A Dink, a Dunk and a Funk

Dink, 5-yard completion, Brady to Welker….dunk, completion for 8 yards to Hernandez, just short of a first down….whoa….16 yard completion to a wide receiver for a first down. Seriously, they ain’t so baaaad. The longest Pats reception was for 21 yards to, of all people, Ochocinco. The Pats didn’t really stretch the field. They really couldn’t scare anybody with that popgun offense.

Eli and the rest of the red, white and blue didn’t really have to do too much. If they had to do more, they probably could have done more. And yes, the Pats receivers dropped a few passes and Gronk was playing hurt, but still, Brady and the Pats ain’t scaring anybody.

The Pats couldn’t really run the ball either nor show me an inspiring runner on that team. Woodhead was their biggest running threat and he did pretty well but he scored when Brady had just oodles of time for some reason, probably just that Fewell out-thunk himself. Why they dropped their best pass rushers into coverage makes no sense to me.

I’m happy the Giants won but, aside from the Manning to Manningham connection, there weren’t really any scintillating plays, or calls for that matter. The game was played like a championship game by two coaches who knew each other better than anyone else on the field. It was a game for football aficionados.

Not that it wasn’t an interesting game if you like that kind of thing but, really, I would’ve welcomed a few chances taken somewhere along the line. Surely one or two shots down the field wouldn’t have hurt anything. But that’s not who the Giants are these days, nor Eli either.

Eli’s great at that QB position. He’s all grown up. But he had just enough pizzazz when he needed it in that fourth quarter with time winding down. That pass to Manningham was perfect. That’s all you can say. And he wasn’t about to give anything away. Eli did a pretty good job of dinking and dunking himself.

But there was no pass rush as there had been in early ’08. I kept wondering how many sacks Rex Ryan would’ve got out of that group of the G-Men. It was a very conservatively-played defensive game too. The Giants played it as if they knew they were the better team and, if they just didn’t give anything away, they would win the game.

But they really shouldn’t have been so sure of themselves. Once again, I thought the Giants got lucky. How many Giants fumbles didn’t amount to anything? There were at least two, one by Cruz on which New England had too many men on the field and one by Nicks that got covered up by Hynoski.

But it all counts. Hynoski got there first by paying attention and running like hell after the ball. And procedural-type penalties happen to even the best of coaching staffs. All in all though, when you consider the New England drops, the meaningless fumbles and the Brady safety on the Pats first play, the Giants had good fortune lined up on their sidelines that Super day.

The 49ers game was scarier than the Super Bowl. But brain farts and fumbles won it for the Giants that day as well. It wasn’t just Eli and that defensive line that won this championship. It was truly everybody and yes, it was everybody just doing their job, as every Giants player seemed to mention in the aftermath of things.

And, speaking of aftermath, was there ever a more gracious winner than these Giants? Eli, Justin Tuck and just about every Giant was classy in their commentary about the game, about the season, and about their opponents. One notable exception was Brandon Jacobs’ harangue after the game but I’ll forgive him for now. After all, it was the “best of all time” Tom Brady and the brainiac Belichick that the G-Men beat on Sunday.

It’s unfortunate that so much time was devoted to whether Eli is truly an elite quarterback or not. Happily, Eli backed himself up by winning this game. God knows what things could’ve been like around here if the Patriots beat him.

For now, everybody’s happy, even me, but it wasn’t long after this game was in the books that all the prognosticators came out with all their prognostications. Who’ll be dropped next year, whose contracts are expiring, which teams will the Giants have to look out for next year?

I know two guys who’ll be coming back. They’d be Jason Pierre-Paul and Victor Cruz. Would the G-Men be here today without either of them? I don’t think so. They were both great, not just great for a rookie but truly among the best in the league. And they came out of nowhere, just like these Giants.

I hated that the Giants let Steve Smith and the tight end Boss go. I hated that they couldn’t have given in to Osi a little bit. But, in the final analysis, Jerry Reese, the GM, is the man, once again, maybe even more so than he was in 2007.

It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken. Despite all the injuries these Giants suffered through this year, Reese’s players emerged as the best. Look around the roster, there’s that punter Weatherford and that Ballard tight end and that center wasn’t too shabby either. How about Devin Thomas? Oncce again, the man seems as if he knows something the rest of us just don’t.

I guess, like the rest of his team, Jerry Reese was just doing his job. But he really did one hell of a job….twice. This Super Bowl is as much his as anybody’s. Coughlin doesn’t have very many bad alternatives on that bench, or on specials, or anywhere.

But now it’s all over for 2011-2012. Now this amazing season and Giants run-the-table finish has run its course. Soon it’ll be just a memory, even if it will be one of the best ones ever.

Look to the Little Guys

This is the longest week in the sports calendar. It must be. I even turned on a minute or so of the Pro Bowl. There should be some form of punishment for that, if the game itself isn’t penalty enough. Unless you’re a madman or Super Bowl trivia expert, this is a week for that ski trip you always wanted.

Oh yeah, there’s basketball. Right. The Knicks traded their way out of contention and nobody wants to play for the Nets. Seton Hall was exciting for a brief while but those heady days appear to be over. The Australian Open was great, I must say, especially the Men’s Final between Djokovic and Nadal but that’s all over.

Oh yeah, there’s baseball hot stove stuff. Every other team in the world is doing something interesting but if you’re a Mets fan, you have to be happy with less. For Mets fans, this is the beginning of the beginning if you’re an optimist. It’ll be a year of hoping a team plays over its head….constantly.

I’m not into hockey but this week I actually wish I was. For a guy who’s never really skated, it’s tough to follow hockey. There is some Rangers buzz though and how often does that happen? Okay, I’m done, what else is there? Oh well, it’ll be a good week to hit the gym a lot. Geez, maybe I can even start following the Republican nominees around. That’s at least nasty.

I know this would probably be a good time to do a nice lengthy analysis of Giants-Pats but geez, it seems I’ve covered the Giants side of things enough already. I’ve maintained they’d need the best defense in the league to even get this far. That has proven true. But they also seem to have a little luck going for them lately, most notably against San Francisco.

I mean, really, how often is the return guy going to let the ball hit him in the knee? And how often is the same guy going to fumble? That’s what makes me nervous going into Indianapolis. It would seem that maybe the G-Men’s good luck is due to turn. I don’t want to put the horns on them but, really, will the Patriots give the ball up that easily?

