Justin Tuck – Keefe To The City

Tag: Justin Tuck

Oct 10, 2013

NFL Week 6 Picks

I finally broke up with the Giants after their loss to the Eagles. But then I took them back just in time for their game against the Bears.

Breaking up with the Giants is hard to do. I deleted their number, unfriended them on Facebook, put all the memories they gave me in a box that I then labeled “JOKE” and have even avoided using the word “giant” in any context, choosing to go with “huge,” “enormous” and “mammoth” among others. But guess what? I let them back in my life! I know, I know! I’m an idiot and at midnight on Thursday night when they’re 0-6 and Eli Manning, Tom Coughlin and Justin Tuck are making excuses like a sophomore in high school whose English midterm is late again (no, that wasn’t me…) you can all tell me “I told you so.” But this morning, with the thought of being still in the division thanks to the Cowboys, it was the equivalent of seeing a few late-night texts from the Giants or seeing a request that “New York Giants wants to be your friend” waiting for me on Facebook and I couldn’t help but give them what is now their third chance this season. I know I’m stupid, but just shut up for a minute and let me explain.

The difference this time is I’m fully prepared for the Giants to get beat up by the Bears and run out of Soldier Field like a drunk Packers fan wearing a foam cheesehead with his entire body painted green screaming “Bears suck!” during a Bears-Packers game. I’m not going into this game thinking the Giants are going to win or that they even have a real chance to win. I’m going into the game hoping that they have a Lloyd Christmas-Mary Swanson-like small chance or even smaller to stay in the game until the fourth quarter and then maybe Eli Manning will find his missing fourth-quarter magic or maybe Jay Cutler will hand the Giants a win the way he has handed so many other teams wins in his career. You’re still not sold? Neither am I really.

***

Apparently as the Giants season goes, my picks go. Week 5 was another train wreck that proved that logic and reasoning is pointless when it comes to the 2013 NFL. On top of it all, anything you have seen or learned or figured out is worthless at the end of each week and completely irrelevant in picking the following week. It’s almost as if the movie 50 First Dates has become me making my NFL picks. And for as bad as that movie was, my picks have been worse.

Week 6 … let’s go!

(Home team in caps)

New York Giants +7.5 over CHICAGO
This is the last time I will be picking the Giants. The absolute last time. This is it. It’s really it.

KANSAS CITY -8 over Oakland
Picking an Andy Reid-led team with Alex Smith as the starting quarterback (even if they are undefeated) this many times is sure to backfire at some point. But the Chiefs have won four of their five games by at least nine points and that’s good enough for me to pick against the Raiders on the road.

Philadelphia -1.5 over TAMPA BAY
It doesn’t matter if Michael Vick starts or Nick Foles starts or Nick Vick (the combination of the two that we saw against the Giants) starts against the Buccaneers. Any of those three options is better than Mike Glennon, who will be making his second career start following Josh Freeman’s release and the circus Greg Schiano created down in Tampa Bay. And if Glennon for some reason can’t play or is removed from the game, you know who his backup is? Dan Orlovsky, that’s who. The future is bright in Tampa Bay.

BALTIMORE +3 over Green Bay
I originally had Green Bay -3 in this game and because I switched it Green Bay is 100 percent going to cover. I have been down on the Ravens through five weeks, but their 26-23 win in Miami last week has made me a believer for at least Week 6 in the Ravens. And I don’t really trust the Packers away from home.

MINNESOTA -2.5 over Carolina
Need a good laugh? Here’s what I said about the Panthers last week:

I know Bill Parcells said, “You are what your record says you are,” and the Panthers are 1-2, but they are good.

Done laughing?

The Panthers repaid my praise for them by getting embarrassed by the Cardinals. (The Cardinals!) A 22-6 loss in a game that featured seven combined turnovers (Carolina had four and Arizona had three), including three picks for both Cam Newton and Carson Palmer.

Meanwhile the Vikings are coming off their bye and their first and season-saving win against the Steelers in London.

HOUSTON -7.5 over St. Louis
The Rams did manage to beat the Jaguars by two touchdowns to cover their 11.5-point spread, but the Jaguars were in the game for far too long and did lead for enough time that it made me think the Jaguars wouldn’t finish the season 0-16 and made me realize just how bad the 2008 Lions were to finish that season 0-16.

