Life is magical and full of…

No.  Sorry.  I can't do it.

The Giants and the Jets both won today.  The G-Men won a convincing victory over the Potomac Drainage Basin Indigenous Peoples, despite RGIII coming off the bench to play pretty well.  Eli looked good, and Odell Beckham Junior continued to look great.  The Jets won a wafer-thin victory over a truly awful Tennessee Titans team (hate that name, they should be the Nashville Cats), the same squad that the Giants crushed just last week… and even then, they almost blew it with one second left when the Titans tried one of those dipsy-doodle seven-lateral plays and came within seven yards of the winning TD.  Even in victory, Geno Smith looked awful.

But it's hard to feel great about either win.  The season is over for both teams.  No one is going to the playoffs.  Lots of people will be getting fired at year's end.   Big Blue and Gang Green weren't even acting as spoilers; their opponents have awful records too.   The Giants at least had the satisfaction of beating a division rival.  The Jets?  Not so much.  No rivalry there.  The Jets are awful, the Titans are awfuller.  And by winning, the Jets dropped behind the Titans and four other teams in the draft, meaning their chances of getting Oregon's Heismann-winning quarterback just got a lot worse.  That's the Jets for you.  Even when they win, they lose.

The only real highlight of the day was the continued superlative play of Giants rookie wideout Odell Beckham Junior.  The G-Men have had a number of good receivers over the years, but they have not had a GREAT one since…  well, ever.  (Okay, maybe Homer Jones, but he was a long time ago).

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Is he the answer?  Hell, I don't know.  But he's the only other quarterback on the roster besides Vick and Smith, and he sure can't be any worse than what Geno showed last night, or in that Buffalo game I attended when I was in New York.  And if he has even half the guts and smarts and arm of his father, he might even win a few of these last games.

Maybe he doesn't.  Maybe he'll lose them all.  That would tell us something too.  Then we'd know the Jets had no starting-calibre QBs on the roster, and we can try and draft that kid from Oregon next season.

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It doesn't get much worse than that.  Losing to the Niners and the Cowboys the past two weeks was bad, but at least they are good teams.  Playoff contenders.  Jacksonville… arrgh…

 We lost two more offensive linemen as well.  As Coughlin was already playing the third-stringers.  No wonder Eli kept going down.  If one more lineman had been injured, David Diehl would have needed to leave the broadcast booth to suit up.

 Bad to worse to worst.

 

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Okay, last week's football proved beyond a doubt that life is miserable and full of pain.

The Jets snow-shifted game against Buffalo, in Detroit, was a disgrace.  The whole team looked awful .  No one more so than Michael Vick, whose once-famed elusiveness seems a thing of the past.  Even worse than the drubbing was the fact that Vick was so wretched that Rex actually benched him for Geno Smith, and has announced that Geno will start again this week.  Argh.  A nightmare.  Vick is done, and Geno is a bust.  GIVE MATT SIMMS A START, I say.  He cannot possibly be worse than Vick and Smith.  It won't happen, I know, but it should.  We need to find out if there is a NFL-calibre on the roster before next year's draft.

The Giants game was far more exciting, but in the end almost as painful, since Big Blue's wretched defense found a way to lose the game to the despised Cowboys after Eli had won it with a masterful fourth quarter drive.  The Giants outplayed Dallas for most of the game, but still blew it at the end.  Losing is always bad; losing to the Cowboys is worse than bad.

But there was one transcendent moment, one brief burst of joy to take from the weekend of despair.  Ladies and gents, I give Odell Beckham Junior, and one of the greatest TD catches in NFL history.

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It's a wonder the score was so close.  The Niners dominated much of the game, but to the credit of Big Blue's D, they bent but did not break, and denied San Francisco several times in the red zone.  If only the offense had been able to take advantage…

But no.  Every time it seemed as if points were in prospect, Bad Eli threw another one to the Niners.  Even so, with time running out in the fourth quarter, the G-Men were down at the five with first and goal.  Four runs with Rashad Jennings and maybe we steal the win.  Instead we got three fades (all incomplete) and an INT.  Game over.

The only good to salvage from the afternoon: it does appear New York has found a genuine star in Odell Beckhem Jr.   He could very well turn into the best wideout the Giants have had since… well, since forever… and next year, if Victor Cruz returns to form, Big Blue could have one of the best receiving tandems in the league.

But that's next year.  And we'll still need some more studs on the O-line, to help keep Eli alive and upright.

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I woke up this morning expecting a long day of pain in front of the television.  The Jets were playing the Pittsburgh Steelers and their red-hot quaterback, Big Ben, and the Giants were facing the world champion Seattle Seahawks.  Given the way both New York teams had been playing of late, I figured we were in for two more soul-crushing defeats.

Turns out I was only half-right.

The Jets shocked everyone, including me, by upsetting the Steelers.   As Gang Green came into the game at 1-8, no one could have seen that coming.  But that's why they play the games, as Boomer likes to say.  (I expect he'll be saying it tonight on Primetime).  Truth be told, though the Jets played much better than usual, the Steelers really beat themselves, with turnovers.  And it is kind of a Pyrrhic victory, since it is way too late to make a playoff run.  It is certainly more fun to watch the Jets win than to watch them lose, but if they start racking up victories now, all it will do is ruin their chances of getting a real franchise QB in the draft.  So that's probably just what they will do, watch and see.

