Friday, December 30, 2011

Is It Finally Romo's Time?

Usually I hate to be wrong. But being wrong about the outcome of the Jets-Giants showdown last week was great. That collection of misfits in green lost to the less-talented Giants.

And they did it in totally embarrassing fashion, from beginning to end. From sending out Plaxico as the sole captain for the coin toss to having their head coach get in a shouting match with Brandon Jacobs at the end of the game, the Jets showed their, um, character.

First of all, the Giants can’t be blamed for letting Burress get away. And the man did carry an illegal firearm and shoot himself in the leg. Picking him up in free agency was fine with me but is he really the man you want as the figurehead for your franchise? Was his sole presence at midfield supposed to scare the Giants? If anything, it gave every Giant the affirmation that they toiled for good sane people while their opponents, at least the ownership and management, were idiots.

I’m one of those people who try to root for both New York teams, at least in football. But it’s been difficult to root for these Jets. Surely they have many players worthy of my respect but those aren’t the players I hear about. I hear about the low-lifes, from Santonio Holmes to that disgusting Scott on defense.

And it was great to see them lose. It was great to see them practically eliminated from contention.

I say “practically” only because we’ve seen these Jets be “practically” eliminated before. As unworthy as the Jets are of having any good luck whatsoever, their cup overflows with good fortune, seemingly every year. Three games this weekend have to go the Jets way, along with a Jets win over Miami, in order for the Jets to get into the wildcard. And, with the Jets luck, those eventualities will very likely occur.

And the Giants finally simplified their pass defense, a move that paid off bigtime. All game long, Giants defenders were only a step away from the receivers. Getting any separation at all from their defenders was too much to ask of guys like Burress, who always thinks he’s open, and Holmes, who’s only interested in the red zone.

The things I feared the most, that the Giants wouldn’t be able to stop the pass or the run, didn’t happen. The media is blaming Schottenheimer, the offensive coordinator, for calling so many pass plays and not taking advantage of their strong running game. But the Jets seemed all game to be running out of time.

And how many times did Sanchez drop back only to hold onto the ball? That situation only arises from receivers not getting open, from low-life guys not trying too hard. After all, aren’t their skills quite sufficient to justify being thrown the ball whether they appear to be open or not?

The Jets offensive line took some heat too but it’s been mostly unjustified. No offensive line can function long enough to prevent pressure when the QB can’t really bring himself to release the ball. The Jets just don’t have it, not the talent, not the character, not the inspiration. No, the team that showed all those things were those guys decked out in blue.

The personification of all those qualities was, undoubtedly, Jason Pierre-Paul, who provided one more clinic on how to play defensive end. He was too fast, too strong, too ridiculously athletic for the Jets offensive line, even going against Pro-Bowlers like Ferguson. Pierre-Paul played as huge as his stature, and Tuck and the rest of that Giants front seven played well enough to prevent a lot of double and triple teaming on Pierre-Paul.

So the Jets are almost dead. The Giants are alive.

I wish I could think the G-Men will prevail at home this weekend versus the Cowboys. Their QB is no Sanchez. Their receivers are not named Burress and Holmes. They can put points on the board with the best of them, Romo to Austin and Bryant and Witten. But their defense can be awful, and, waddaya know?, there’s another Ryan, Rex’s brother Rob, running that defense into the ground, blitz after ill-conceived blitz leaving receivers open all over the place down the field.

Theirs is a defense that truly mirrors their defensive coach…..bold…..and stupid, characteristics of all the Ryans, it would seem. This was very clearly evident in the first Giants-Cowboys encounter, a game that Dallas led by two scores with just about 5 minutes left, a game situation that called for a careful defensive approach against a team with Eli and Nicks and Cruz and Manningham.

Instead, the Giants saw blitz after blitz and took full advantage, coming back to take a 3-point lead, and then held it by icing the kicker and then blocking the second kick, a guy named Pierre-Paul once again doing the honors.

