The Giants released Victor Cruz today.

It was not unexpected. Cruz missed the last two seasons with injuries, and this season, when he finally came back, he had a subpar year. Only 35 catches, way down for him. He had a very high salary number for next year, too high for a third receiver, and by cutting him the Giants saved $7.5 million against the salary cap, money they can now use to improve elsewhere. And they really need to improve elsewhere — on the offensive line and at tight end, especially — if they hope to advance further in the playoffs than they did this season.

All the same, the release made me sad. Victor Cruz was my favorite player, and I was hoping he would retire as a Giant. I think Victor was hoping the same. He seemed not only to be a terrific player, but a terrific guy, an undrafted free agent who walked on and made it big.

If it had been up to me, I would have stayed the course and kept Cruz. Ask him to take a salary cut, sure. I think he would have done that. Next year, I would have moved him back to the slot, his best position. He was just not as effective last season playing outside the numbers. And while the rookie Sterling Shepard was a good slot receiver last season, Cruz in his prime was a GREAT slot receiver, one of the best in the league. If the Giants had kept Victor in the slot, and played Shepard outside, both of them might have had better years.

One mediocre year and two years on injured reserve can make us forget — especially since Odell Beckham Junior has been dazzling Giants fans with spectacular catches during those same three seasons — just how good Victor Cruz was before his injury. When he was good, he was very very good, as the saying goes. Here, take a look, remember:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgMh5_-hr64

We’ll miss the salsas…

Good luck, Victor. You earned it.

Another week, another round of NFL playoffs.

Last week in the divisional round, we got two great games and two blowouts. I was hoping that this week’s conference championships would give us more exciting contests, but no such luck. The Falcons ripped right through Green Bay and the Patriots obliterated the Steelers. Neither contest was even remotely competitive.

Not much to say about either game, really. Aaron Rodgers is amazing, yes, but he doesn’t play defense, and the Packer D could not even seem to slow down Matty Ice, let alone stop him. And the Patriots… yeah, yeah, Brady is good, especially when you give him weeks to sit in the pocket unmolested and don’t cover his receivers. I watched him complete pass after pass that seemed to be totally uncontested, with the receiver standing all alone and not a defender within yards.

Anyway, we have our SuperBowl: Patriots against Falcons.

Nothing much to say but GO FALCONS.

Meanwhile, I am thinking about next year’s draft…

So this past weekend was the divisional round of the NFL playoffs.

And, yes, being a football fan I watched them all, even though my Giants were eliminated last week (and the Jets never got within shouting distance).

There was good news and bad news for the people of Houston. The bad news was, Evil Little Bill and his Patriots dismissed the Texans rather soundly. (Not unexpected, sad to say. Not when you have Osweiler going up against Brady). The good news was, the Cowboys lost, thereby eliminating any chance of a Cowboys/ Patriots Superbowl, so right-minded fans no longer need to root for a giant asteroid to strike Houston. Now we can simply root for whoever is playing New England.

With neither of my teams involved, I had a lot less invested in this weekend’s contests. The Saturday games were both pretty one-sided, so much so that I found myself multi-tasking and doing other stuff while watching. The Sunday games were better… especially the epic struggle between the Packers and the Cowboys. That one looked like a blowout too when the Pack went up 21-3, but somehow Dallas fought back, and tied the game at 28 and then again at 31. Looked like overtime, but they made the mistake of leaving thirty seconds for Aaron Rodgers. His sideline pass to set up the winning field goal was the thing of beauty, a throw and catch to rival Eli’s superbowl tosses to Tyree and Manningham. And afterwards, in the wake of the Cowboy defeat, America got to see Jerry Jones making his I-am-sucking-on-sour-lemons face, last seen in 2007 when it was the Giants who sent the Boys home.

The Kansas City/ Pittsburgh game also came down to the last second, yet somehow was not nearly as exciting. The Steelers won without scoring a touchdown. That’s not going to cut it next week against the Patriots and Evil Little Bill.

So… Pittsburgh at New England, Green Bay at Atlanta.

Should be fun.

The news just broke that the San Diego Chargers will be relocating to Los Angeles next season.

San Diego has loyally supported the team since the old AFL days in the early 60s. Win or lose, the fans loved their Bolts.

LA has never supported any football team unless it was winning, and preferably winning big. Once LA had two teams, and that was great when they won; when they hit down years, as all teams do, the Raiders and Rams were both abandoned. That’s why they left town twenty years ago, both in the same year. Last year the Rams came back… but they lost, and before season’s end, they were playing before tens of thousands of empty seats.