NEW YORK JETS -2.5 over Pittsburgh
I expected the J-E-T-S to get blown out of the Georgia Dome on Monday Night Football and instead they put together a 2011 Giants-esque game-winning drive to improve to 3-2 on the season. The Giants are 0-5 on the year, the Yankees’ season ended 11 days ago and in the Rangers’ most recent game they were run out of San Jose in a 9-2 loss. Maybe me picking the Jets this week will restore some order in the New York sports world.

Cincinnati -7.5 over BUFFALO
Last week someone named Jeff Tuel took over for an injured E.J. Manuel in the Bills’ 37-24 home loss to the Browns (who also lost their starter Brian Hoyer to a torn ACL and had to replace him with former start Brandon Weeden) on Thursday Night Football. (How great has Thursday Night Football for 17 weeks worked out?) How bad was Tuel? Bad enough that the Bills have signed someone named Thad Lewis off their practice squad to start over Tuel this week. Bills head coach Doug Marrone said, “Thad gives us the best chance to win,” but he’s wrong. He’s not wrong that Lewis is better than Tuel because he might be, though that’s not saying much. He’s wrong that the Bills have a chance to win this game. They don’t. Now we just need Lewis to be bad enough that the Bengals can cover.

SEATTLE -13.5 over Tennessee
Ryan Fitzpatrick finally gets a chance to start for the Titans and he gets the then-5-0 Chiefs (now 6-0) and the 4-1 Seahawks (soon to be 5-1). Sometimes things aren’t fair for Harvard graduates who get $59 million contracts with $24 million of guaranteed money.

DENVER -27 over Jacksonville
At no point would I feel nervous about taking the Broncos in this game. The Broncos beat the defending Super Bowl champions by 22 points in Week 1 and beat the Eagles by 32 points in Week 4. You don’t think they can beat the winless Jaguars by four touchdowns? The Rams managed to beat the Jaguars by two touchdowns last week.

SAN FRANCISCO -11.5 over Arizona
The Cardinals are on a mission to destroy my picks as best they can this season and so far they are succeeding. I can’t help that I want to pick against Carson Palmer every possible chance I get. Is that so wrong?

Since the 49ers were embarrassed in Seattle and Indianapolis in back-to-back weeks in Weeks 2 and 3, they are 2-0 and have outscored their opponents (St. Louis and Houston) 69-14. The NFC favorite that was supposed to go back to the Super Bowl this season is back after their two-week hiatus and now they need to put an end to the pesky, pick-destroying Cardinals.

New Orleans +1.5 over NEW ENGLAND
The Saints proved my whole theory about them being a different team outside the Superdome wrong with a win on the road at Soldier Field. But maybe that theory was only good for Saints teams of the past? Maybe the 2013 Saints are capable of winning road games against worthy opponents? Their two-point win over the Buccaneers said they weren’t, but now their eight-point win over the Bears says they are.

The difference in New Orleans is with Rob Ryan’s defense, which hasn’t allowed more than 18 points in a game this season (17, 14, 7, 17 and 18). In the past the Saints weren’t worried about giving up points knowing they could outscore any team in the league, especially at home, but now the Saints (at least through five games) appear to be a well-balanced team and that’s bad news for the rest of the NFC.

Washington +6.5 over DALLAS
I was nervous that the Cowboys were going to stop the 2013 Broncos train in the final minutes on Sunday, but Tony Romo put to rest my fears with a Tony Romo game-ending interception to keep the Giants mathematically involved in the NFC East despite having no wins. Now the Redskins are coming to the Big D with a chance to take over the division lead with a win and an Eagles loss. Everyone keeps talking about how the NFC East will be won by an 8-8 team or possibly even a 7-9 team. If it’s possible I’m pulling for a 6-10 team to come out of the East. The scary thing is the Giants would have to play .545 football the rest of the way and go 6-5 just to finish 6-10 at this point. Has anyone told Antrel Rolle this?

Indianapolis -2.5 over SAN DIEGO
I keep picking against the Colts and they keep making me pay. Thankfully, I jumped off the Chargers undefeated covering streak in time for their 10-point loss to the Raiders last week.

Last week: 5-9-0
Season: 29-44-4

Blogs • Giants • Giants Thoughts

Oct 1, 2013

Giants-Chiefs Week 4 Thoughts: A 12-Game Season

The Giants were embarrassed again and after an 0-4 start to their season they need to put the first quarter of the season behind them and focus on the remaining 12 games.