Most prognosticators are predicting another shootout for this final but I’m not so sure of that. Will Rob Ryan be that stupid again? Can even a disciplined Giants pass defense deal with all those fine Dallas receivers? I have my doubts. But there certainly have been encouraging signs.

Can Pierre-Paul be a monster again? Will the addition of Osi Umenyiora give the Giants DL even a better pass rush? Is Felix Jones, the Dallas running back, really hurt? All indications so far point to another Giants win.

Maybe that’s what makes me nervous. Might it finally be Romo’s time to do something in the playoffs? Bad hand, bad record, bad defense, can’t Romo finally pull one out? Against all odds? If anybody’s ever been due for some good luck, it would have to be Tony Romo.

The Giants are favored by 3 points. The over-under is 46½. I figure that’s just about right. If so, it won’t be a high-scoring affair and not really a defensive battle either, rather somewhere in between, 25-22 or so, a game decided by turnovers and mistakes.

Who’ll make them?

Monday, December 19, 2011

The Bad Guys Will Win It

I should be happier really. My fantasy team romped behind Drew Brees again and even CJ Spiller went a little crazy. But the Giants failed miserably, starting with the usually reliable Hakeem Nicks, and the Jets were even worse, starting with Santonio Holmes and ending with a defense that just started badly and looked even more horrible as the game went on. Where can I dump all my sweatshirts and tees?

The Giants lack talent, especially on the defensive end, and could probably use a good defensive coach, something that has eluded them since the departure of Spagnola. The Jets have plenty of talent but have absolutely no character, starting with Santonio Holmes. Anybody who can do a stupid endzone routine when his team is down by a few touchdowns deserves to sit for a long, long time.

Not that it matters. Neither of these teams is going anywhere. Neither team deserves to go anywhere.

The Jets defensive performance defies description. They couldn’t stop LeSean McCoy. They couldn’t hold on to the football. They couldn’t rush the passer. They couldn’t contain Vick. They did nothing. It’s impossible to root for a team that not only quits but quits with a smile, as did Santonio.

The Giants are at least a bunch of high-character people. They just don’t have a lot of experienced people on the defense. Oh, and sometimes the offensive people decide to take a week off. Other than that, not being able to play offense or defense, they’re great. At least they have character. They looked genuinely disappointed to have lost a second time to one of the worst teams in the league.

So where does that leave New York sports fans? Well, basketball starts pretty soon. The Knicks will be better, much better in fact, on paper anyway. They’ll have the best front line in basketball with Carmelo Anthony, Amare Stoudemire and now Tyson Chandler. I like some of their support people too. Landry Fields and Mike Bibby are unselfish contributors and, while Baron Davis is totally full of himself nearly all the time, at least he has some talent, when he cares to play.

But, until then, the start of the NBA season, it’ll be tough for us fans. Since both local contingents play each other next week and both can’t possibly lose, we’ll have to wait a little longer to finally turn out the lights on pro football. For two more weeks, we’ll have to listen to the drivel surrounding the playoff hopes of at least one of these sorry teams.

I guess it’ll be interesting to see which one of these local teams will prevail. While I’d like to see the Giants beat the Jets next week and take their sorry inconsistent brand of football to Dallas in the final week, I just don’t think that sorry defense could possibly put together two good weeks in a row.

But at least I can root for them. Except for Brandon Jacobs and that miserable fellow playing safety, the Giants are a bunch of nice guys. The Jets’ only high-character individual is now hurt and Leonhard’s absence from the field no doubt contributed in large measure to that totally uninspiring performance they mailed in on Sunday.

The Jets though have been the luckiest team in the NFL for two years running, having made it to the AFC Championship Game both years, once because an undefeated team sat every player that was any good in the last week of the year and once because nobody else seemed to want it.