I’d say the same fate awaits the Chargers, except I read that they will be playing in a small 30,000 seat venue for a couple years until the new Rams stadium (where they will be a tenant, like the Jets in old Giants Stadium) is complete. That’s smart, I suppose. Nothing else about the move is.

It’s all about greed. And despite what you may have heard Gordon Gekko say, greed is NOT good. (Too many people seem to lose sight of the fact that he was the VILLAIN of that film).

I am a fan of the Giants and Jets, both of whom have great loyal fan bases and seem likely to remain where they are for decades to come… but I know what it is to have your heart torn out when a greedy owner moves your team away. When I was a child, I was a Dodgers fan… the Brooklyn Dodgers, thank you very much, the Boys of Summer, one of baseball’s great iconic franchises, playing in one of baseball’s great iconic ballparks, Ebbets Field. The Dodgers were the heart and soul of Brooklyn; never has a city loved a team so much, or had so much of its identity bound up with them. The city that was Brooklyn died when the Dodgers departed; the gentrified borough that remains is just a bedroom community for Manhattan. (Okay, they still have fantastic pizza, gotta give ’em that).

The Dodger fans (and the fans of the baseball Giants, similarly bereft) eventually got the Mets, which helped some… especially in ’69 and ’86… but the pain is still there, down deep, when we think back on it. Ebbets Field was old and run-down and small, yeah, but it was wonderful in the same way that Fenway Park and Wrigley Field are wonderful. Those ballparks have become legendary and historic, cherished by the people of Boston and Chicago respectively, and I don’t think anyone would dare to tear them down now. The same thing would have happened to Ebbets Field if only it had lasted a few more years and managed to survive the fad for building hideous concrete multi-purpose stadiums that dominated the 60s. (And indeed that is exactly what has happened in the Wild Cards universe, an alternate world where Walter O’Malley contracted the wild card virus before he could move the team. He turned into a pile of slime, but it was days before anyone noticed the difference).

Maybe because of my early childhood trauma at losing the Dodgers, I have never liked the various relocations that have plagued both football and baseball over the decades. The ONLY cases where I think it is warranted are those where a city stops supporting its team or teams… as happened in LA with the Raiders and the Rams. But the rest? Bob Irsay slinking out of Baltimore in the dead of night with the Colts? Despicable. Al Davis abandoning Oakland, spending a decade in LA, then moving back? Offensive. Art Modell moving the Browns from Cleveland? Shame, shame.

Cleveland did get a new Browns team, so at least they got to keep the name and tradition (though the original Browns, now the Ravens, are a perennial contender who won a SuperBowl after the move, while the expansion Browns have pretty much sucked since they were reborn, so it was hardly a fair swap). The good fans of Baltimore did not even get that. The ‘Colts’ name and colors should have stayed when Irsay left. Let the Indianapolis team start fresh with a new name and uni, as the Ravens did. It would be splendid if the NFL would rule that Spanos can move his team, but the name ‘Chargers’ and the lightning bolt and the powder blues should all remain with San Diego, for however long it takes for them to get an expansion team. The relocated team can be the LA Earthquakes, since I think their tenure in Lalaland is going to be pretty shaky. If what I read is true, neither the city nor the Rams want them there.

Green Bay has the right idea. The Packers are owned by the people of Green Bay. Would that were true in more cities. If I were only a billionaire (not even close, sorry), I’d buy an NFL franchise and leave it to the city upon my death… except, alas, I am told that NFL rules no longer allow that. So there will never be another Green Bay, and the billionaire owners will continue to move their teams around the country in search of ever newer, bigger, glitzier stadiums paid for by the fans and taxpayers, stadiums that can generate hundreds of millions in profits instead of merely tens of millions.

Charger fans, I feel for you.

The NFL wrapped up its regular season over the weekend, with victories for both of my teams.

The Jets defeated the Buffalo Bills 30-10. Last year, when facing the Bills on the final weekend, Gang Green could have clinched a playoff spot with a win… so, of course, they choked and played the worst game of the reason. This year, when the game meant absolutely nothing, they romped. The Bills fired Rex Ryan after last week’s loss, so you couldn’t even pitch the contest as “Hot Seat Bowl,” with Buffalo playing under an interim coach.

