Anybody ever seen such a gluttonous chewer of ass as Parcels yesterday? He dined on the special teams, offensive line, receivers, cornerbacks, officials, resampled the offensive live and took a couple of huge bites out of his assistant coaches. Fox took note and was treating it as an equal sideshow to the game.
Dallas pays yet again for not putting an opponent away when they have the chance.
[Bender]
Bite my shiny metal ass.
[/Bender]
Actually, as an actual Dallasite I feel I’m obligated to support my team, but I’ve gotta tell you I haven’t liked the way they look this year. Mind you, it’s the best team they’ve had in years, but it just seems so fragile. And I think it’s showing. They played 59 minutes of football only to fall apart in the end. Well, that’s not really fair. The defense can only do so much; the offense just ain’t all that hot. Bledsoe’s good, but not great, and he’s old, so he wears out quick. So don’t expect any last minute comebacks.
As much as I hate to say it, I’m really liking the Giants. Not only do they look good, but they’re fairly young. Manning is quickly developing as a quarterback and if they don’t make it to the Superbowl this year, they’ll make it next year. Kind of reminds me of the Cowboys when Jimmy Johnson first took over and Troy Aikman was still learning the ropes. The Giants are going to develop even more and dominate the NFL for several years to come.
Whereas this year’s Cowboys were built for, well, just this year, so who the hell knows what’ll happen next year? Grrrr.
Well lets see, Dallas, Philly and NY combined outscored the Redskins this week, barely. By two points. Heh. I was really pulling for San Diego, and Seattle done me proud.
BTW, LeVar Arrington plays sparingly in the first three games, 3 close wins. Doesn’t play at all for two games, 2 losers. Plays regularly again, big win. Coincidence, I think not. Even if it isn’t all because of his play directly, he obviously impacts the players around him in a positive way and makes the opposing offense change their game plan. Gibbs, Williams, et al shoud take note of this and make sure he gets into games somehow, someway.
Hail to the Redskins!
Hail Victory!
Brave on the Warpath,
Fight for Old DC.
That is an excellent observation.
The youth is what really has me pumped, especially regarding the free agents we picked up. (Kareem McKenzie, Plaxico Burress and Antonio Pierce are all in their mid twenties, and Jay Feely is 29, which is still young for a kicker.)
While we still have some old guys that we count on – Tiki, Strahan, and Toomer apparently – the bulk of the units are young. Of the eight offensive linemen on the team, all five starters and one of the backups (Seubert) are all in their mid twenties, and getting better individually and as a unit as time goes on.
Basically, with the notable exceptions of Tiki and Strahan, the entire team is chock full of above-average young talent that may or may not have potential to become very good. It’s almost as if Ernie Accorsi stole a copy of my Madden franchise and decided to build a team using my philosophy. I couldn’t be happier about it. And Ernie hasn’t sat around basking in his Eli deal; he’s spending his final year as Giants GM signing up the young guys (like David Diehl) to longterm deals.
We need some help on the interior of the defensive line, at outside linebacker, and we probably need two starting CBs, as Will Allen is in a contract year and Peterson may be done with the NFL. And we need a successor to Tiki. But considering all the holes Erni filled last offseason, I’m confidant we can patch those holes in the draft alone. (Assuming we don’t draft a single offensive player, and keep the entire unit intact, as I would love for them to do.) Free agency then just becomes a bonus round.
It’s odd how rare it is for the Jets and Giants to both do well in the same season. 2002 is the only time they both made the playoffs in the same year for the past few decades, and both teams started out 2002 very poorly. Only huge stretch runs got them into the playoffs at all. Something about New York, I guess. There’s only room for one good NFL team per year.
I’m not a happy guy for the Jets. Any Bears fans in here? Would you trade Benson for Pennington? I’d then try to work another deal with Washington, who seems to love to trade with the Jets. Bring in either Ramsey or that rookie they drafted.
Thanks for the compliment and You’re welcome for us not resigning Pierce who played great for us last year.