I believe in luck. Some people have it. Some teams have it. And the Jets certainly have been one of those teams. When they choose to do so, even without Leonhard, they can play pretty good defense. The Giants can’t play defense under any circumstances. At least not so far.

The Giants ground game won’t beat the Jets. The Jets will stop power backs better than speedy guys. The Jets can score against that ridiculous Giants secondary. The Giants will score too but not every possession. And that won’t be enough the way the Giants defense has been playing.

So, to me anyway, the bad guys will win (that’d be the Jets for those of you not paying attention). That’s if all things are equal, heh-heh. But then the Jets are the lucky team too. I see lots of wide receivers in green doing their airplane thing. Darrelle Revis could make an appearance or two.

The rest of the NFL action, outside of New York, was fantastic. Green Bay finally loses and Indianapolis finally wins. Drew Brees throws for a zillion yards. Detroit nips the Raiders. Ndamokung Suh blocks a field goal attempt, a la Jason Pierre-Paul… the Broncos cough it up to the Pats…..what more could you ask?

The Chiefs beat the Packers under Romeo Crennel and they sure looked happy on the sidelines. The Pack lost two offensive tackles, and the Chiefs hit those Pack receivers off the line. The Packers may be quite beatable now. The Chiefs showed everybody how it could be done.

You’ll hear that Brady beat Tebow. But the result really had nothing to do with either of them except to show that both qb’s can really play the game in their own way. The turnovers were just too hard to overcome for Denver.

And it was great to see NJ’s own Donald Brown change direction and race through the Titans defense for about 80 yards and a touchdown. It was even nice to see Peyton Manning smile again. That Lions-Raiders game was great to watch and who knows that Janikowski wouldn’t have made that 65-yard field goal if that giant arm of Ndamokung Suh hadn’t got in the way.

I’ll enjoy the rest of these shootouts for sure, even the Christmas Eve games, and probably this big Giants-Jets matchup most of all, even if it won’t be a battle of titans. Before you know it, it’ll be time for Santa.

Monday, December 12, 2011

On Heroes and Goats

NFL fans and owners are a tough audience. The Cowboys lose, it’s Tony Romo’s fault; the Bears lose, it’s Marion Barber’s fault (twice); the Chiefs lose, it’s the head coach’s (Todd Haley) fault.

At the same time, Denver’s success is all due to Tebow (Tebow, Tebow, Tebow), the Giants success to Eli Manning and Jason Pierre-Paul. Our predisposition to have heroes, I guess, is the reason there are still monarchies in the world today.

Not that I even mind the hero worship that much, especially in the cases of Eli and Pierre-Paul. Eli was great last night, making all the throws and all the right decisions. Pierre-Paul was all over the field all game long and finally blocked the kick that would have tied the game for the Cowboys. But Mr. Tebow (Tebow, Tebow, Tebow) had a lot of help in that Bears game, even if he very well might be the reason every Bronco player thinks he can be great too.

But poor Marion Barber; his first error was allegedly running out of bounds to stop the clock, thereby giving the Broncos time to tie the game. But he didn’t really run out of bounds. He took a tremendous blow from the side that knocked him out of bounds. His late fumble was actually a strip, something that shouldn’t happen but does sometimes for a guy who gained over a hundred yards for the Bears yesterday and scored their only touchdown on a very nifty run and side-step that left his defender on the ground.

Poor Todd Haley; his team lost Jamaal Charles, one of the league’s top running backs, Matt Cassell, their quarterback, Tony Moeaki, their tight end, Eric Berry, a Pro-Bowl safety and a pretty good linebacker too named Brandon Siler. The real story is that the GM in KC hates the head coach, always has hated him, and was only too happy to finally pull the trigger.

Romo threw for 400 yards and zero interceptions. His “overthrown” pass to Miles Austin is what detractors say lost the game. But as Mom used to say, “it takes two to Tango”, and there’s no better example of that than the curious chemistry between a QB and his receiver. Austin had been out with a bad hammy for weeks and who knows whether he was running full speed or not.