I can bemoan that later, however.  For the moment, I will enjoy the win, and wonder what might have happened if Rex had only benched Geno Smith earlier.  (I was distressed to see Geno back as second string, and Matt Simms inactive.  Simms showed more in his brief appearance last week than Geno has all season).   Some good play there by Percy Harvin, Erik Decker, and Chris Ivory.  And the D line.  Gang Green DOES have some good players, if only they could get a quarterback.

The Giants game started off promisingly as well.  Big Blue gave the world champs all they could handle in the first half, and even held the lead at certain points… but they couldn't stop the Seattle running game.  Marshawn Lynch is a beast, the kind of RB I love and wish we had, and Seattle's elusive  QB  Russell Wilson kept fooling the Giants D with fake handoffs and scampering around end for ten or twenty yards before any of the Giants even realized he still had the ball.  "Get him," I kept shouting, "he's right there, get him, get him, get him."  But they didn't.

Still, the Giants held in there for three quarters, and were about to take the lead again when a long bomb from Eli caromed off Odell Beckhem's hands to a Seahawk DB for a freak interception.  After that things fell apart quickly.  The last ten minutes of the game were ugly.

The season is over for the Giants as well, alas.  Their record is slightly better than the Jets', but not enough to make a difference.

 sigh

(And yes, for those who will ask, I will continue to watch, week after bloody week.  A true fan remains a fan in defeat as well as victory).

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Life is meaningless and full of pain.

Watching the Jets week after week has become an exercise is masochism.

I will grant that Michael Vick looked better today than Geno Smith has all season… but he's still not a long term answer at QB.  Matt Simms did get to play for a couple of series, and showed some real promise, I thought.  His numbers won't look good, but the line gave him no protection and his receivers dropped a number of balls.  At least his passes were on target.

This season is a lost cause.  The worst things the Jets could do now would be to start winning.  They don't have a prayer of making the playoffs, and every win will just push them down on the draft chart.  Rex would do well to start Simms the rest of season.  See if he is the answer at QB.  Geno Smith is a bust, face it, and while Vick might win more games than Simms short term, he doesn't have enough years left.  The Jets need a younger QB to build around.

Anyway, being a fan, I will continue to watch every game I can.  Even if it does feel like being beaten weekly with baseball bats.

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Life is miserable and full of pain.

Giants look utterly wretched.  A few good plans from JPP, and maybe we have a new TE emerging.  Nothing else good can be said.  They were humiliated by the Cardinals, with a backup QB.  C'mon.

Jets took a 21-3 lead and still figured out a way to piss it away.  Harassed Aaron Rodgers and sacked him repeatedly, still allowed him to complete the big passes and runs when it counted.  Geno, meanwhile, put up some nice stats early on, but can never seem to make the key throw when the game is on the line.  Well, no, to be fair, he did complete one great pass in crunch time… a TD which was called back when a coach who did not actually have the power to call a time-out somehow called a time-out.  Needless to say, Geno's attempt to duplicate the heroics a few minutes later ended in an INT.

Eli and Geno led the NFL in INTs last year, and both of them are on track to do it again.

And the Cowboys and Patriots both won big, so I don't even have that as solace.

Pfui.

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The Jets won and the Giants lost, but I can't even say the glass is half full.

The Jets win was over the Oakland Raiders.  A lot of the commentators on the sports channels seem to think the Raiders may be the worst team in the league this year… and yet the Jets bared squeaked out the win.  Their defense looked stout, and they dominated, but the offense kept shooting themselves in the foot.  WAY too many penalties, and while Geno had his moments, he also had two fumbles and an interception, which suggests he going to be a turnover machine once again.  I am still not certain that the Jets have a quarterback.  Gang Green won this week, but the schedule gets a lot harder in the weeks to come, and if Geno keeps turning over the ball at that rate, we aren't going to win many more games.

As for the G-Men, those people I quoted above who think the Raiders may be the worst team in the league obviously did not see the Giants lose to the Lions tonight.  What a debacle.  The new offense… well, no one seemed to be on the same page, and Eli threw two INTs… part of which was the confusion, and part of which was the O line, which gave him no protection.  No running game to speak of either, and none of the Giants wideouts seemed to want to catch the ball, not even Victor Cruz.

This could be a very long season.  I'll watch, of course.  I'm a fan, and that's what a true fan does, no matter how painful it gets.  But I don't promise to post every week about Sunday's games.  I am too busy and too tired, and somehow what started out as fun became a sort of obligation, so… I will post when I have something to say.

At least the Cowboys and the Patriots both lost.  THAT was fun. 

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The NFL is back!

Gotta say, the Seahawks looked pretty damn formidable tonight, absolutely destroying the Packers and that baaaaaaaaad man Aaron Rogers.

It remains to be seen how good my Jets and Giants will be.  We'll get a taste this weekend, I guess.

I am wishing both teams have decent seasons, at the least.  Maybe one or the other will surprise me.  Life IS generally miserable and full of pain, of course, but this year I could live without weekly reminders.  I want to be writing "life is magical and full of joy" a lot.

We shall see.  That's why they play the games.

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