The highlight of the game came after the Jets kicked a field goal and kicked off to Buffalo. The ball bounced into the endzone, while a Bills player stood over it looking at it curiously, as if to say, “What is that? Is that the ball? Was I supposed to catch it? I forget. Maybe I should pick it up?” While he was pondering, one of the Jets rushed past him and fell on the ball for a touchdown. Maybe it was good Rex was not on the sideline, his head might have exploded.

FWIW, I think Buffalo made a mistake in letting go of Rex. They did not even give him two years, and they are not likely to find anyone better. The Bills are a deeply dysfunctional franchise; they keep hiring new coaches, but never give them time to build a winner. No wonder they have been out of the playoffs longer than any other team in the NFL.

The Jets are not much better, however. The win left them with a record of 5-11 on the season, and the sixth overall draft slot. But they still have no quarterback. Christian Hackenberg, their second round draft pick last year, finally dressed for a game, but still did not play. Ryan Fitzpatrick started and finished and played… well, okay, but everyone seems certain that he will not be back next year. Neither will Geno. Which leaves Gang Green with the broken Bryce Petty and the totally untested Hackenberg and that draft pick. Do they use that on yet another young qb? So they try to address one of their many other needs? Do they pick up a quarterback in free agency or trade for one? If so, who? I hear talk of Romo, Cutler, and Kaepernick, which seems to me just a choice of poison. Arsenic, cyanide, or strychnine, what would you like?

Meanwhile, the Jets did keep their head coach… but fired a whole bunch of assistant coaches. So I don’t know if they really have much more continuity than the Bills, when you get down to it. Sigh. Sometimes it’s hard to be green…

So let’s go blue, and talk about the Giants. They won too, and much more impressively, defeating the Potomac Drainage Basin Indigenous People 19-10. (Would have been 13-10, except for a freak defensive touchdown on Washington’s last desperation play). The game was not really as close as the score, since Big Blue’s defense dominated throughout, pretty well shutting down one of the league’s highest scoring offenses. What made the win even more impressive was that the Giants were already locked into the #5 seed in the playoffs, win or lose, and had nothing to play for, while the Redskins had everything to play for. I was glad to see that Ben McAdoo and Eli Manning played to win regardless; I hate it when teams lie down on the last day of the season. (I am looking at you, Cowboys).

The Giants ended up with an 11-5 record on the season, and their first playoff appearance since they won the SuperBowl in 2011. Can they do it again? Odds are against them, but you never know. The G-Men do have a great defense, and it is often said that defense wins championships. We’ll see. The road starts at Green Bay. That should be a great game. In Aaron Rodgers, the Packers have the best QB in the game, but their potent offense will be facing the Giants’ tough defense. On the other side of the ball, however, a weak Green Bay defense with a porous secondary and no pass rush will be matched against a New York offense that has no running game, an offensive line that gives Eli no protection, and only one downfield threat in Odell Beckham. So it will be strength against strength, and weakness against weakness.

The Packers are favored, and rightly so. Mr. Discount Doublecheck is red hot. On the other hand, in the past Eli Manning has played his best ball in the playoffs, the O-line has gotten a little better since Justin Pugh returned, and even the running game showed some signs of life, at least when Perkins has the ball in place of Jennings. We shall see.

Go G-MEN!

The Giants lost a heartbreaker of a game to the Iggles down Philly way. With the playoffs in sight, suddenly Eli starts throwing INTs right and left and the wideouts start dropping every other pass.

And then today the Jets got totally crushed, eviscerated, and humiliated by Evil Little Bill, Tom the Deflator, and the Patriots (and their newest wideout, straight from an Arizona jail). It was not just a loss, it was an embarassment. The coach made the game, after being hospitalized yesterday, but the team did not show up.

I hates me some football.

Life is meaningless and full of pain.

Christmas, you say? Santa, you say? No, no, that’s Nackles you hear.

Hot damn, the Giants won again… and over a good team, the Detroit Lions, who are presently leading their division, and had a hot streak going, pulling out eight games this season in the fourth quarter.

But not today.

Eli Manning had a solid game, but the heroes of the day were once again Odell Beckham Junior and the defense. Odell’s catch on the winning touchdown was a thing of beauty, another one-handed grab that no other wideout could possibly have snared. The pass was seriously off target. Victor Cruz had a nice catch as well, and the running game showed signs of life, at least when Perkins was in (having Pugh back on the O line made a huge difference).

