of calls because they were America's Marketing Department Team.  The Indianapolis Colts get a lot of calls because their quarterback is the posterboy of the league.  Watch a replay of the Colts-Pats regular season game and the Colts-Chargers playoff game and tell me I'm wrong. 

The NBA is a joke league because it has sold out the essence of its sport to marketing.  How many fundamental rules of the game of basketball have been thrown out the window to make the game more exciting?  Is traveling a violation any more?  Just how high can you dribble a basketball and not get a whistle?

The NBA should not be the model or any sport, yet every other sport is sadly following basketball's rush to sell out.  Baseball added a wild card, half of the NHL gets into the playoffs and the league has amended rules to promote scoring and the NFL continually attempts to aid the teams of its most marketable players. 

But the Giants won anyway.  So the NFL Marketing Department can go fuck itself.

I'd also like to thank Trickage, author of the Bolts Blog, whose beloved Chargers fell short in their attempt to end the Patriots perfect season.  I think we are the last two active bloggers of the season like two drunks at the bar at 2AM.  We ain't leaving.  Hell, I just put another dollar in the damn jukebox.

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• #1 Comment from monponsett 
  1/22/08 4:04 AM | Permalink

  Number 19, I presume?