I don’t think so. Plus, there’re all those characters you’ve heard about before. Yeah, yeah, Bellichick. Yeah, yeah, Brady. And now, yeah, yeah, Gronkowski. But maybe the big scary tight end will have no wheels for this game. That sure sounds like more good luck to me.

The question for me is whether or not the Giants can beat that Pats team without getting ridiculous breaks. It is possible, I think. But it’s also possible that Bellichick will come up with something weird. For this game, if I were him, I’d use the formula that won me a Super Bowl for the Giants against the Buffalo Bills back in 1991.

That day, Bellichick’s Giants defense decided to let the Bills QB Kelly complete short passes in front of them and then proceeded to knock the ever-loving hell out of the receiver. Before you knew it, the high-flying Bills were doing nothing and the Giants were just pounding the ball on the ground, keeping that Bills offense off the field. Before the Bills figured out that the G-Men were letting them run, it was almost too late.

I say “almost” because the Bills actually did finally run the ball into scoring position with a chance to win. But Scott Norwood was wide right with his field goal attempt. It was too late for the Bills only because Norwood missed. All of Bellichick’s scheming could have gone out the window. Luck showed its ugly side to the Bills that day.

But the circumstances between that game and this one are similar. The Giants have a running game for sure but the real threats are in the passing game and lots of yards after the catch. Why not sit back and blast the hell out of Nicks and Cruz and Manningham? Why wouldn’t the Pats force the G-Men to beat them on the ground?

On the other side of the ball, the Pats would try to run the ball as O.J. Anderson did that January day in 1991. That will really be the challenge for the Pats. But, even if they can just get a few yards now and then on the ground, it’ll enable Brady to dink and dunk them to death with Welker and Hernandez, their other tight end and jack-of-all-trades. A ground game will also tire out those animals on the Giants defensive line.

If the Pats can do all those things, pound the Giants receivers, run the ball successfully, and dink the Giants to death, they could easily win this game. Incredibly enough, the betting line currently says the Pats are favored by 3; the over-under at 54 ½. Vegas thinks it’ll be somewhere around 29-26 in the Pats favor.

No two teams know each other better than these Giants and Pats, having played once this season already, and both head coaches coached together under Bill Parcells. When there are no surprises, the team with the better talent will tend to win the game. You couldn’t convince me that the Pats have the better overall talent.

With a healthy Gronkowski, the Pats may be more talented. But a slowed-down Gronk makes a big difference. He’s been Brady’s favorite receiver. Even a big guy has trouble playing with pain. And a high ankle sprain presents a nice target for further injury. I’d expect some low tackles on Mr. Gronkowski.

This game is too hard to predict really, but, especially if both teams neutralize the perceived power on the other side, I’d think this will be a game of unlikely heroes, maybe a Patriots running back or a Giants tight end. I don’t think the “usual suspects” will have a chance.

Look to the little guys in this one. Definitely.

Yes, the Best Defense in the League!

Since Saturday night, all I’ve been hearing is that Aaron Rodgers had an uncharacteristically bad day. Otherwise, they seem to say, the Giants could’ve lost their battle with the #1 seed and 15-1 Green Bay Packers. They outline each and every time Rodgers missed a pass or one of his receivers dropped a ball.

I say “bullshit.”

Rodgers missed the passes because he was out-of-synch all game long. The best passer in the world was only normal when he had pass-rushers up his butt all afternoon. His receivers got a little jumpy when they had defensive backs and linebackers growing out of their backs. Packer running backs found a lot of tough going and every Packer had to make sure they held onto that football.

Pressure. That’s what stopped the Packers. Relentless all-day-long hits and eleven guys paying attention, an offense the Packers kind of knew they couldn’t stop, a quarterback named Manning making all the throws and making all the right calls. The combination of all that was just too much for the green and gold, even at home.

There would be very few leaps into the stands that day.

I had called it exactly right. I had said that it would take the best defense in the league to stop Aaron Rodgers and all those nifty receivers, Finley and Jennings and Jordy Nelson and Donald Driver. And it did take some really great defense to do it. I think the Giants have the best defense in the league. Who’s better….the Ravens?

I don’t think so.

Not the guys from Baltimore, not the 49ers and certainly not the New England Patriots. The Giants are the best defense in the league. The 49ers will have something to say about that this weekend but it wasn’t the Niners defense that won their game against Drew Brees and the Saints, although for almost 3 quarters, they showed they were awfully tough.

In the final quarter, the Niners were getting picked apart. It was an almost miraculous performance by the Niners offense that saved the Niners day. Alex Smith and Vernon Davis saved the Niners. The Saints defense couldn’t stop a perfectly-thrown goal line pass to Vernon Davis. They couldn’t stop Alex Smith running with the ball. The Saints dared Alex Smith to beat them and so he did.

The Niners may beat the Giants but it won’t be their defense stifling Manning and those wide-outs. They may stop the run pretty well but the Giants should get their points. Hell, they may even be able to run the ball, though the wise would be wise to not count on such a happening.

Even Eli and all his weapons will have trouble penetrating that sure to be pumped-up Niners defense in San Francisco. But I think they eventually will. It’ll probably come late in the game, after having pressured that Niners secondary all day long.

The G-Men will eventually take the lead and hold it. Alex Smith and Vernon Davis won’t beat these Giants. The home field of that City by the Bay won’t beat them. After all, they’ve already come through that gigantic structure in Dallas and that frozen tundra in Green Bay. Those la-la Niners fans won’t shake them. It’s not likely anyway.

What might be likely is a bit of a Giants letdown. They’ve been through a lot of pressure themselves. This will be their umpty-ump must-win game in a row. And it’ll be the first time in these playoffs that they won’t be facing an acknowledged defense-killer at quarterback, no Romo, no Rodgers, just a guy named Smith.

And they’ve faced these Niners before. To a man, they think they should have won that game. That previous experience can do two things. It can build up confidence or it can lead to a little bit of complacency on the field. After all, it won’t be Rodgers guiding those Niners….just Alex Smith.

Our heroes will also be facing arguably the best head coach in the league. Jim Harbaugh doesn’t make mistakes. He’s no Mike Smith, the Falcons head coach, the 4th and 1 wonder. He’s no Jason Garrett either. He’s probably on a par with that Green Bay head coach who won 15 games this season.