The day really belonged to the D, though. Game by game, quarter by quarter, they have been getting better and better, and now, I think, have to rank as one of the NFL’s best. Which delights me no end. I love good defense, and the New York Giants as a franchise have always prided themselves on tough D. It’s part of Big Blue’s heritage. Having the worse D in the league last year was a disgrace. So all hail to Spags, and Snacks, and T’Other Eli, and DRC, and Olivier Vernon. Oh, and our punter, who kept pinning the Lions back inside their ten.

Worrisome, however, was Jackrabbit Jenkins going out with a back injury in the first half. He’s been playing great, so I hope he comes back soon.

As for the Jets, they played last night, and improved their position in next year’s draft. Nuff said.

YES!!!!

Life is magical and full of joy!

(At least where NFL football is concerned. Admittedly, as this crappy year comes to an end, life in general continues to have its warts, carbuncles, and weeping sores).

Never mind about that, however… the Giants beat the Dallas Cowboys last night on Sunday Night Football, breaking their eleven-game winning streak. And for the first time since 2011, the G-Men have swept the season series from Jerry’s Boys.

It was, in truth, a helluva game if you like defense, which as it happens I do. Big Blue’s D was flying all around the field, smacking the hell out of the Dallas runners and wideouts and turning the heralded Cowboy MVP duo of Zeke and Zak back into rookies. The Giants defense has been getting better every game, but last night they played their best sixty minutes of the season… quite something when you remember that last season New York had the worst defense in the entire NFL. The free agent signings that Jerry Reese made in the off-season are looking like real genius right now; both Janoris Jenkins and Olivier Vernon came up aces last night. And so did the kid that stepped in to take the place of the injured Jason Pierre-Paul. I’ve already forgotten his name, I blush to confess, but if he continues to play at the same level, the whole NFL will know it soon enough.

Dallas converted only one third down the entire game, I believe… which you’d think would mean the game was a rout, but, alas, the Giants were not much better. The final score was only 10-7, and the game was in doubt until the final seconds. As good as Big Blue’s defense was, the offense was almost equally bad. Eli fumbled twice and threw a terrible interception, the offensive line never gave him any time to throw, the running game was still missing in action, there were costly penalties at the worst times. The defense actually had to win the game like three times in the final quarter, since the offense was unable to get even one first down to put the win on ice and run out of the clock. As it was, the difference in the final score was a single electrifying catch-and-run from Odell Beckham, and a field goal made by the Giant kicker… whereas his Dallas counterpart doinked one off the crossbar.

So… THAT close, yes it was. But beating the Cowboys is always sweet, no matter the score. Mind you, Dallas still has a two-game lead and will probably win the NFC East, and unless the Giants offense gets a lot better in the weeks to come, it’s hard to see them going far in the playoffs. But I was sure proud of them last night. They played their hearts out.

Oh, and the Jets won too. Coming back from a 14-0 deficit to beat a truly woeful 49ers team in overtime. Just like I predicted last week, now that the season is effectively over, the Jets will win a few meaningless games and thereby weaken their draft position. I expect they will win one, and maybe two, of their remaining contests.

Bryce Petty threw an INT on his first pass, but after that played pretty well, leading Gang Green’s comeback when the team could easily have packed it in. That’s sonmething, anyway. One has to root for Petty. Elsewise I have no idea what the Jets will do for a quarterback next season. Fitz and Geno will both be gone; their contracts are up, and unlikely to be renewed. The draft class looks especially weak at the QB position, and veterans likely to be available as free agents — Jay Cutler, Tony Romo, Colin Kaepernick — are all poison of one sort of another. Maybe the Jets can talk Brett Favre into another comeback. Failing that, Bryce Petty is what we’ve got.

Jets Game? What Jets game?

Did the Jets play a game? On Monday Night Football, you say?

Surely not.

Those were not the Jets. That was the Weehawken High School Junior Varsity dressed up in Jets uniforms, surely.

The hardest hit of the night was the one the security guys put on the streaker.

Oh, well. Bryce Petty came in and showed flashes. That was something. One nice long TD pass… and a lot of misses. We’ll see him the rest of the way, I am told. Good. Maybe with some reps in practice, he can improve.

An APB has been put out for Gang Green’s once heralded D.

(The Jets being the Jets, now that they have been officially eliminated from the playoffs, they will probably win a few meaningless end-of-season games, just to mess up their draft position).

Life is meaningless and full of pain.