… full of ups and downs, isn’t it?
The good thing about having two teams to root for in the NFL is that it greatly decreases the number of Sundays where you feel like pounding your head against the wall until your brains dribble out of your nose. Even if one team gets spanked, the other may win.
Last week it was the Giants who looked terrible in losing to the Cowboys, and the Jets who looked like world beaters in crushing the Bills.
This week, just the reverse.
Not much to say about the Jets loss in Pittsburgh. The Steelers are a damn good team, and they have always seemed to have Gang Green’s number, at least since… well, forever. As sharp as Sanchez looked last week, this week he looked awful. His wideouts did not help much either. I lost count of how many balls I saw bouncing off Santonio Holmes. Kerley and The New Guy were non-existant. If this is the best we have at wideout, we need to resign Plaxico Burress tomorrow. Plax was always good for six down in the red zone. Our run game… well, it was unimpressive when Shonn Greene was running, and worse when he came out. And our vaunted Jets D is much MUCH less impressive without Darrell Revis. Where’s the pass rush? Our big round one draft choice DE so far is doing an amazing impersonation of Vernon Gholston.
The Jets better show up next week and kick some Dolphin ass. If they lose that one, they could well be looking at 1-4, since they have the 49ers and the Texans the following two weeks, and the team I saw today won’t stand a chance against either of those squads.
Thank the gods, old and new, I have my New York Giants too. Now THAT was a hell of a game. Not that the early action did not prompt a little head-banging, what with Eli tossing those three interceptions and all. That sound you heard was me, screaming, but Parris waved her magic Giants blanket and kept the faith, and in the fourth quarter Eli came roaring back… and how. Threw for something like 510 yards, I believe, which like the ninth best total ever for any QB in the history of the league, or something. From two touchdowns down, the G-men rallied to tie it up (with a 2 point conversion at the end, the real miracle, we NEVER make 2 point coversions), then went ahead by a TD… and then had Josh Freeman and the Bucs come right back and tie it up again with a touchdown of their own…
But they scored too quickly, and left Eli almost two minutes. That’s ALWAYS a mistake. Just ask the New England Patriots. So Manning just drove them back down and did it all over again, scoring another go-ahead TD.
An incredible performance by Eli, and by his two favorite targets, Hakeem Nicks and Victor Cruz. Both were sensational today. Victor more than made up for all those drops last week against Dallas with 11 receptions for 199 yards, including an 80 yard TD that he dedicated to his grandmother, who passed away this week. Even with totals like that, he only had the second-best day among the Giants wideouts, since Hakeem Nicks racked up 10 catches for 199, despite coming into the game with an injured foot and then having his ankle stepped on so badly that he was limping and hobbling all through the last quarter. It was a great gutsy performance by Hakeem, who gave Bucs QB Aqib Talib a real schooling.
Some kudos are also due Giants TE Marcellus Bennett, who came through a great clutch TD catch after letting a couple of previous TD tosses from Eli bounce off his hands. If he’d caught all three, the game might never have been in doubt. Bennett has been inconsistent so far, but he certainly flashes plenty of talent. If he starts showing it every play, he could be a hell of an addition to the offense.
Also, the G-men seem to have found a terrific backup RB in Andre Brown, who has been on the team for three years and never done a thing… but today Ahmed Bradshaw went out early with a neck injury (hope it is not serious, Ahmed’s a favorite) and Brown came in and ran all over the Bucs. Suddenly Big Blue’s run game was the smashmouth style I remember from days of yore. Brown also had the wits to go down on the one yard line when the Bucs were trying to let him score at the end of the game. Nice to see that too. I hope to see more of Brown in the weeks to come, he could well be the complement to Bradshaw that we need, a new younger version of Brandon Jacobs, running hard right up the middle.
Speaking of the end of the game, though… one hates to pile on, but damn, that was a bush league move that the new Bucs coach pulled at the end of the game, having his line smashing into the Giants when Eli was kneeling down to run out the clock. Good way to injure someone. Yeah, I know you came from college, but this is the NFL. Game’s over, guy. Deal with it. It may have been legal, sure, but it was classless. And if you keep doing stuff like that, you may be headed back to college sooner than you’d like.
Anyway… we won one, we lost one. Just like Hugo night. Seems to be a theme of late.
Oh, and the Pats and Cowboys lost. Icing on my Big Blue cake.
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