Harbaugh will keep that team motivated. He’ll probably figure a way of getting to Eli. Harbaugh will likely find some chink in that Giants armor. It’ll probably be centered around the Niners running game and that horse Frank Gore.

But the Falcons had a horse of a runner in Michael Turner. He didn’t do much. And the Falcons had a great receiving corps…Julio Jones and Roddy White and that venerable Tony Gonzalez at tight end. That contingent scored zero versus the Giants. Sure, Mike Smith was a handicap but even the best head coach would’ve had trouble with the Giants that day.

The Niners though have some Smiths of their own, some formidable Smiths, not just Alex but also Aldon and Justin in that steely Niners front seven. Justin is especially scary. Anybody who witnessed him charging through that Saints offensive line won’t take anything for granted this weekend. The Harbaugh Niners are really tough and play really hard.

Unlikely as it seems to me, the Giants are currently the underdog in this matchup by 2 ½ points, no doubt due primarily to hosting the game in San Fran. The over-under is currently 42. That means the rest of the world thinks the Niners will come out on top by a score of 22 ¼ to 19 ¾.

I don’t think so. Yeah, I know all about the brilliant Niners coaching and their terrific kicking game and their stingy defense but the Giants ain’t chopped liver either. Harbaugh acknowledged as much the other day. He seemed to be of the same mind as Green Bay when they decided to on-sides kick in a tie game, that they would need an extra possession to win.

If the better team prevails, it’ll be the Giants game.

The Best Defense in the League?

What an NFL Wildcard Weekend!!

I had thought this past weekend might be one of those yawners that seem to happen now and then. The matchups certainly didn’t lend themselves to one’s thinking that it’d be great entertainment, especially not the Broncos-Steelers game. I’d been looking forward to the Giants-Falcons, of course, but the other games didn’t send me, except for maybe the Bengals against the Texans. I thought the Bengals had a great chance.

Wrong, wrong, wrong!!

The Texans were off and running early. JJ Watt, a lineman for Pete’s sake, made a reaching stab of a Dalton pass to the flat and that play pretty much was a harbinger of things to come. There’d be no Dalton dramatics, there’d be no stopping the Texans running game….it was a pretty routine win for the contingent from Texas. For one more year, it’d be a shame to be a Bengals fan.

That Saturday night, the Saints-Lions was on the schedule. Nobody in their right mind thought the Lions would be able to stop Drew Brees but they actually did pretty well through the first half before utterly crumbling in the second half. It was like a snowball rolling down the hill. But, if you like watching a good quarterback work, Drew Brees is one of the three quarterbacks in the league that can absolutely destroy a defense.

One of the other two, of course, Aaron Rodgers, is unfortunately facing our Giants this weekend. His Packers have lost just once this year and Rodgers has been a huge part of the reason. The man is as accurate as anybody who’s ever played. He rolls around in the pocket and will take off running when the opportunity presents itself. The man just rolls.

Yeah. That’s true. But what about the Giants defense? Won’t that pass rush get to Rodgers? I certainly hope so but that Pack OL ain’t chopped liver and I’m not so sure the Falcons OL had one of its better days against the G-Men. But, statistically, as I can recall, the Falcons OL was pretty high in the rankings.

What I’m trying to say is that, if the Giants defensive line is the best in the league, if they can get to any quarterback in the league, then Rodgers might find himself running around a bit more than he is used to. I’ve already heard the Giants have a puncher’s chance and that’s as good an analogy as any, I suppose.

The trouble is that even a Rodgers under pressure is going to be pretty damned good. He’ll roll around and get rid of the ball when he must but most of the time, he’ll just find those receivers in perfect stride. Or, if they’re covered, he’ll just do that back-shoulder routine that’s so impossible to stop. Rodgers throws to everybody and he throws on the run probably better than anybody. So, even if he’s running, that doesn’t help the opposition as much as you’d think.

When the Giants beat the Pats in early 2008, Brady was the QB and, at the time anyway, Brady was considered the best quarterback ever. As things turned out, the Giants did indeed get to Brady and the pressure affected him bigtime. But Brady is a statue compared to Rodgers.

The aforementioned Brady is still in these playoffs, of course, and his Pats should have another reasonably good time against the Broncos. All I can say about that one is Tebow, Tebow, Tebow, Tebow. Watching Tebow running that Denver offense, when it’s all working, is a thing of beauty. What’s he going to do? Well, he could run himself, he could simply hand off or he could run to the edge and pitch it, or he could just wing it down the field, that last being the least likely of all.

That is, until Sunday afternoon. After Sunday’s game, the defense will have to figure against the Broncs passing game as well. Tebow’s 316 yards passing and two touchdowns, and another one rushing, pretty much killed any thoughts that the Broncs were only 3-dimensional. Any more dimensions, of course, would be out of this world, by definition, and that’s exactly what most Broncos fans are thinking about their quarterback these days.

After the Giants crushing of the witless Falcons, I would’ve been happy with the day as it was. I didn’t really need a great Broncos game, even if the Broncs opponent was the hated Steelers, the hated Ben Roethlisberger, that stupid Kiesel beard, that bully Harrison, and Mike Tomlin just out-thinking and out-motivating everybody else on the sidelines.

The way Denver went about their business was special. That first half was especially good, watching the Broncos not only take the lead with a beautifully-thrown Tebow pass that went the distance, but then adding insult to injury by just piling up some more points. And when hated Big Ben took the Steelers all the way back to inevitably tie the game in regulation, one had to think the worst. But Tebow’s on-target dart to Demaryus Thomas on the first play of overtime was just great. There would be no Steelers victory that day. Tebow to Thomas took care of that.

Saving the best for last, the Giants game proceeded pretty much as I had expected. The game started slowly, both teams did nothing and then things heated up quickly. But I’d thought both teams would have some success through the air. I’d thought Falcons head-man Mike Smith would ultimately blow the game. As things turned out though, Smith took his team out early with badly-run quarterback sneaks while the ponderous Michael Turner watched from the bench.

And the Giants defense stopped everything the Falcons could muster.

But Rodgers will be doing the mustering this week and their head coach isn’t Mike Smith. The G-Men need to bring their best game. If they truly have become the best defense in the league, as it certainly appeared on Sunday, they could even win this thing.

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?

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.