I didn’t think things could get worse after the six-turnover Opening Night performance. I was wrong. And I didn’t think they could get worse than losing by 18 despite being down 10-9 at halftime. I was wrong again. And then I didn’t think things could get worse than losing 38-0 and producing 150 yards of total offense. I was wrong about that too. Things have gotten progressively worse since the “Disaster in Dallas” and I’m not sure what’s left after getting embarrassed and run out of Kansas City by Alex Smith, Andy Reid and the Chiefs. Are the Eagles planning a “Miracle at the Meadowlands Part II” for this Sunday? If so, I wish someone would tell me now, so I can find something else to do like watch Knocked Up or Funny People or Five-Year Engagement.

The same day the Yankees season officially ended after 182 days and 162 games, the Giants season ended after 21 days and four games. Sure, the Giants are technically still alive in a division where the Cowboys of all teams are in first place at 2-2. And if there’s any team incapable of holding a division lead in the NFL, it’s the Cowboys.

But why would anyone think the Giants are going to suddenly figure it out? And by “it” I mean everything as in every facet of the game. Because right now there isn’t one thing the Giants are doing well. Well, unless we’re talking about throwing interceptions, losing fumbles, taking untimely and game-changing penalties and missing field goals because they are doing all of those things better than any team in the league.

Going to Kansas City in Week 4 with the Chiefs flying as high as they have in forever and the Giants at an all-time low in the Tom Coughlin era and maybe the lowest of low in franchise history was a recipe for disaster. It was a game the Giants were set up to lose after what had happened in the first three weeks for them and for the Chiefs. But even as 5-point underdogs, the Giants didn’t show up and were worked over the same way they were the previous two weeks and everything Carl Banks said about the team to Joe Benigno and Evan Roberts on WFAN last week held true again.

I’m not going to talk negatively about Tom Coughlin, question his decision making or call into question his job status. It’s not for fear of having Justin Tuck punch me in the face, but rather because I don’t think this debacle is because of Coughlin, even if he is the man in charge. Coughlin’s not the one who has thrown nine interceptions in four games and he’s not on the offensive line failing to hold up his man and he’s not on the defensive line failing to get to the quarterback. He’s the man on the sidelines, who is watching his highly-talented team underachieve and not play to their abilities and live up to their expectations. But Coughlin does get to call the shots during the game and he made a bad call on Sunday that changed the game.

In the third quarter with the Giants facing a third-and-17 at the Giants’ 14, Eli Manning hit Victor Cruz for 17 yards. A 17-yard pass in a third-and-17 situation. What’s that mean? First down, Giants. Right? Wrong. Andy Reid, whose history of poor challenges, poor use of the clock and bad in-game management helped end his tenure in Philadelphia, challenged the ruling on the field of a first down and the spot of the ball, a call that’s rarely and I mean RARELY ever overturned. But because it’s New York Giants football and because things are going as bad for the 2013 Giants as they did for Mischa Barton’s acting career after she left and ruined The O.C., Reid won the challenge and it became a fourth-and-1 for the Giants on their own 30.

Tom Coughlin had a decision to make: Go for it on fourth-and-1 from the Giants’ 30 and risk turning the ball over on downs in a 10-7 game or punt it away and rely on the defense to make another stop. He went with his second choice and Steve Weatherford, who has been part of the problem and not part of the solution like just about everyone on the team this season, punted 59 yards to Dexter McCluster and McCluster “DeSean Jackson’d” the punt 89 yards for a touchdown and a 17-7 lead. Game over.

Cruz didn’t agree with Coughlin’s decision by saying, “I thought we should have gone for it on that fourth down. It’s coach’s call at the end of the day. … We had the momentum. I felt it was a yard, not even a yard, half a yard, we’ve got to take a risk at some point and make something happen.” And I agree with Cruz. The Giants had to make something happen and they went with the safe play even if it was the supposed right play given their field position, but at 0-3 and on the road and a quarter away from being 0-4, the Giants had to do something to change the momentum of that game and trying to gain not even a full yard for a first down would have done that instead. Instead they changed the momentum for the Chiefs.

The 0-4 start is alarming because it’s 0-4, but it’s heightened because of how last season ended and the bad taste it left in everyone’s mouths. Usually we’re used to see a stretch like this in the second part of the season or near the end of the season as the Giants erase their division titles hopes and playoff chances. Never before during the Tom Coughlin era have we seen something like this where the patented second-half collapse takes place in the first half or the first four weeks.

