Week 5: Giants vs Eagles

“The Giants’ can beat the Eagles today. If they do, they got a shot of making the playoffs.”

Looks like this kid's got the big blues.

This is what I said at a Giants’ tailgate before I entered Metlife Stadium on Sunday. Clearly I was still in denial about how bad the Giants are. But after a long trip using the LIRR, New Jersey Transit, and being held up at Secaucus Junction for forty extra minutes, it was clear to me that the Giants have derailed. The stadium was filled with a bunch of naive fans just like me. Fans thinking that the Giants still have a chance of turning their awful season around. And our loyalty was repaid with a collective, and all too familiar kick to the junk. Myself, and tens of thousands of Giants' fans experienced a roller coaster ride of emotions. From happy, to bummed, to incredulous, to excited, to fired up, to angry, then finally to demoralized.

But this has been the Giants story this season. It’s the same story, only the opponents have changed.
The Giants played sloppy, undisciplined football. They committed unnecessary penalties. Twelve penalties for one hundred and thirty-six yards to be exact. This included three intentional grounding penalties. THREE! That’s more than a normal quarterback should have an entire season!
Coach Coughlin called a timeout in order to challenge a play that didn’t get overturned and it ended up costing the team two timeouts in the second half. The last timeout was used by Eli well before the end of the game to save himself from a delay of game penalty.
Despite having a low success rate, they still go for the home run ball with every fresh set of downs.
When they were backed up into their own end zone, they used an east/west runner in Wilson to try to create space instead of Jacobs, who is better at running between the tackles.
Eli throws three picks in the fourth quarter. Which brings his total for the year to a whopping twelve.
The entire Giants’ team fell apart in the fourth quarter.
The Giants’ punt coverage couldn’t help Weatherford on his coffin corner kicks.
The defensive line couldn’t get much pressure on either of the Philly quarterbacks.
You would think when Vick injured his hammie, they would have a good chance of shutting down the Eagles' offense. This was wasn’t the case as Foles tore them a new one.
Deshawn Jackson was making toast out of the sixth year corner back Trumaine McBride. I’m not sure why their best corner, Prince, wasn’t on him the entire game.

It’s issues like these that resulted in the death of the Giants‘ 2013 season.

The issue is that the Giants’ have been bad all season but now we can all come to grips with it. Now with the demise of anything we love, there are five stages of mourning.

The Giants make these guys look like Pearl Jam.

1) Denial and Isolation: After the first loss you can reason why the Giants’ were at Nickleback suck level, “Hey they aren’t awful. They had six turnovers, but only lost to the Cowboys by a few points. They can turn it around.” Then after the slaughter at the hands of the Broncos, people could say, “The Giants’ were just out-matched by Peyton and the Broncos. It wasn’t a huge shock, but I think they are still better than they were against Denver.” These were the excuses we made. Even a small part of me that was delusional enough to think they still could turn the season around on Sunday. We didn’t want to believe that the Giants’ were just straight up bad this year.

2) Anger: This was occurred after the Giants’ got their butts kicked by the Carolina Panthers. Eli couldn’t get any time in the pocket and the defense gave up a ton of points. They got blown out by a bad team. It was embarrassing and infuriating.

3) Bargaining: Giants’ fans came up with excuses on why they crapped their pants this year. Quick fixes were bring thrown around. “If we only kept Bradshaw”, “If only our offensive line was healthy,” “If Nicks attended those voluntary workouts”, “If only JPP was healthy”, “If only Stevie Brown didn’t get injured”. "If" can be a very dangerous word.

4) Depression: After the dust settled from the Panthers beatdown, the Giants’ got their asses handed to them by the Chiefs. This was a devastating blow to Giants’ fans everywhere. After that all of those fans that tried to believe in Big Blue were now shuffling around in sweatpants and stained t-shirts, listening to Morrissey, and watching the Giants’ Super Bowl DVD to remember the good times.

Mourning is not easy an easy thing to do.

5) Acceptance: After the loss to the Eagles, it was confirmed that the Giants’ are done. Eli’s late interceptions were the final nails in the coffin. Now the Giants are Sonny at the toll booth, they're Quint on the Orca, they're Mr. Orange it the warehouse. In other words, they are long gone, but now it’s safe to finally embrace it.

So what have I learned?

I could rattle off a few reasons on why they're so bad. But honestly what's the point?

Unfortunately, the G-Men just need to take their lumps and get through this season. They’ll pick up some wins along the way but it’s not going to be easy.

The Giants are in major need of a reload. I wouldn’t necessarily say they need to rebuild. A top five pick in next year’s draft should definitely help.

The whole team stinks.