On NFL Week 9 qnd Smokin' Joe

Wow! What a football week! Having just finished watching “da Bears” take the shine off those golden boys from Philadelphia (in Philadelphia), I can honestly say this Week 9 NFL action was pretty darned good, better than I can remember in a long, long time.

The Giants (and Eli) were great. The Jets were pretty darned good. The Ravens war with the Steelers and the Bengals-Titans matchup were superlative. The Broncos won under Tebow. The Dolphins won their first game (in a big way). The Chargers were competitive against the Pack but still managed to look bad in doing so.

And some of the big guns in the NFL rolled in dazzling fashion, the Falcons, the Saints, Houston, the Niners and Dallas all outclassing their opponents as was expected. I love watching form prevail. But it’s nice to see the lower-echelon teams coming on too, the Seattles and Rams of the world still losing but looking a little better in the process.

How great was it to watch Eli bring the Giants back to outdo Tom Brady and the Pats (in Boston)? What made it better was that Brady had just finished doing his own reprisal of “Tommy Breaks Your Heart Again”. But it was the Pats hearts that were shattered. And who the heck is Jake Ballard? How can he be making all those nice catches?

I don’t root for the Jets anymore but they sure did a number on Fred Jackson and the rest of the Bills. And not just because Freddy is my feature fantasy back. (Julio Jones more than made up for Freddy). How can anybody root against those lovable Bills who couldn’t quite circle the wagons soon enough on Sunday? The Jets just systematically took them apart, nothing really flashy, just hard hits and a smart offense and defense too. The Green Team was dominant.

Back to the Giants though, just for a few seconds, it was great to watch Coughlin with the team in the locker room! The feeling between Coach and his guys was palpable. He quite apparently does not run a concentration camp, and maybe….just maybe….even modern athletes can appreciate somebody who makes them more disciplined.

Equally as great about the Giants win was that I gave them just about zero chance of pulling it off. Their best receiver (if that can even be said anymore), Hakeem Nicks, was out. So was their best running back, Ahmad Bradshaw. The center was out too, just to add a further degree of difficulty. The Pats hadn’t lost at home in five years or so. The whole thing was pretty damned shocking to a person who feels he’s got everything figured out.

Of course, I didn’t have to sit through all the commercials. I watched the Zone. In fact, tonight’s Eagles-Bears game was so oversold with ads as to be totally unwatchable, especially in the final minutes of the second quarter. Shouldn’t ESPN be embarrassed? Does nothing embarrass them?

A moment of silence (and tribute) to Smokin’ Joe Frazier who died today. He feels like family in a way, so closely were his fights with Ali examined, so genuine and so richly deserved his dislike for Ali, the hype for the fights, the actual fights, every single thing you could say about that rivalry would have to be good.

Joe played his part almost too well, first taking Ali’s title (for real this first time) with a terrific left hook to Ali’s jaw, then losing to Foreman, then Ali beating Foreman, then the “Thrilla in Manila” and the sequel that almost matched the original for drama. Joe was the plugger, Joe was the determined one, Joe was the guy who’d make Ali eat his cruel words. Joe was a guy every man, especially Ali, had to respect, even if he never seemed to get any love.

Joe kept coming, straight at you. I think Saint Peter will just stand aside.

The Bears’ Matt Forte and Lance Briggs did their own tough-guy routine tonight as they put a battering on those Eagles, even if Forte made more mistakes in one night than he usually makes in a month or two. Linebacker Briggs was just all over the place. When he delivered the hits, the “hittee” was all over the place. And that Bears offensive line kept Jay Cutler clean as a whistle.

It looks as if it’ll be the Year of the Harbaugh. Younger brother Jim Harbaugh has brought the Niners back to relevance while big brother John has his Ravens positioned nicely to finally win an AFC Championship. And they’ll meet each other on the field Thanksgiving night in Baltimore. That one promises to be the Game of the Year.

But, meanwhile, the damned Packers just keep winning. It seems that nobody can stop Aaron Rodgers and company, certainly not the San Diego Chargers. But I’ll say right now that I don’t expect them to win it all. Not this year, not with that running game….or lack thereof. Excuses can be made for the defense, I suppose, having to deal with Rodgers putting so many points on the board, but their running game is putrid.

Some might say the Pack had no running game last year. That’s really not the case though. Their offensive linemen had blocked last year. They show no inclination towards doing that this year. When the threat of the run becomes so small as to make no real difference, the play-action passes won’t work. And their defense can’t stop anybody.

Of course, there is half a season left to play. And maybe, just maybe, the game of the year will be the Giants against the Jets. That’s the game in store for us on Christmas Eve…….if we’re very good, and if the Giants and Jets are too. If even one team falters, the game might not be very meaningful.

But if both locals can keep playing good football, it could be a precursor to the Super Bowl. Now that’d be something!

Predictable?? NOT!

Is anybody else having trouble keeping track of all these games? Baseball playoffs are going hot and heavy. If you’ve been a baseball fan all season, you have a team you favor in each playoff series. Me, I’ve been rooting hardest for the Cards. Beating the pitching-heavy Phillies would be just outstanding. But the NFL Week 4 games have been going head-to-head with baseball on at least a few occasions, If you like all the football action too, you’ve really worn down that “last” button on your remote.

As this is written, the Phillies are still having trouble putting away these pesky Cards. In the bottom of the sixth, there is still no score. Cards pitcher Jaime Garcia is pitching a gem but so is Cole Hamels of the Phils. What a great series this one is turning out to be. This game followed another nail-biter, that between the Rays and Rangers which the Rangers won, thus eliminating the miracle Rays.

The best 3 of 5 format of the ALDS/NLDS games is outrageous. Anything really can happen. And it usually happens in the blink of an eye. It’s not just the home runs either. Sometimes it’s a play at the plate or grabbing a Texas Leaguer. Of course, if one guy hits 3 homers in the same game as Adrian Beltre did earlier today, that’s pretty friggin’ noteworthy. (No, not quite sponge-worthy).

Indicative of the frantic nature of these festivities is that I haven’t even mentioned the Yankees yet. They surely were looking good as Ivan Nova finished off those Tigers in Game 1 behind Sabathia and the rain. But then they played Game 2. It sure seemed like Game 3 as Game 1 had seemed like two different games. Be that as it may, the very unlikely hero Max Scherzer outdueled Freddy Garcia (and didn’t Yank pitching seem a little thin)?

