He'll have to do more still to earn jdeppa house privileges. He'll have to do more than slice a 36 yarder barely inside the left upright (from the LEFT hash, by the way), in order to get back into my house. But it's all good, because Big Blue found a way to win.
It sure as hell wasn't pretty, but I'll take it.
The quarterback, previously unflappable in the final stanza, tried to gift-wrap the game for the woeful Philadelphia Eagles, by throwing three dreadful looking picks on consecutive drives late in the game. The coach, handed the opposition three points at the end of the first half (more on that in a moment). And the Giants lost four starters to injury in the first half. Among them; their star middle linebacker, a solid defensive tackle, and both offensive tackles. In the end, none of that mattered. My Giants found a way to win.
They were led, on the offensive side, by the great Tiki Barber. Anybody that's read this blog in the past, all two of you anyway, know that I don't think too much of running backs in general. But this one, he's special. Week after week, Tiki is stating his case for Canton, and it is truly becoming a strong case indeed. He had another two hundred yards from scrimmage yesterday, and was the focal point of the Giants attack.
On defense, it was the same old story. Strahan and Osi (I've got to find a catchy name for this tandem, I reference them every week) dominated the 2nd half of the game. They were sorely needed yesterday, with Antonio Pierce and William Joseph having left the game due to injury. They combined for three and a half sacks, and the forced fumble that won the game.
As a fan, I've got to tell you, I can't stand the so-called "trap game". This one was certainly slapped with that label by the national media, and that made me nervous. It's no fun watching your team play a trap game. If they win, they were supposed to. And you feel relief afterwards, not joy. If they lose, it's a complete disaster.
The entire time you watch a trap game, you feel like your team should be winning the game by three touchdowns the entire time. You get nervous even when your team has a working margin. I'll give you an example. The Giants led 14-7 in the 2nd quarter yesterday, and were going in for more. They had a 1st and goal on the Eagles three yard line, when they commit a penalty, and give back five yards. The Giants fail to get in the end zone, and are forced to settle for three. This made me very, very, nervous. As I just had a feeling that the Eagles would come back right after that.
Of course, they promptly did so. And this is a good segueway into my rant about the head coach. Up 17-14 with :35 to go in the 1st half, the Eagles threw an incompletion on 3rd and 4 from the Giants 25. A flag comes in, and it turns out that the Eagles commit offensive pass interference on the play, a 10 yard infraction. Now it seems to me, the right thing to do, with the Eagles having no timeouts, is to take the penalty, back the Eagles up, and hope they can't work their way back into field goal range. Instead, genius Coughlin declines the penalty, and us Giants fans didn't have to look to know that David Akers ended up splitting the uprights from 42 yards out. I like Tom Coughlin. I like his aggression, I like his game management, for the most part. But he's been shaky when it comes to these penalties.
Hey, everyone. I'm back on the blog after an extended hiatus. One or two of you may remember me as a finalist in the inaugural NGS competition, during which, I was bested by a plagiarist and a nine year old, among others. Understandabl y, my ego was destroyed as a result of this, and I needed some time to recover. But I'm back because, well, I need some place to share my idiotic observations on sports and pop culture. Thanks for stopping by.