An 0-4 start looks a lot worse than a 6-2 team becoming 6-6, which is more Giants-like. But it leaves open the thought that maybe the Giants are getting their collapse out of the way now. No, that doesn’t mean I think the Giants are going to go 12-0 and run the table like Antrel Rolle said he “believes” the Giants can. But they don’t need to this season in this division where a winless record only has them two games out with 75 percent of the season left. And while Rolle’s prediction of the Giants winning out was just a little bold, he did redeem himself by saying, “This is just a new beginning, a 12-game season for us.”

The 12-game season begins with two games in the next 10 days. It’s hard to believe in the Giants, but that’s when they are at their best.

Blogs • Giants

Dec 19, 2011

A Giant Embarrassment

I wasted part of my Sunday watching the Giants, and I should have known better. With the Giants suffering a humiliating loss, I decided to look at some of the postgame comments from the team in an attempt to make sense of the mess at MetLife Stadium.

If you wasted part of your Sunday watching the Giants, I don’t feel sorry for you. I don’t feel sorry for anyone like myself that watched the Giants game because we all should have learned by now. We should have known better than to think that the team that had their season saved in a span of five minutes and 41 seconds of improbable events last Sunday night would do anything other than take their second chance for granted.

I was prepared for the Giants season to be over with 5:41 left last week and the Giants trailing the Cowboys by 12 points. But then they had to come back and win and suck me in and make me believe they could make the playoffs and maybe go on the sort of run we saw from them four years ago. I’m a sucker. No really, I am. I have fallen for this same act year after year and I fell for it again because of last Sunday. When will I lean? Better yet, will I ever learn?

The Redskins had absolutely nothing to play for on Sunday. Absolutely nothing. Other than that the game was on their schedule and that it was their one of their last three chances to add to or improve their season stats and that a win would screw up the Giants’ season, they had no incentive to win on Sunday. But maybe playing for nothing was enough for them.

The Giants had everything to play for. They were given a second life in their season to make the second season and three games in a row at home to win and set up an easy path to the postseason where they would host a playoff game for the first time since 2008 and just the second time since 2005. But maybe playing for everything wasn’t enough for them.

I watched Mean Streets on Friday night and I can’t stop thinking about how the New York Giants are Johnny Boy (Robert DeNiro) from the movie and how the fans are Charlie (Harvey Keitel). Johnny Boy is a screw-up that everyone else knows as a loser and a joke and someone they wouldn’t want to associate with, but somehow Charlie sees the good in him after growing up with him and feels the need to support him and vouch for him and his debts by giving him unlimited chances to turn his life around. But Johnny Boy takes Charlie for granted and never changes his reckless lifestyle.

Like Johnny Boy telling Charlie he will pay off his debts next week and then the week after that and then the week after, the Giants keep promising to be prepared next week and the week after and the week after that. Following the loss to the Redskins they made their excuses to the media and then preached change for their Christmas Eve game against the Jets. The same change they have promised after the other six losses this season. And if they lay an egg against the Jets and the Cowboys lose to the Eagles, they will tell us that the Week 17 game against the Cowboys is the only game that has mattered all along. It won’t end until there isn’t another week for them to prepare for. It won’t end until Tom Coughlin is packing up his desk and office into empty Amazon and Dell cardboard boxes and wondering what he’s going to do in 2012.

I honestly wish the Giants lost on last Sunday night against the Cowboys. I’m serious. It would have made this loss a lot easier knowing that the season were over and would have given me an extra week to accept the idea that the Giants wouldn’t be playing in the postseason for the third straight year and would have allowed me to try and fathom how another year of Eli Manning’s prime has been wasted by this team and this coaching staff.

I don’t understand “optimism” when it comes Giants fans. This team isn’t good. Their 7-7 record says so. Their 1-5 run since beating the Patriots says so. Their -38 point differential says so. Their two losses to Rex Grossman and losses to Charvaris Whiteson, Alex Smith and Vince Young say so. By the end of Sunday’s game I was so depressed that I needed a good laugh and with 4:12 left, Corey Webster provided it when he broke up a pass in the end zone for a would-be touchdown and then celebrated to the fans sitting in the back of the end zone. The Redskins were leading 23-3 at the time. (Granted Webster and Jason Pierre-Paul have been the only two consistently good defensive players this year, but really? Save the celebrations for another time.)

It was the same old song and dance from the Giants after their embarrassing loss to the Redskins that reopened the wound they stitched up last Sunday. Tom Coughlin and his players threw out a lot of clichés and a lot of promises to blow smoke up everyone’s ass that cares about this team and to those that have wasted 15 weeks waiting for some form of consistency.