It would seem the 'Skins got the better of the whole Lav Coles back to NY in exchange for Moss deal, at this time. There is no way the ‘Skins are trading Jason Campbell, mostly because the trading deadline has passed 
but I do think Ramsey will be a huge addition to some team next year. I don’t think he was given a fair shake as a starting QB in Washington between Steve Spurrier of The Porous O-Line, and Gibbs’ preference of a veteran starting QB. I disliked when they brought in Brunell and gave him so much money, and drafting another QB high in the draft this year showed the teams confidence in P-Ram as the “QB of the Future” :rolleyes: Last year Patrick Ramsey looked pretty good in the preseason but Brunell had the bigger paycheck so they started him even though he obviously wasn’t the same guy tht played in Jacksonville. Patrick got stuck in there after a few weeks and the season was pretty much downhill from there. This year Patrick looked uneasy during the preseason and they started him anyway even though Brunell was back to looking like that guy who played in Jax.
I’ve always been a fan of Ramsey. The schaudenfreud (sp?) I experienced during the Spurrier regime aproached nirvana. The way he twirled his QB carousel was a joke, but I thought Ramsey looked good in what few chances he was given. The fact that everyone except Spurrier could see this just added to my enjoyment of the Redskins trainwreck.
Obviously the deadline already passed this year…I was in my Jets mindset, which is already thinking only about next season. I meant trade Penny for Benson about two days after the Probowl, and then try and broker a deal for Ramsey or Campbell. I’d be happier with Ramsey than Leinart, to be perfectly honest.
Poor Jets. I remember all too well how much it SUCKS when you have QB issues. The 90s may have started off well, but the Giants ended up on a long, long road to finally find someone to take the snaps. With Collins and Manning, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the consistency (barring the Thumbalina experiment last year) the Giants have had in the past half dozen years at the QB position.
But I’ve lost all faith in Pennington in New York. He could easily do well somewhere else, but I fear his time in the Big Apple is over. That huge contract he just signed is a major downer.
Although I’d be fine with Jay Fiedler as the #1 for the next three years or so, so maybe I’m jumping the gun a bit. Fiedler is a proven winner, after all. So no trade with Washington needed. The Jets plan for success, IMO, should be this:
The only flaw in this plan is that this year is rapidly becoming the high draft pick year. It’s tough to draft a QB of the future after a successful season, which 2006 could be if they followed my plan. (9-7 wouldn’t be out of the question.)
The Redskins own the Jets when it comes to trades and free agents. First you rape them for four productive players in the Jetskins debacle, then you turn around and send one of them back for a straight up player swap after realizing he wasn’t that good, and manage to end up with a better deal again. Unbelievable.
And yes, a thousand thank you’s for Pierce, whom I love having on the team. He filled the gaping hole left by Barrow’s departure. How many old Giants you got over there, anyway? I miss Cornelius Griffin. (Though William Joseph has been playing fairly well so far this season.)
It’s cool and all that Arrington playing coincided with a rout, but let’s not forget it was against the lowly 49’ers. I like Arrington, and hope he gets more play time, but we’ll see how much faith the coaches have in him next week in, arguably, their most important game of the year thus far.
Speaking of, I’m really looking forward to this next week. Division-wise we might actually see a breaking of all the ties. The winner of the Skins-Giants will move into sole possession of first place, with Dallas a 1/2 game behind after they manhandle the hapless Cardinals, while the Eagles should drop into last place.
Btw, grats to the Giants fans for the big win over Denver. I view it as a little payback for what they did to my Skins. I was pulling for ya’s.
In looking over the play-by-play, it seems you guys got a big boost from some holding and interference calls (2 on Bailey–ha!). One of these days I’ll get the time and initiative to go back over some play-by-plays for the evidence to support my theory that Denver gets away with a lot more holds at home than they do on the road (though even then it would be only half-evidence as you can’t prove they’re holding if they don’t get called on it).
DIVISION CHAMPS
WILDCARDS
LOSERS
That’s beautiful, man. I think I feel a teardrop coming on. And my Darrell Green bobbleheads are nodding in agreement.
Jesus, why stop there? Why not deal Bollinger for Cadillac Williams, while you’re at it? What I mean to say is, I don’t think the Bears would be into that.
Anyway, it’s kind of interesting to look at what division teams have done on the road – i.e. nothing. The Giants have no wins outside their own stadium, the Skins beat the Cowboys in Dallas but lost in KC and Denver, the Cowboys beat the Chargers and the “49ers,” whoever they are, and the Eagles got nipped by the Falcs, beat the Chiefs, and got smacked by the Cowboys. What it all amounts to is a whole lot of lack-of-proven. The only team at .500 on the road is also the only team that has failed to hold serve at home.
