Week 12: Giants at Saints

One minute and one second left in the fourth quarter and the Saints are driving yet again. Mark Ingram gets the ball and runs to the left side and strolls into the end zone to score a 35 yard TD. As a viewer, I see Corey Webster turn his back on the play and walk toward the bench as soon as Ingram burned him. This is what the Giants defense have become. A lifeless, uninspired, and confused group of men. I struggle to call them a team.

Some players like Antrel Rolle, said they need to show more intensity, show more fire. I've seen more intensity during a game of hungover Thanksgiving football. I can picture this exchange happening in the huddle:
    Deon Grant: "Hey, I'm gonna take the next play off. I think I'm gonna puke."
    Corey Webster: "Ok, that's fine. Just don't cover anybody, I'm sure they'll get tackled."

At least if they were hungover it would make sense that the Saints absolutely clowned them. It seriously looked like a Madden game being played on Pro Rookie. You could tell they had no answers for the Saints by everyone on the defense displaying their best "Eli face." It seemed that every play the "D" was out of position and the only one who was actually trying was Jason Pierre-Paul (JP2 for future reference).

Maybe what the team needs is a team building montage straight outta Mighty Ducks or Little Giants. Maybe even watching these movies could help. The mention of Little Giants brings me to my next point...

It seemed that some receivers channeled their inner "Hot Hands" and decided to not catch some of the balls that were thrown to them. I dunno if some of the receivers are aware of this but without catching the ball, it's tough to get anything going on offense. Having said that, the receivers finally got their act together and Eli completed an amazing 19 consecutive passes.



A little help guys? Why the heck is
Deon Grant passed out behind the Gatorade buckets?



Poor Eli. His best year as a QB plagued by an ineffective running game, a porous offensive line, and receivers not running correct routes, catching the ball, or staying in bounds (I mean you, Nicks). His back must be killing him for carrying his teammates. Remember, you can't spell ELectIve back surgery without ELI.

Despite all of this, against my better judgment I still hold out hope for these jabronies. This is when they (are supposed to) play their best ball: When everyone counts them out. Obviously this didn't work out on Monday. But after they lose to the Packers they have Dallas twice, the Jets, and the Redskins. Those are all winnable games, and the two against Dallas need to be won. If they lose any games to Dallas, Tuck and Jacobs might as well be drinking beer, eating chicken, and playing X BOX in the locker room.

So let's keep hating on this team and build up their "Us Against The World" mentality. Having said that...

Coughlin is going to get fired.

Defense can't stop anybody.

Running game is a disgrace.

I leave you with this great Jim Fassel quote. Get your sh*t together, guys.

“I am raising the stakes right now, ... If this is a poker game, I am shoving my chips right in the middle of the table. I am raising the ante. Anybody who wants out, can get out. This team is going to the playoffs. OK? This team is going to the playoffs.”

Week 11: Giants VS Eagles

Preamble:

This is the first time I'm doing this. I didn't even have the motivation to do this until I saw the disater that was the Giants last night loss to the Eagles. Here goes nothing. But honestly can it be any worse than what happened last night?

There are a lot of things I can take away from this. I'm not going to say the obvious things, like Jacobs is less reliable than getting a stoner friend to pick you up at the airport. Or how back up QBs scare me when Vince Young looked like STEVE Young on an 18 play 9 minute drive. Or how if you don't catch the ball you don't MOVE the ball. Or nothing angered me more than Steve Smith celebrating a TD in Jersey while wearing an Eagles jersey. Or my reaffirmation of how much I despise DeShawn Jackson. (I digress) Besides all of that here is what I actually learned...



"Oh hey Matt, next time don't f*ck my sh*t up!" - Tom Coughlin



If Matt Dodge was still on the Giants the final score would have easily been 42-10 because DeShawn Jackson would have housed almost all of them.

Granted much of those returns would probably be called back because DeShawn Jackson lacks any control to act like a big boy.

The punting putz, kicking calamity, the field-position failure that is Dodge had a knack for kicking the ball in such a way that always put the returners in the best position to get 6. 

Steve Weatherford kept the Giants in that game by effective punting. Yes, he did have a close call where DeShawn Jackson almost housed one but he did make that tackle and overall he punted well. He kicked the ball all over the place, the furthest being 61 yards, and on two punts he was down right Feaglesesque (I'm gonna make that a household frame of reference). I don't like that the Giants were so inept that they punted 9 times but Weatherford planted 4 inside the 20 and put the Eagles in poor field position more times than not.

Having said all of this, you know your team is in serious trouble when the punter is the silver lining.