Let’s look at some of the postgame quotes from the Giants as they search for answers as to how Rex Grossman (you know the guy who lost his job to John Beck this season) beat them twice in the same season.

Chris Canty on blowing an easy opportunity for a win: “We had a tremendous opportunity here against a division opponent and we let it slip through our fingers. We didn’t take advantage of it and we did not play New York Giants football.”

There’s no truth to the rumors that Chris Canty will be hosting a HBO comedy special this offseason. The guy is hilarious, isn’t he? Wait, he was serious when he said, “We did not play New York Giants football?” Is this real life? You didn’t play New York Giants football? Umm, actually that’s exactly what you did. I know you’re semi-new around here, but what happened against the Redskins is what Giants football is. Being humiliated at home and losing to four-win teams and playing .500 football and being undisciplined and unprepared is Giants football.

Antrel Rolle on the frustrating loss: “I have said that we are the better team but they [Washington] beat us twice so clearly they’re the better team at this moment.”

It doesn’t matter what Antrel Rolle says at the end of the day. He can say that Washington sucks or that the Giants will do this or that they will accomplish that, but none of it matters at the end of the day. At the end of the day, does anyone believe anything that Antrel Rolle says anymore at the end of the day? If Rolle told me that Christmas is this Sunday, I wouldn’t believe him at this point.

Last week we had to here about how he was mad at Cris Collinsworth’s analysis of him not covering Dez Bryant. According to Rolle, he was right where he was supposed to be. But then this week, Rolle missed several tackles and many big plays happened on his side of the field. Was he where he was supposed to be on every play against the Redskins? Maybe Collinsworth was on to something?

Rolle has spent most of his time this year guaranteeing stuff like Ray Zalinsky. Does he even know what “guarantee” means? It means, “to promise or assure a particular outcome.” Can we just use guarantees in sports for significant events like playoff games and championships? Antrel Rolle shouldn’t have to guarantee postseason berths. With this team and this talent, that should be a given at the end of the day.

Tom Coughlin on the lack of running plays in the first half: “We planned to do more and have more. The first three plays were three incomplete passes in a row and had we have gotten a first down, you would have had a good mix of run and pass but that didn’t take place. You didn’t see many plays in the first half. The first 15 probably had more passes than runs but not to an excessive extent. It just didn’t work out the way we would have liked it to.”

How can you plan to do more running and not do it? You do realize that you are the head coach and therefore you have the final say, right? And you do realize that your team calls its own offensive plays, right? So, if you plan on running it more, you can. You can run it as many times as you want. You can run it on every play if you want. You can run it on zero plays if you want. What does that answer even mean?

Tom Coughlin on how to improve the pass coverage: “You just keep working at it and keep trying. We keep maneuvering around and changing coverages and trying to get people in the best possible spots. We are trying to understand what the opponent will do to us. That continues.”

I take it Coughlin didn’t fully grasp the “trail and error” method in school. If you try something and it fails, try something else. It doesn’t seem like the defense keeps working at anything other than just playing the same way they have played all season.

Prince Amukamara on how tough it was for the secondary: “The quarterback made plays, the receivers made plays and they completed passes on us.”

Ah, nothing like Prince Amukamara going with the “Bill Belichick” in the postgame. (The “Bill Belichick “is saying “They made more plays than we did.” It’s the ultimate copout.)

I’m glad he noticed that the Redskins completed passes on the Giants since most of those passes were on his side of the field. I remember when everyone was talking about the defense’s struggles earlier in the season, but the consensus was “the secondary will get better when Prince is healthy.” Is it possible that the secondary is worse off with the Giants’ first-round as part of it? I think it’s certainly a question that can be asked. It seems funny now that I included him as part of the devastating injuries when I talked with the Daily News’ Ralph Vacchiano prior to the start of the season.

Brandon Jacobs on the emotion and passion from the Giants: “We didn’t play well. We were disappointed in each other. We disappointed our fans. We just have to play better. We didn’t want it bad enough the first time we played these guys and we didn’t want it bad enough this time.”

How is it possible that the same guy who gave us that quote also gave us this one just a few weeks ago?

“I’m playing for my teammates, my brothers. That’s who I care about. I don’t care about anybody else to be honest with you. I don’t care if [fans] cheer for me another day. They could boo me every day.”

So the guy who doesn’t care about the fans and doesn’t care about being booed all of a sudden feels bad that he let the fans down? If there’s only two games left in the Giants season, at least there’s only two games left of Brandon Jacobs as a Giant.