Then the Tigers ace Verlander outdid CC and a bunch of relievers. One of those relievers, Soriano, took the loss. Before you could say “Robinson Cano”, the Yanks were one loss away from elimination. And, in a wonderful twist of fate, all Yank hopes now reside in the one pitcher Yanks fans have hated all year, AJ Burnett.

And if all that isn’t ironic enough, if the Yanks do manage to emerge from the Motor City, it’ll be Ivan Nova taking the mound for the Yanks in Game 5, probably facing Doug Fister again. If that winds up being the case, it’ll probably be a Rangers-Yankees ALCS. The winner there, probably the Rangers as things shape up right now, will face the Phillies in the World Series. The only way the Milwaukee Brewers can get by Philadelphia is if all the games could be played in Milwaukee.

While all this baseball stuff was going on, the Giants seemed to get better and the Jets got incredibly worse. Both turnarounds could be attributed to the respective offensive lines. The Jets OL was terrible. They made everybody else terrible and, if not for the Jets defense playing pretty well, there’s no telling what the score might have been.

Joe Namath says they picked all the wrong guys. He’s probably right. Oh, and he did mention Vern Gholston, the muscle-bound totally inept defensive lineman from yesteryear. I tend to agree. Rex Ryan even conceded the Super Bowl, saying they’re not even a playoff team. Mark Sanchez was shell-shocked. Any QB would have been. Can you say Vlad Ducasse five times fast?



I don’t think we’ll be seeing either local football team in the playoffs this year. It looks as if those Bills from Buffalo will take the Jets place while the Giants spot can be handled by the Detroit Lions. The entire NFC East is terrible though so I suppose it’s theoretically possible for the G-Men to win the division.

Whatever else happens in the NFC, the North looks like the strongest division to me. Green Bay, Detroit and even Chicago all seem pretty formidable compared to the low-lifes in the East and NFC West. The Packers look like a good bet to be the NFC rep in the Super Bowl once again, probably facing the Baltimore Ravens.

The real NFL excitement this year has been in Buffalo. What could be better than watching a perennial doormat win their first three games, one of which was their division nemesis New England? While the Bills obviously didn’t circle the wagons tightly enough to prevent their loss to Cincinnati last week, I think those Bengals will prove to be one of the better defenses in the league this year. Look for the Bills to get back on-track really soon.

But not just in Buffalo have there been success stories. I love that the 49ers seem to be making a comeback under new head coach Jim Harbaugh. The Titans and Mike Munchak are hitting like crazy and are 3-1. Oakland looks as if they could run the ball through a brick wall. And finally, Houston has a defense that can match their offensive capability.

Other teams have been fascinating for their failures. Philadelphia, Dallas, Atlanta, even New England to a degree have been colossally disappointing, much as have the Steelers.

Michael Vick has been far and away the biggest story on all the networks, especially ESPN and the NFL Network. I’d say his name is mentioned about once every ten minutes. Blah-blah-blah. The same can be said for Tony Romo. The NFL seems to have designated those two especially as NFL reality shows. And neither Michael nor Tony have done anything to step out of the spotlight.

Vick doesn’t want to get hit. He feels he doesn’t get the calls the other signal-callers get. Romo gives a game away by fumbling on the one, then snatches victory the very next week, then remarkably jumps right back into a deep hole by feeding the hungry Lions two INT’s for touchdowns.

It all seems kind of predictable, doesn’t it? Yeah, you’d think so.

But it’s not.

On Sports and Luck

Yes,the Giants victory over the Eagles was fun and unexpected, especially the performance of a Jersey boy named Victor Cruz, and the Jets loss was eye-opening, even if the handwriting should have been on the wall, but the nicest surprise for me occurred on Monday night when another Ryan brother coached the defense that shut down Santana Moss and the Redskins.

My fantasy opponent needed just 10 points from the Redskins Moss in order to send my team down to defeat. Moss is no stranger to the Boyz, of course, and, over the course of many years battling each other, Moss almost always had the upper hand, averaging about 15 fantasy points per contest. As the rest of my team had fared very well in Week 3, I looked with trepidation on my prospects for holding the pesky Skins wideout to zero touchdowns and less than 100 yards gained.

But Rob Ryan’s defense would concentrate on Moss that night. He would take away Moss for most of the game and, even when game conditions dictated that Shanahan’s Skins should concentrate on getting the ball downfield, they managed to do so only once or twice.

There’s no feeling better than winning the game you fully expect to lose. I had determined relatively early that my only chance in the contest relied on my opponent’s quarterback Aaron Rodgers either having a terrible day, which he never does, or throwing all his TD passes to my fantasy tight end, Jermichael Finley. As luck would have it, Rodgers threw all his 3 touchdowns to Finley. Go figure.

It didn’t hurt either that Buffalo had the day it had against the feared Patriots. My running back Fred Jackson continued his hard-pounding and elusive running while David Nelson, one of the Bills’ relatively unknown wide receivers, would gain 89 yards through the air. And Matt Ryan (you won’t see me calling him Matty Ice anytime soon) finally threw some passes to Julio Jones.

Drew Brees, my fantasy QB, ignored the fact that he was missing Marques Colston or that he was facing a newly rugged Texans defense. Mr. Brees just kept on keepin’ on. At any rate, big outputs from 3 or 4 players offset the total failure of my running back #2, one Javon Ringer from Tennesee and the paltry stats racked up by Hakeem Nicks, the Giants wunderkind whom the Eagles shut down only to watch Victor Cruz beat them.

Life is good sometimes. Just ask the Bills or Cowboys or, switching sports, ask the Tampa Bay Rays or St. Louis Cards. The unexpected can happen once in a while. The Bills came back from three TD’s down to Tom Brady’s Pats, picking him off four times in the process. The Cowboys and Tony Romo held steady against the rugged Skins and blitzed Rex Grossman into the big mistake of the game.

In baseball, Tampa Bay finally caught the Red Sox, the dream team of baseball going into the season, whose pitching went almost totally into the tank the entire month of September. The Cards still have a shot at what had been a sure wildcard for the Braves going into September.

The San Francisco Giants added Carlos Beltran but would have needed at least two more of him to prevent their unhappy demise. The Angels had a shot too for a while and still aren’t mathematically eliminated. So major league baseball is right at the forefront of sports fans’ imaginations going right into October. So much for changing the wildcard rules.