Now everybody’s saying the Giants will be the NFC East Champions. And, while I’d love to agree, it’d certainly help me lean in that direction if I thought for one minute that their defense could stop anybody. They certainly didn’t stop the Cowboys.

But the Giants defense is practically the worst defense in the league. They’ve given up 349 points in 13 games, by far the worst statistic among playoff-caliber teams and exceeded in futility by only Minnesota, Carolina, Tampa Bay, Indianapolis and Oakland.

I keep hearing how bad the Patriots defense is but they’ve surrendered only 274 points, 75 less than the Giants. That equates to a TD per game at least. The Pats have scored a whopping 396 compared to the Giants 324. The Packers, last year’s Super Bowl winner, have given up 278 and scored a league-leading 466. Face it, Giants fans, the pass defense is a sieve. If they manage to cover everybody, it’s an accident.

The Giants still have a long road ahead too. They should dispatch the Redskins at home next week but then they’ll be facing the Jets and, in their last regular season game, they’ll face the Cowboys once again, a team that will have had the taste of revenge on their tongues for three full weeks. Just as a benchmark, the Cowboys defense has given up just 281 points.

What saves the G-Men are their defensive line, even without Osi Umenyiora, Eli Manning and those terrific receivers, Nicks and Cruz and Manningham, and now, the tight end too, a fellow named Jake Ballard who already has 589 yards and 4 touchdowns, pretty incredible for a rookie tight end. Hakeem has gained over a thousand yards already, with 6 touchdowns, but he’s an All-Pro.

Yeah, yeah, I know, matchups are everything. The Giants proved that against those very same Packers last week, forcing them into overtime to finally eke out their 13th victory without a loss. But the very best teams have secondaries who can cover people more often than not. Defensive lines are great but the best QB’s will find somebody, even given just a little bit of time.

Eli has been matching up with the best of those quarterbacks too. Eli can make all the throws and out-think opponents most of the time too. In fact, Eli is one of those guys, like Aaron Rodgers, like Tom Brady and like even Tim Tebow, who make everybody play better. It’s a special gift and doesn’t happen for just anybody.

So what are the Giants missing? Until last night, I would have said it was the offensive line. Until last night, I would have said it was the running backs. But last night I changed my mind. Brandon Jacobs, that big goof usually, was everything I could have ever wanted in a running back last night. The offensive line surrendered no sacks.

But even after last night, I still have to question that secondary. George Allen hated having rookies anywhere on his team. He couldn’t deal with the mistakes. He’d have put a gun to his head last night (perfectly okay in Dallas and much of the country). Those corners and safeties were just clueless last night. They’re only fooled when the opponent decides to pass. And, oh yeah, those linebackers are a little suspect as well.

Of course, nobody stops quarterbacks these days. It’s against the rules. If anybody was watching as Skins linebacker London Fletcher dealt Tom Brady a perfectly legal hit and got called for unnecessary roughness, they’d have been as sick as I was.

The only sure thing though is that, whatever losses are found down the road, it’ll be somebody’s fault.

Monday, December 5, 2011

On Dual Phenomena

The NFL is so strange. The Giants lose and everybody’s deliriously happy because they only lost by 3 points. Tebow wins again and everybody shakes their head. And a fellow named TJ Yates comes in for the Texans and makes the Falcons defense look like the rookies. Oakland does nothing against a Dolphins team that couldn’t do anything right for the first half of the season. And now they’ve won 4 out of the last 5.

Oh, and there’s more. How about Urlacher’s Bears losing to the Chiefs on a decently-blocked Hail Mary? How about Cam Newton having himself a career day in Tampa? And then there was the Bills C.J. Spiller fumbling at full speed at about the 15-yard line and then just barely recovering the ball in the endzone.

You can’t makes this……oh just yada yada….