Also, every division game so far has included the Cowboys, so the season, for all intents and purposes, has only started for one team (and if the Giants beat them when they play in Jersey, even they’re back to thumb-up-the-butt status). I’ll stop short of taking this to where some participants in this thread might think I’m going, but it seems to me like we don’t know nothing.
That’s why they play all 16 games.
That’s a double negative, btw.
Yes, it’s a double negative. BTW isn’t a word. What’s your point?
Well, I guess that by saying “we don’t know nothing”, you’re saying we know everything, which we don’t. Or probably more likely that your post was pretty mean-spirited and unecessary.
Perhaps I misinterpreted the tone, but it comes across as snobbish and condescending.
Anyway, you’re right about one thing, the season’s not even half over and there’s a lot of football to be played yet. We’ll see how things stand then.
Don’t worry about Jimmy, he’s still sore because I called out his team as being the only one in the division without any Lombardi trophies, much less multiple ones like everyone else. Damn scrubs tarnish the history of winning built by the other three franchises. Four years in a row we dominated, but where were the Eagles?
hehheh.
Seriously though Jimmy, why do you think the Bears wouldn’t even consider Pennington? Do you think Chad is that crappy or that Benson is that good? I figured it my be a decent trade because Jones doesn’t seem to be letting Cedric get on the field, plus all the mileage Benson racked up in college is a bit of a red flag. Combine that with the dismal performance of their QB position in the past decade, and you’d think they’d be just about ready to go with a proven winner.
(When I call Pennington a proven winner, I mean regular season. The same context in which Jay Fiedler, Mike Vick, Peyton Manning et al are proven winners.)
Heh, I think it’s more like: Redskins play five pretty good teams and all five games are close. Redskins play the worst team in recent memory (at home) and blow them out, just like everybody else will this year. Gregg Williams is an excellent defensive coordinator – if he thinks that the team is better off with Arrington on the bench (or not), I’d be inclined to trust his judgement.
Agreed that it’s nice to see the team locking up young talent with long-term contracts (instead of overpaying for declining veteran free agents, as so many teams seem willing to do), but I’m still a bit concerned. We probably overpaid on the Shockey extension – he’s got a contract befitting the best TE in football, which he clearly is not – though we did get some cap relief this year and next.
The Tiki extension, I thought, was terrible. He was signed at a reasonable salary through next year, when his skills will start to crumble. Perfect. Unfortunately, we tacked on two years and some guaranteed money to his contract, and got no cap relief. It’s a nice gesture to a classy guy who’s meant a lot to the franchise, but there’s no salary cap exemption for nice gestures.
Manning’s rookie contract is huge, and if he continues to improve, we won’t be able to renegotiate in our favor in a few years when the prohibitively large base salaries kick in . . . which will be just around the time that base salaries for Plaxico, Shockey, and others escalate to the point at which we’ll want to renegotiate those deals. If we want to win a Super Bowl with this group, we’re going to have to do it within the next three years, or else find a bunch of draft steals that can help out as cheap labor.
But this is what really worries me. The salary cap issues we can work around, probably, but we need to replace almost all of the defense. In the next year or two, we’ll need a new starting DT, LDE (to replace Strahan), OLB (probably two OLBs, actually), FS, and CB (quite possibly two CBs). We might also have to replace Wilson, Umenyiora, and/or Joseph if we’re unable to sign them to reasonable contract extensions. The only player on the defense guaranteed to be around for several years is Antonio Pierce . . . which might be a blessing in disguise, since the defense has been terrible this year (particularly the secondary).
Oh, and Manning seems to have excellent field vision and decision-making, but he is going to have to improve his accuracy sooner or later.
(I’m really not all doom & gloom on this team; just guarding my optimism with a vengeance, is all.)
Man, you sound shell shocked from the past two seasons. Speaking of which, do any of the other Giants fans in here roll their eyes to the point of injury whenever you hear people talking about how bad the injuries are this season? My buddy the Bills fan tried to pull out the injury card a few weeks back when Takeo went down, and I erupted into incoherent rants involving the phrase “17 guys on IR!” When I moved on to the boatload of injuries we suffered in 2003, I swear a little foam starting coming out of my mouth. People know now not to bitch about injuries around me.