This just in. The judge trying the Mets bankruptcy case just ruled that that Pirate Picard, the snake lawyer representing the Madoff downtrodden, has to prove that Wilpon and Katz knew there was a fraud being perpetrated. That’s a huge win for the Wilpons.

I’m listening now to Mets fans calling Mike Francesa to complain that the Mets would be better off if the Wilpons were forced to sell, that it’s a setback for Mets fans that the Wilpons will prevail in this gigantic legal fight. It makes me sick. The Wilpons have been pretty good owners. They just haven’t been the brightest lights in the sky…..or the luckiest.

Think about the Mets collapses, the failures down the stretch of Glavine and Pedro Martinez, that brutal curve ball for a called strike 3 on Carlos Beltran. Omar Minaya could have been more prudent to be sure in his day but the Mets owners’ decision to hire him wasn’t that bad.

But Minaya had always worked for organizations with almost no money to spend. Minaya was like a kid in the candy store. Glavine and Pedro were too old. Beltran was just paralyzed. He should have been way more attentive.

Their latest decision on a GM was a great one. Sandy Alderson is like the anti-Minaya. He doesn’t act without careful study. He’s surrounded himself with good people, not drones. He understands that Reyes is a Mets frontispiece. He brought in Collins. Together, Alderson and Collins have brought in young talent, have shuffled the right pieces and have positioned this Mets team for the future.

What a way to end the baseball season. Not only are we provided with wildcard races down to the wire but now Mets fans can visualize their appearance in a playoff series somewhere along the road. They can also think about shorter fences and lower walls. The “half-full” crowd can even dream about a successful return of Johan Santana.

The sky’s the limit for the Mets (but that sky has been defined as from 100 to 120 million dollars). Still….

This fellow will never minimize the significance of luck. Luck shot down the baseball Giants, luck shut down Santana Moss for me, luck crippled the Red Sox and Braves in September; luck may have just saved the Wilpons in bankruptcy court even as it had abandoned them for much of the 21st Century.

They say people make their own luck. “They” can sell that bit of nonsense elsewhere.

Fantastic Reflections and EARTHQUAKE!

A beautiful day is this Tuesday August 23rd, a great day for running in the park or getting some outside chores done. But while I should be getting my butt moving on to other things right now, I just can’t. My mind is chock full right now of reflections, on the baseball season just past for sure but also on the upcoming NFL season.

But I haven’t been thinking at all about the actual seasons. After all, the Mets have been decimated once again and the playoff teams are virtually set in stone with one or two exceptions. The only questions left are whether the Yanks or Red Sox will get past the Rangers and, if they do, will either of them get past the Phillies in the World Series?

Looking ahead to the NFL actual seasons, it’ll be business as usual, it seems, as the Pats and Jets and Colts and Packers and Steelers, you know, the usual suspects, look to be the strongest teams for 2011-2012. I’ve not included the Giants as they seem to have too many weaknesses right now, not the least of which may be the two yahoos running things. (yeah, I know, they won the big one 3 or 4 years ago but you’ll notice that some of their key clutch players from that almost magical season are gone now).

So, if not the actual seasons, what can I be reflecting upon? Why, the fantasy seasons of course!

In fantasy baseball, my Crabs contingent is sumthin’ like 16½ games ahead of its closest competition with just two week left to the regular fantasy season. And, while it’s possible I could really get blown out in these last two weeks, it’s highly unlikely. Even with losing Brian Wilson and Jimmy Rollins to the DL in this last week, I’m thinking their replacements will still get me to the finish line in fair shape.

I like to think my brilliant baseball draft strategy back in late March is the reason I’m so far ahead but, more realistically, my success can be attributed to just two guys, they being Robinson Cano, my number 1 draft choice, but most especially Curtis Granderson. my number 13 choice. As David Wright was my number two choice and is having by far his worst season ever, I must eat humble pie on my draft strategy and admit I’ve been lucky.

But I’m left to reflect upon the true greatness of this Granderson fellow. This guy just hasn’t quit being humility personified this entire season. Despite his prodigious numbers, currently at 114 runs scored and 98 ribbies, Curtis, when asked, will focus on his measly .281 batting average and his 131 strikeouts.

Curtis won’t mention that he has stolen 24 bases. He won’t dwell on the fact that he plays a stellar centerfield. He attributes his huge lead in the runs scored department to Cano and Teixeira, who drove him in more often than not. But to me, his most endearing attribute is his unfailing propensity for picking up foul balls around the plate and handing the ball to the catcher!

I mean, who does that? Only one guy. Curtis Granderson.

And only one guy gets an inside the park home run on his drive to the top of the right-center field fence the other day. Only one guy runs full-speed out of the box until he sees it go over the fence, only one guy turns it up a notch when he sees the coach’s go sign, and only one guy makes a beautiful slide into the plate, fatigue be damned. His name is Curtis Granderson.

I know Jose Bautista’s been great and Adrian Gonzalez too, but they haven’t been, and can’t be, Curtis Granderson. Curtis Granderson is, as Nick Swisher said the other day, blowing the doors off. I’m rooting like crazy for him to somehow, some way, keep up his almost feverish intensity throughout the rest of the season. There are 39 games left. I don’t want to jinx him…..but whoa!!

Meanwhile, Cano has been, well, Cano. After a pretty ho-hum start for him, he seems to have turned it up after the break. His August numbers have been unbelievable, to date standing at a cool .351 BA and he’s driven in 19 in as many games. He’s slugging .649 for a ridiculous August OPS of 1.035.

I’ve been a real Yankee-hater but it’d be impossible to hate these guys, not just Granderson and Cano but also Teixeira and Jeter and you can throw Swisher in there too. I’m hoping Arod’s return won’t screw things up, but Grandy’s batted second, third, fourth, eighth….and it hasn’t affected him one bit. Lefty on the mound? No problem…..unaffected, that’s the essence of Granderson.

Speaking of “unaffected”, I was anything but unaffected by a friggin’ EARTHQUAKE that just shook my entire house. I thought my body was spasming at first, then started walking to the door and thought I was having some kind of heart attack as I felt dizzy and shaky. Holy crap!!

Back on point though, I’ve already been worrying about my number 4 position in my fantasy football draft coming up this Saturday. What I’m expecting is that Arian Foster and Adrian Peterson will be gone, as will QB Aaron Rodgers, based on my previous experience with the same group. That would leave me only Chris Johnson and Ray Rice of the “elite” backs and I just can’t get excited over either of them.

