A lovely win yesterday for the Giants. Even with the Cowboys sort of hanging around until that last TD with 8 minutes to go, there wasn’t any real anxiety, as Dallas clearly could do nothing at all on offense; their lone offensive TD came at the end of an overlong drive (time-wise) that included a number of pretty lucky breaks (especially the B.S. personal foul) and a ton of negative plays. Obviously it’s a different game with Romo and, say, Newman back in the lineup, but a 35-14 win that wasn’t even as close as that score would imply suggests to me that the Giants are pretty clearly the superior team even if Dallas is at full strength.
A word on Dallas and Football Outsiders: in Pro Football Prospectus ‘08, FO unveiled a surprisingly pessimistic projection for the Cowboys, saying their numbers suggested about a 50% chance that they would finish with 8 or fewer wins. There were a few factors that played into that projection, but by far the biggest was injuries: Dallas has been exceptionally healthy the past few years, which has been a huge factor in their recent success. While conceding that part of that health is almost certainly due to the skill of Dallas’ trainers, FO did the research and found that unusually healthy (or unhealthy) teams can generally expect to regress to average health going forward, which in turn means that a very healthy team in Year X is likely to under-perform in Year X+1 relative to expectations due to regression to the mean. This is exactly what we’re seeing with this year’s Cowboys. They’re finally suffering from the kinds of injuries they’ve been avoiding all these years, and it’s showing up in the Loss column.
I guess we’ll know a lot more about the Redskins after tonight, won’t we?
For my money, next week’s New York-Philly matchup is the game of the year to this point, bar none. The Eagles are better than than their 5-3 record. Their losses have been close defeats at the hands of good teams, while their victories have mostly been dominating. They have the 3rd best point differential in the NFL (New York, Tennessee), and by a healthy margin. Kevin Curtis is back, adding a #1 (or 1.5) WR to an already potent offense. I doubt they’re as good as the Giants, but Philadelphia scares the hell out of me, especially **in **Philly. The Eagles are 2.5 to 3 point favorites in the game, suggesting most people feel about the same as I do. Yikes.
That said, to this point this is the 2nd best Giants team that I can remember watching (behind the '90 team; I was too young to remember the '86 squad). While I expect a very close game next week, this team is certainly capable of winning by three scores, which is saying something.
