Bet ranch on Dallas
by Vic Ziegel
NY Daily News
There is no chance I could be wrong about Sunday's Giants' game - and if I am I was quoted out of context - but I would gladly give the 3 1/2 points, bet the farm, and the silo, every one of my shares in Google, and my Kaz Matsui bobblehead doll that the Cowboys will be the easiest kind of winners.
Well, maybe not that easy because you can usually count on the Giants to hang tough for a few quarters before they begin resembling a middle-of-the-pack PSAL team. But asking them to pull out of their horrendous tailspin - on and off the field - against the Cowboys, winners of three straight, and led by the league's top-rated quarterback, is like expecting spinach to taste like food.
The Giants have lost their last three every way a team can lose a game. That doesn't mean they can't end that streak Sunday, but this is not the right time to make that bet. Or bring anything weaker than 12-year-old Scotch to your tailgate party.
The Giants haven't been lucky, if that's what you want to call it. Too many injuries to too many key players. A few too many bad decisions by the coach, whose sideline antics make you think he needs a pacifier. The quarterback, the famous kid brother, is becoming a liability, and I'm being kind there.
And now we have Michael Strahan, who can usually be counted on for a few laughs, blasting the media - me, and guys who dress like me - for being so gosh darn negative. As if the last three games didn't happen. Or that we had anything to do with Eli Manning's wayward passes. (I'm going on the record again: I have never blown a 21-point lead in the fourth quarter. And when that time comes, I know what my explanation would be: stuff happens.)
Plaxico Burress is a part of the problem - two interceptions in his immediate neighborhood followed by his half-hearted attempts to tackle the villains. Tiki Barber, another star, is another problem. Nobody needed him to deliver his retirement announcement so early in the season. But since he did, it's become a lot easier for him to come down pretty hard on the ("out-coached") coach.
The coach, of course, will never admit any of this bothers him. When something unpleasant does come up, he tells us, he takes care of it with a little conversation. We don't have to believe that.
Strahan talks to the press every Thursday. Money never changes hands. His recent criticism of Burress came during his Monday segment on WFAN, for which he's handsomely paid. Now he's ticked off because reporters who heard his comments relayed them to Burress to ask what he thought of those remarks. Huh? Huh? (So Strahan exploded, came out of hibernation a day earlier, to rip every notebook in sight. He wasn't anywhere to be seen yesterday, which must make Wednesday the new Thursday.)
Burress' initial response didn't turn down the clubhouse temperature. "If that's the way he feels, hey, that's sad," Burress said Wednesday.
Yesterday, Burress, and the rest of the Giants - at least the ones worth talking to - were insisting that Strahan's explosion, and those last three losses, and Manning's failing grades, and the media's insistence on pushing those issues, no longer were on their minds. "Hopefully," Burress said, "you guys will let us get it behind us." (And I whisper to myself, "Good luck.")
The only player who used the word worried was the quarterback. "Our concern, right now, is football, what goes on on the field," Manning said. "And that is all we are worried about. We are worried about practice and having a good plan for Dallas and going out there and performing well. That is all we need to focus on and that is all we are doing."
Which is always a good idea. Until the snakes in the media come around and suggest there might just be a teeny - really teeny - concern among the Giants about the losing and the mistakes and, on top of that, suggest that the locker room is something less than a visit to Six Flags. OK, let's say, the media is eating it up, and spreading it around a mite too enthusiastically. It's called doing our job.
"I want to thank you guys again, for causing all the disruption on the team," Antonio Pierce said. "You did this when we were 1-2 and good things came out of it. So keep writing things and keep trying to make guys bicker on our team."
Thanking us "again" suggests that the criticism at the start of the season had something to do with similar disruptions. "Yeah, but we're not angry at one another," Pierce said. "We're angry at all of you guys and we thank you for that. I love you guys. I think you're the best. You motivate me the most and I'd like to thank you guys. When we get back on a streak again, I don't want you guys to jump on the bandwagon."
He likes it, Pierce insisted, when the media is negative. "When everybody thinks we'll lose by 40."
Hold it, I never said it would be that bad.