Of course, there will be elite QB’s still on the board, all but Rodgers in fact. But Peyton Manning is hurt, Tom Brady winds up almost every year taking a seat during the fantasy playoffs and Michael friggin’ Vick is the closest human thing to a target for every fast huge hard-hitting defenseman looking to make a name for himself.

That would leave me Drew Brees, a guy who helped me to a 2nd place finish last year. I guess I can live with that.

A Half Empty Outlook

Wow, it’s August 18th already and the baseball season is winding down. Professional football action is right on the horizon. And professional basketball will never again be played in our lifetimes. The U.S. Open for pro tennis is one of my personal favorites (not that I’m a tennis player but I like to play) and do I really have soccer in my sights? Well, no.

Yeah, yeah, I know, I forgot hockey again. Oh yeah, and there’s the Triathlon swimming controversy and drugs in biking and a whole bunch of other stuff but really, how many things can you concentrate on at once?

Anyway, I don’t really have a point but if I did want to make one, it’d be along the lines of what the hell are you doing swimming the friggin’ Hudson River if you’re concerned about injuries? There’s all sorts of stuff floating around in the water. That just two died of heart attacks is pretty good, I’d say, under the circumstances.

What other points need to be made? Let’s see, the friggin’ Port Authority is right up there on my list. Let’s make it impossible to travel. Let’s charge people road licenses, after all, the NFL manages to charge for seat licenses. Let’s build more tunnels and make bridges higher so we can get humongous ships into Port Newark.

Oh yeah, and another concern of mine, still waaay before pro sports of any kind, is that friggin’Christie is a hair from the Republican presidential nomination. I mean, he’d get things done but would they be the right things? Would he have thought things through? I don’t know.

And Obama is stinkin’ out the joint.

Okay, okay, I know I should be worrying about more socially irrelevant things like the friggin’ Mets, for one good example. Yesterday, they torched the San Diego Padres in San Diego for a really impressive win in a hostile environment (yeah, I know, it was only Kansas City), and how nice was It to see David Wright finally play like a superstar?

David’s 3-run homer was impressive enough against a tough Matt Latos but then his fielding gem was even better. I mean, he was in the moment, recognizing that he’d never make the play at first while watching Cameron hustling around third base, that his best choice and doable too was to step up and nail Cameron before he could get back to the bag.

Angel Pagan is doing everything after months of doing not so much. There’s the big kid Duda too and Justin Turner and hard-workin’ Thole and Pridie and those young pitchers….and the continuing saga of Jason Bay. I guess I’ve already given up on Jose, either coming back immediately or long-term too. The bankruptcy proceedings overhang everything….

Meanwhile, the Yankees took back first place from the fear-ed Red Sox. Y’know, it’s easy for even me to root for them this year, as an underdog, not just to the Red Sox, but to the Phillies also, if the Bombers should be fortunate enough to ever get past the Red Sox in the ALDS and ALCS. And a lot of these Yankees are damned good baseball players.

Take a look around the diamond. Start at first base….watch Teixeira play the position…..holy shit!! On to second base, there’s Robinson Cano who sometimes seems to have a magic wand over there in the hole. Shortstop? Derek Jeter is playing like a young guy. Uh-oh, third base is a little shaky right now, I suppose, but a guy named Arod can at least still swing the bat.

Outfielders? There’s Curtis Granderson contending for MVP honors and that smilin’ plugger Swisher and the crazed left fielder with the blazing speed and pesky at-bats. Yeah, and Posada can still play in spots. Will he make the playoff roster?

And the crazy pitching staff is kinda’ interesting too, right now a struggling CC and a bunch of question marks in Burnett, Colon, Garcia, Hughes et al. Of course, sometimes those guys will come through, and if they do, the relief corps is dynamite…..not just Rivera, who can be forgiven his recent lapse, but Robertson too, and now the long-awaited Soriano. ( Does anybody else wonder that they’d sign another Soriano after the first one)?

So I’m obviously rooting for both New York teams, solid underdogs both, for the Yanks because of the pitching questions and for the Mets because they have this friggin’ cloud hangin’ over their head. Tomorrow there will be another ruling that will be appealed either way. Oh yeah, and then there’s the friggin’ mediation still plodding along…..

All this baseball drama is perfectly complemented by the anxiety about the football season, the Giants seemingly having done nothing while the Jets and especially the Eagles dominate the headlines with signing after signing, and what about the friggin’ Patriots?

Balanced against all these willy-nilly signings is the stability of the Giants organization, and their almost Steeler-like affinity for Football 101, running the football and playing solid defense and a guy who can throw too, with protection (and hopefully those line-changes will work).

Listening to GM Gerry Reese, he’s not worried. Yeah, they have no proven slot receiver and no tight end that you could really call a complete tight end, and oh yeah, the #1 draft choice got hurt on the first day of camp, but still, there’s that pass rush and Jason Pierre-Paul and a Tuck and a Umenyiora, who’d play hard if we give him more money.

I don’t know. I’m a half-empty kind of guy, I guess. But that 2007 team that won the whole shebang wasn’t expected to do great things. And the guys that helped a lot that year were brought in by Gerry Reese. But geez, their defense really did stink last year.

And I’m happy for Plaxico. I think it’s great that he’ll be a Jet and already I’ve heard one of those SNY crazy people predict 55 catches for him this year.

We shall see.

I'd Dump Them Both........except...

The feelings around town are definitely mixed. Fire Coughlin or not, get rid of Eli or not, dump Ryan, bench Sanchez. The only things to which all agree is that the Giants and Jets may not stink, but they are surely not smelling that sweet these days either.

I’ll buy that last sentiment for sure. But guess what? It’s the players. Even though I do pin the Eagles loss squarely on Coughlin, for the most part it’s the players who are to blame for the losses. Not all the players, of course, but for the Giants it’s the linebackers and corners and for the Jets, it’s the defensive line.

Even though the Jets already clinched a playoff spot, it’s not as if they’re likely to get out of the first round, not with that defense. The Giants threw away their playoff spot in that horrible meltdown against the Eagles but, even if that hadn’t happened, the same goes for them. They’re just not that good. They would have folded in the wildcard round.

But just because neither coach is the worst in the league, that doesn’t mean they should be retained.

