This is an important game! Much will be decided, at least for the Giants. Let’s have some opinions!
Ny 35 Jx 3
Heh, I wish, Ripper. I’ve got Tiki and Plax on my fantasy team tonight. The Jags are stickin’ it to em so far, but the score doesn’t show it. It’s currently 10-3 Jacksonville, but I’m pretty sure the Giants have not yet converted a first down.
I like the Jags’ uniforms more than the Giants’.
Ghaaaargh. The Jags already have 10 points, and the Giants without a single 1st down, well into the 2nd quarter. This is sickening.
It’s this Giants fan’s opinion that that game sucked nuts.
Incidentally, I know the refs were calling it pretty evenly, but were they aware at all of what “defensive pass interference” means? It looked to me like the corners could’ve been using tire irons and the laundry would’ve stayed in the refs’ pockets.
Yeah, it did at that. Still, the Grunts are in first place with a few decent players slated to come back this season. This was an expendable loss, so far.
It was, as usual, a ridiculous performance by the refs. They aren’t even paid as full-time employees by the NFL. All we need to do is leave 2 refs on the field and the rest analyzing each play by video as it happens, to ensure there aren’t any fucked up calls. Holding, on offense or defense, occurs on virtually every play. Put a complete stop to that and see how the game changes.
They sure seemed to make a big deal about Del Rio’s coat. I’d rather them have elaborated more on his relationship with Leftwich, Jacksonville’s owner and the reasons for Del Rio being in the doghouse, a whole slew of things other than his coat’s absence of buttons.
Eli looked anemic… again. Not good for y’all fans of the GMen.
Yeah, by the end of the first week, we’d get to watch the third string QBs. By the end of the second week, they’d have to cancel the season.
Giants sucked. Eli is mercurial.
They REALLY seem poorly coached at times. It’s like they have random game plans that sometimes work, and sometimes don’t. He mismanages his downs, mismanages the clock.
There’s something wrong with a team that gets shut down for 3 quarters and then scores 40 points in the 4th, two weeks in a row.
I’m not saying they’re bad. They’ve had a tough schedule (Indy, Chicago, Jax on the road, Seattle) but they’re just all over the place. They look like such a mess sometimes, and that directs my attention to the coach.
Better watch it, Trunk. There was a real big uproar in NY going into the bye week when someone else mentioned that they were outcoached. 
Well, one of them said it after that atrocious playoff loss last year, too.
Well-coached teams can still lose games, but they’re games like the Boys lost to the Skins or the Pats lost to the Jets. That’s a bad loss, to be sure, but there was an interception, and a fumble and they were still in it. You shouldn’t look like you don’t know what you’re doing on the field.
Against the bears, like Madden said, they should have been closer for the figgie try. THey shouldn’t have had the figgie run back, and after the figgie run back, they shouldn’t have collapsed.
But, some games come out and they look like world beaters, like against the Skins. Or do something incredible, like against the Eagles.
But, when you look at the big picture, it’s hard to say whether they’re good or bad. They’re just a mess.
And, I like saying figgie.
Not a bad broadcast for ESPN, exlcuding the TWO booth guests- at least Ronde Barber was actually pretty interesting and insightful. I’m still waiting for Theisamann to punch Tony K. the next time he calls Joe on his contradictory statements, even though I think their apparrent animosity is just schtick. I could have also done without the 100 closeup shots of the faces of Shockey and Barber, but absolutely love the upset looks that Eli gives every time he screws up, which was pretty frequently last night. Is he regressing? Wasn’t Peyton way beyond him at this point in his career?
It’s hard to say whether Peyton was beyond him at this point or not, as it took Peyton SIX YEARS to win his first playoff game. And, frankly, he still has yet to beat a real team in the playoffs. (Are his only playoff wins against Denver – who the Colts own – and the defensively-challenged Chiefs?)
My take as a hardcore Giants fan is not good. Before the game I wrote that I was very down, and needed the Giants to play well to restore my confidence. Obviously, that didn’t happen. When thinking about the Coughlin-Eli era, I’m worried.
Last season there were a bunch of games I could point to where the team came together and played a complete game. The shutout of the Redskins, the dismantling of the Rams, the ease of beating the Raiders despite all the LB injuries, the ho-hum pounding of the 49ers, plus the quality wins against the Chiefs and Cowboys.
This year? I can’t point to a single win that was convincing. An alarming number of Giants games have been nigh-unwatchable this year, and that includes several wins. (The Texans game, for one, was painful to watch.)
This is not a good sign. Injuries are really only an excuse for the defense, since that unit is clearly built around the ends, where three of the four have been out for weeks. Given that, letting up 26 points to the Jags is about what I’d expect, so I have no issue with that.
But WTF is up with the offense? I grant you that Petitgout’s absence hurts; despite what many Giants fans think, he’s a stud LT, and losing a guy like that is going to be noticed. Also, the loss of Toomer is huge. He’s the guy left 1on1 when the defense takes away Shockey and rolls extra help to cover Plax. This is made obvious by how many times Eli has been targeting Tyree of late, and also the fact that Toomer led the league in receptions several weeks into the season.
But COME ON. Are you friggin’ kidding me? Eli is lost out there. Peter King recently used hindsight to describe the Eli trade as the most lopsided since the Herschel Walker deal. And I can’t argue with that.
The worst thing that could have happened Monday night would have been for the Giants to rally and score a couple touchdowns, either winning or losing by only a 2-point conversion miss or overtime coin flip. If that had happened, it would have been just like the Eagles game where the lesson learned would have been nothing. With this embarassing loss, the lesson now is that there is a serious problem.
Eli doesn’t need to be Peyton or Carson Palmer or even Tony Romo to make this team great. I honestly think Jared Lorenzen would have fared better against the Jags, though I don’t claim he would have gotten the win. Eli has serious accuracy issues, much of which is superficially due to mechanics. Those mechanics issues are due to something mental, and he needs to get his mind right in the worst way. I hoped the Bears game would have been enough of a wake-up call, but I guess not. Maybe this one will be. Who knows?
As for the refs, fuck that pussy shit. I cannot stand the wussified PI standard that Peyton whined his way into the league adopting. Let them fucking play. I was disgusted by Peyton’s whining for PI call at the end of the Cowboys game. The strategy of “scan the field for a receiver getting interfered with and then throw the ball safely over his head to draw a flag” is chickenshit. Man up and try to complete a pass for god’s sake.
Anyway, without Petitgout, Tiki will be stuck in the backfield, and without Toomer both Shockey and Plax will be covered like white on rice. For a normal coaching staff and quarterback this could be overcome, but I’m not holding my breath for this group to pull it together. I’m not sure what the Giants need, if anything, to overcome their problems. My worst fear is that this is as good as this group will ever be, and the Giants have no shot at the promised land until the next regime has had a couple years to settle in.
It’s very frustrating.