NY Daily News
There is no chance I could be wrong about Sunday's Giants' game - and if I am I was quoted out of context - but I would gladly give the 3 1/2 points, bet the farm, and the silo, every one of my shares in Google, and my Kaz Matsui bobblehead doll that the Cowboys will be the easiest kind of winners.
Well, maybe not that easy because you can usually count on the Giants to hang tough for a few quarters before they begin resembling a middle-of-the-pack PSAL team. But asking them to pull out of their horrendous tailspin - on and off the field - against the Cowboys, winners of three straight, and led by the league's top-rated quarterback, is like expecting spinach to taste like food.
The Giants have lost their last three every way a team can lose a game. That doesn't mean they can't end that streak Sunday, but this is not the right time to make that bet. Or bring anything weaker than 12-year-old Scotch to your tailgate party.
The Giants haven't been lucky, if that's what you want to call it. Too many injuries to too many key players. A few too many bad decisions by the coach, whose sideline antics make you think he needs a pacifier. The quarterback, the famous kid brother, is becoming a liability, and I'm being kind there.
And now we have Michael Strahan, who can usually be counted on for a few laughs, blasting the media - me, and guys who dress like me - for being so gosh darn negative. As if the last three games didn't happen. Or that we had anything to do with Eli Manning's wayward passes. (I'm going on the record again: I have never blown a 21-point lead in the fourth quarter. And when that time comes, I know what my explanation would be: stuff happens.)
Plaxico Burress is a part of the problem - two interceptions in his immediate neighborhood followed by his half-hearted attempts to tackle the villains. Tiki Barber, another star, is another problem. Nobody needed him to deliver his retirement announcement so early in the season. But since he did, it's become a lot easier for him to come down pretty hard on the ("out-coached") coach.
The coach, of course, will never admit any of this bothers him. When something unpleasant does come up, he tells us, he takes care of it with a little conversation. We don't have to believe that.
Strahan talks to the press every Thursday. Money never changes hands. His recent criticism of Burress came during his Monday segment on WFAN, for which he's handsomely paid. Now he's ticked off because reporters who heard his comments relayed them to Burress to ask what he thought of those remarks. Huh? Huh? (So Strahan exploded, came out of hibernation a day earlier, to rip every notebook in sight. He wasn't anywhere to be seen yesterday, which must make Wednesday the new Thursday.)
Burress' initial response didn't turn down the clubhouse temperature. "If that's the way he feels, hey, that's sad," Burress said Wednesday.
Yesterday, Burress, and the rest of the Giants - at least the ones worth talking to - were insisting that Strahan's explosion, and those last three losses, and Manning's failing grades, and the media's insistence on pushing those issues, no longer were on their minds. "Hopefully," Burress said, "you guys will let us get it behind us." (And I whisper to myself, "Good luck.")
The only player who used the word worried was the quarterback. "Our concern, right now, is football, what goes on on the field," Manning said. "And that is all we are worried about. We are worried about practice and having a good plan for Dallas and going out there and performing well. That is all we need to focus on and that is all we are doing."
Which is always a good idea. Until the snakes in the media come around and suggest there might just be a teeny - really teeny - concern among the Giants about the losing and the mistakes and, on top of that, suggest that the locker room is something less than a visit to Six Flags. OK, let's say, the media is eating it up, and spreading it around a mite too enthusiastically. It's called doing our job.
"I want to thank you guys again, for causing all the disruption on the team," Antonio Pierce said. "You did this when we were 1-2 and good things came out of it. So keep writing things and keep trying to make guys bicker on our team."
Thanking us "again" suggests that the criticism at the start of the season had something to do with similar disruptions. "Yeah, but we're not angry at one another," Pierce said. "We're angry at all of you guys and we thank you for that. I love you guys. I think you're the best. You motivate me the most and I'd like to thank you guys. When we get back on a streak again, I don't want you guys to jump on the bandwagon."
He likes it, Pierce insisted, when the media is negative. "When everybody thinks we'll lose by 40."
Hold it, I never said it would be that bad.
posted by The Gryphon at 6:51 PM
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