But sometimes you get an inkling that something weird’s about to unfold. Take the Giants game. A lot of observers seemed to think the Giants could indeed beat the undefeated (and Super Bowl Champions) Packers. And I myself had a similar vision of Cam Newton having a monster day in Tampa. Sometimes there’s just something in the air.

There’s a different energy in the air too inside a football stadium. Some players latch on to it and use it to make plays. And nobody captures that something in the air as does Tim Tebow. The interesting thing to me is that Tebow hasn’t really had to do anything impossible while winning all these games for his Broncos. He’s just made the plays that he’s had to, um, every time.

Now some may say that there aren’t many quarterbacks who could have avoided that stupid Jets blitz of a couple games ago. But that’s not really true. Any QB with reasonable speed could have done that. Everyone comments on his size and his speed that he’s used on seemingly endless quarterback draws and sweeps and, well, just about anything else a quarterback could do with a football. And that is true.

But, all that stuff (the running skills) only works in an offense that maximizes the potential of a guy such as Tebow. No other team in the NFL uses that run-option stuff. It’s ironic that the guy who’s directing all the unusual stuff (head coach John Fox) has his background as a defensive coordinator. But it’s not so ironic at all really when you consider how difficult it is to stop that offense.

You have to guard against the run at all times, not so much the running of McGahee, which can be prodigious in itself, but the running of Tebow, and not just his runs down the field (which can also be prodigious by themselves) but his knack for buying time to get that ball to a receiver. It’s that infuriating elusivensess in the pocket and out of it too. Fran Tarkenton had it. Joe Kapp had it. Ben Roethlisberger sorta has it too as does Drew Brees. And each of those fellows has certainly had his impact on the game. But none of them presented the running down the field danger of Tebow.

Tebow can take it all the way. He’s a fullback-type runner with enough speed to get to the outside. He can score anytime he has the room. Defenses have to guard against the pass too, and, thus far, it seems as if the opposition has decided to take their chances against Tebow passing the ball. But they’re finding that, alas, Tebow can pass the ball a little too.

There’s something else too that Tebow brings to the table though. And that is fear, that visualization of your upcoming loss. Other quarterbacks have that too, of course. But their names are ones like Brady, Brees and Rodgers. All those names give a defense that expectation of imminent loss. Heady stuff.

While Tebow brings unusual talents to the table, it’s not as if other QB’s haven’t had the same skills to both run and pass the ball. Michael Vick comes most readily to mind. But Michael Vick has always been the round peg in a square hole. Every coach he’s had has tried to standardize Vick to the NFL, to make him run an offense for which the coach is most comfortable.

And Vick gets hurt a lot. Vick always seems to take some of the most formidable hits you’ve ever seen. Tebow, as much as he runs the ball, never seems to really get clobbered. Even as big as he is, he’d get hurt more often if he didn’t have a knack for absorbing the hits.

But the thing that’s really unique about this Tebow phenomenon is the offense itself. It’s not Tebow per se; rather it’s Tebow in an offense designed specifically to mazimize his skills. I give almost as much credit to Elway and John Fox as to Tebow.

It took a lot of moxie to take the steps they’ve taken. And, game by game, nobody’s handled Tebow as well as has his coach, whose direction has been most decidedly conservative, only asking his QB to do those things that Tebow most decidedly can do, and only when those things have needed to be done.

Okay, that’s enough about Tebow and the Broncos. His game is so much fun though, if only because the naysayers say it’s impossible, or now, that it can’t last, that NFL defenses will catch up. And I do think that defenses will indeed catch up but they’ll be defenses like Pittsburgh and Baltimore, with names like Polamalu and Suggs.

Another phenomenon though is leaving our fair town. His name of course is Jose Reyes. Our terrific Mets shortstop will be taking his fun game to Florida. And, while I can cry in my beer about it, I can be happy the Mets didn’t spend 17 mill per year for the next 6 years, which is what Jose got from the Marlins.

You had some bad luck, Jose, but you were aces.