Justin Tuck on the loss: “Obviously the one word that comes to mind is disappointing, a little bit embarrassed. Knowing what we had at stake, it is disappointing.”

Disappointing? Why that’s a nice way to put it. But just “a little bit embarrassed?” You lost to the four-win (before today) Redskins at home. You lost to Rex Grossman again. I would say you could use “embarrassed” without “a little bit” in front of it. We’re way passed being “a little bit embarrassed.”

And, how about Tuck and Rolle’s war of words after the game? If the season is going to go down in flames, they might as well make a spectacle of it.

Antrel Rolle is in no place to criticize or call anyone out on this team. He has made a lot of public promises and has acted as a leader to the media, but in reality he has been one of the team’s biggest defensive problems. How many shots of a wide open receiver catching a third-and-long pass and then Rolle and Aaron Ross entering the pictures five seconds later are we going to see?

Justin Tuck is in no place to get mad over criticism. Yes, he has been injured, and I’m not going to say he hasn’t been as injured as he has led people to believe like other members of the league and the media have suggested, but Tuck has been a disappointment. He was supposed to be the face of the defense starting when Michael Strahan, but he has had a hard time living up to that status consistently.

I’m just glad we can add locker room divide and using the media to as a trash-talking messenger to the problems this Giants team faces. It wouldn’t be a second-half collapse without it!

Justin Tuck on if the Giants can make the playoffs: “I still have the most confidence in this football team. Sometimes we come out and lay an egg and today we laid an egg but I have seen us rebound so many times in my short career here and I know the character of the guys in that locker room.”

There were a lot of times during Will Ferrell’s Saturday Night Live career when I wondered how he was able to keep a straight face. There was his Robert Goulet and Gus Chiggins and Mr. Tarkanian and hundreds of others. Most of the time I wondered how he was able to keep a straight face while other cast members (mainly Jimmy Fallon who actually used Saturday’s SNL monologue to make fun of himself for this) laughed at Ferrell’s performance. Well, Justin Tuck used his best Will Ferrell SNL impression with this quote. Seriously, how do you say you “still have the most confidence in this football team?” I think I have less confidence in this team than I did in last year’s team that starred in the Week 15 Eagles debacle, or 2009’s team that started out 5-0, finished 8-8 and gave up 85 points in their last two games. Confidence? I don’t think so.

I could see “Sometimes we come out and lay an egg” painted on the Giants’ locker room wall or on a sign hanging in the tunnel on the way from the locker room to the field. But sometimes the Giants lay eggs? The Giants have lost five of six. That means in the last six games they have laid an egg 83.3 percent of the time. Is that “some of the time?” OK, if you don’t want to use a sample size, then they are 7-7 and have laid an egg 50 percent of the time this season. Half of the time, isn’t “sometimes” it’s “half of the time.”

Tuck’s “short career” is now seven seasons. That’s not exactly “short.” In that time the Giants have lost 20-0 at home in the first round of the playoffs; lost in the first round in the playoffs; had maybe the best Super Bowl run in history; lost in the first round of the playoffs at home; missed the playoffs; missed the playoffs; and right now might miss the playoffs again. So aside from the glorious 2007 playoff run, they have rebounded in exactly zero other seasons. Somehow, Tuck must have erased this from his memory.

Eli Manning on what to tell the fans after the loss: “We’re competing and we’re trying to win. We didn’t play as well as we needed to today and Washington played better than us. We’re sorry about that, but we’re going to get back to work and get ready for the Jets.”

I have nothing negative to say about Eli Manning. Yes, he threw three interceptions and had his worst game of the season in a game the Giants should have won. When it rains, it pours with the Giants and every Giant seemed to have their worst game of the season today. But Eli is also the reason for the team’s seven wins, so he’s allowed to have a bad game every once in a while. The rest of the team gets to have one every week, so it’s not surprising that he finally decided to have one too to balance things out. (He also made the perfect pass to Hakeem Nicks that Nicks dropped for a would-be touchdown, which was the turning point of the game. If Nicks catches it, the Giants take a 7-3 lead, and suddenly the Redskins, who have nothing to play for are playing a meaningless game from behind rather than with house money.)

Like Eli said, the Giants are sorry, even if sorry doesn’t make it and doesn’t make a team make the playoffs. But don’t worry, everyone, the Giants are going to get back to work and get ready for the Jets next week, just like Johnny Boy telling Charlie he will have the money for his debts next week. And the Giants will keep telling us this until they run out of weeks to prepare for. They always do.