I trimed down your post in the quote:
My head exploded three different times while reading this.
You can’t possibly be serious about Shockey. He’s a better blocker (by far, IMO, but analysts just say “better”) than Gonzalez, and his career yards per game average is also better than Gonzalez and every other TE in the league. He’s #2 all time on the list, behind only Kellen Winslow. I was concerned Drew was going to hold him out after the season, but thankfully he’s locked up nicely now. Seriously, I wouldn’t trade him for any other TE in the league, even if they tossed in a first rounder. Gates? Whitten? Crumpler? Shockey is as good or better than all of them, and he fits the team like a glove. Drink the koolaid. He caught 60+ balls for 666 yards last season on possibly the worst passing team in the league. He’s averaging 17 yards per catch this season. Seventeen! He’s on pace for 1100+ friggin’ yards this season, fer chrissakes.
About Tiki, thou art unclean, blasphemer. Consider that crosstown rival Curtis Martin has 3400+ carries, and then consider that Tiki has 1600+, and tell me again how he’s done. Curtis was at 1600 carries six years ago.
Regarding Eli’s contract, weren’t you the guy in the holdouts thread explaining how the backend years are imaginary? You really think Eli would cripple the franchise to get every last penny out of the Giants?
We already have a couple of those guys. Not sure if you’ve been watching, Justin Tuck is clearly Strahan’s heir apparent; the guy is a sack machine, and he beat Ladanian Tomlinson in the 60 yard dash. (hehheh) As far as FS, Shaun Williams should already be in in place of Alexander; he’s played FS before, and I think he’d be fine at it for the next couple years.
Yeah, why isn’t he great yet? He’s already started 13 whole games!
Seriously, ease up on the doom and gloom over there. You’re sounding as bad as a Jets fan, and that’s saying something. At least complain about things that make sense. If you want ot bitch about wasted money, complain about Petitgout.
I’d just like to suggest a brief moment of silence for the passing of Wellington Mara. A great football man, patriarch of the Giants, and one of the few non-player / coach NFL legends. One of the classiest owners in all of sports.
Condolences to the Giants. 
Almost 4 hours of silence in this thread has been a fitting tribute.
Duke
He was truly a founding father of the NFL. Co-owner for 75 years. Willingly allowed revenue sharing to allow trhe entire league to grow strong.
He has 11 children and 40 Grand Kids BTW.
I can’t even get a handle around the 75 years part. He has been the owner almost forever in NFL terms.
Hear, hear. I’ve always felt proud to root for the classiest franchise in North America, and that kind of attitude starts from the top down.
He gets thrown to more often than any other TE, with the possible exception of Gates; I bet he leads all TEs in drops over the past few years, which is the problem. Up until this season, he’s dropped entirely too many passes. He’s been much better about it this year (thank God!), but, like the man said, let’s not start sucking each other’s popsicles just yet.
Anyway, Gates is the best TE in football right now. Gonzo is also better than Shockey, though due to age that won’t be the case for very long. Until he proves otherwise with a full year of good health and good hands, Shockey is in the same class as Witten and Crumpler.
Martin is an aberration, a crazy outlier. I guarantee you that Barber will not have a career year at the age of 32. If the Giants are smart, he won’t even be starting.
Well, the back-end years are almost always imaginary. Sometimes, the contract has a flat structure, which Eli’s doesn’t. Sometimes, the guy plays like a superstar and doesn’t have to renegotiate because the team can’t cut him. Peyton’s rookie contract, for example, survived intact into its last year, even when the base salary exceeded $10 million. Eli’s rookie contract is even larger, which is why having the first overall draft pick is kind of a damned if you do, damned if you don’t deal. Either Eli doesn’t play great and we’ve paid him a ridiculous signing bonus, or he does play great and he sucks up a huge chunk of the salary cap all by himself.
Good call on Justin Tuck – I’d forgotten about him, and he does look like he’ll be good enough. I’m not so sure about Williams at FS. He’s had major knee injuries, and the coaching staff seems to think that Brent Alexander is better, which doesn’t say much for Williams, since Alexander is not having a good year.
And, Jesus, don’t get me started on Petitgout. I have nightmares that end with a referee saying, “Holding, Number 77, offense. Ten yard penalty, repeat 3rd down.”