Ryan has become a clown and an embarrassment. How can he hold the respect of his team after committing dumb thing after dumb thing? Coughlin should be held accountable for throwing away that Eagles game. Never has a defense played so recklessly, never has a return team been so oblivious and never has a punter been so scared.

Imagine waking up some Monday morning to read that Coughlin is retiring! Oh baby! What a breath of fresh air! No canned responses at press conferences, no confused countenance on the sideline, no listening to him blame every other thing, usually turnovers, for losses rather than just actually admitting to anything.

His public chastising of that rookie punter, Matt Dodge, after the Eagles game was pure Coughlin. His only object was to make it clear to the television audience that he instructed that punter correctly. With Coughlin it’s never his fault (although he does his false humility thing taking responsibility for every damned thing under the sun when things aren’t his fault). In short, Coughlin is the biggest phony in the New York area, which is saying a lot.

As for Ryan, reading of his ousting would be a sad thing. He’s a terrific personality and great with the defensive x’s and o’s but how many times can you have your lead guy embarrass the entire organization? How can the players respect that?

I’d say dump them both…..except….

The only sobering aspect of firing each coach is that the replacement could definitely be worse. These are both “football guys”. Although it’s very unlikely that anyone could be more embarrassing than Ryan, or that anybody could be more annoying than Coughlin, it’s hard to imagine anyone being more qualified than either as a head football coach.

Of course, I’d rather have Gruden, I’d rather have Cowher, I’d rather see Tomlin jump over here from Pittsburgh, and I wouldn’t mind having Spagnola back at all. Other than that select group though, there really isn’t anyone to get excited about. (Don’t even try talking me into Billick).

So any coaching move would be fraught with peril. A lot of guys could be worse. Maybe we should forgive Coughlin for the Eagles debacle, for the boring press conferences, for the Mom and apple pie feeling he gives to everything. And maybe we could give Ryan a little time to straighten out his act and his life too.

As for the quarterbacks, all we hear about are Eli’s turnovers, never mind that half of them have bounced off some receiver’s hands or head or shoulder pads. Never mind that he almost never has any time in the pocket, he does have some great receivers, right? Oh, and never mind that he seems to have everyone’s respect in the locker room.

Is Eli fast? Well, no. Is he elusive? Um, that would be a big no too (except for one notable Super Bowl exception). Is he really accurate? Well, he’s getting better. But Unitas wasn’t any of those things (except for accurate), Starr wasn’t either (except for accurate), or Jurgensen or a lot of other signal-callers of great renown(except for accurate).

I’d hang on to Eli. I’d concentrate on getting him some time in the pocket though, on the order of the time his brother seems to get in Indianapolis.

As for Sanchez, he surely looks like a keeper to me. His football instincts aren’t always in evidence but that could be a disconnect between that wacky offensive coordinator and himself. He just needs a little more experience, not to mention some receivers who catch the ball each and every game, not only when they really try to focus.

Yeah, I’d hang on to Sanchez. I might look into getting him a new offensive coordinator though.

So I hope cooler heads prevail in both cases. The lion’s share of the problems for either team have nothing to do with coaching, at least not at the head, except for one notable game, or two if you count the Jets total meltdown in Foxboro.

Get a couple of corners for the G-Men and maybe some help for that offensive line that only got worse when O’Hara returned. Get a couple of defensive linemen for the boys in green. Get rid of some of that high-priced help that in many cases hasn’t delivered.

Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to mimic the Belichick drafting strategy a bit, successively trading down for more lower picks, pretty much guaranteeing a whole lot of talent on the field at all times, if a little more distributed.

And, for both teams, try to decide what your team does best and then go out and do that. It seems the Ground and Pound isn’t working. And it’s hard to tell sometimes just what the Giants are trying to do.

Maybe both teams could acquire a resident shrink.

Getting What You Deserve

How often have you said to yourself, “he (or she) needs to have his ass kicked” when confronted with an arrogant, stupid person on the street, or in a car, or just about anywhere. You know, one of those unruly pampered brats who says and does whatever he wants with no thought given to how it might affect somebody else, good or bad but especially bad.

That’s pretty much the way I felt about the Jets drubbing by the Pats Monday night. They’re a hard bunch to feel sorry for. No team in any sport I can think of has ever deserved a sorry beating more than these 2010-2011 Jets.

So they got what they deserved. And Tom Brady seemed to think so too. In fact, that whole Boston team seemed to buy in. Whether it was their offensive line, or their little Jets-rejected running back, Danny Woodhead, either of their two tight ends, the fast one and the really fast one, or heck, just about everybody on that team.

They turned the tables on the Jets. They did what they wanted whenever they wanted. They kicked the Jets ass….in every way you could ever think of.

It was totally predictable too. Even though the Pats were only 3 ½ point favorites going into the game, any informed observer would or should have taken note of the fact that the Jets had just lost their defensive captain and leader, safety Jim Leonhard, and remember what happened to our Giants when Antonio Pierce went down?

Sometimes, it’s always the least likely guys who really make all the difference. Only a couple of analysts even took note of Leonhard’s absence. After all, he’s not that talented, right?

The Jets were flustered clearly, starting with QB Mark Sanchez. On at least one pass, he didn’t even bother to check the coverage. Braylon Edwards dropped his first two passes, not that he needs to be flustered to do that. Then it just seemed that all the guys in the red and blue had super powers.

Brady, Welker, Woodhead, Aaron Hernandez, Gronkowski, oh hell, just everybody from Boston was kickin’ Jet butt. It must’ve been so much fun.

It’s just one game though, no matter how bad the Jets stunk it up. It’s an emotional game and the Jets were beaten soundly last night even before the opening coin flip.

How many teams from week to week have been proclaimed the best team in the NFL? I know the Giants were. So were the Jets. But that also goes for Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, New Orleans, Baltimore and…well, you get the idea. The Chargers looked great there for a while too before absolutely smelling up the airwaves versus the Raiders.

So the Jets will live to see another day. But their defense especially must improve. They need desperately to figure out their coverage, without Jim Leonhard being on the field. Sanchez needs to settle down and his receivers need to catch the ball. Their kicking game needs to improve dramatically. And they must run the ball.

If they can’t recover immediately against Miami, their wildcard spot will be in jeopardy as, after the Fish, it’ll be Pittsburgh at their place and the Bears in Chicago. If their record is only 9-6 going into Buffalo for the final regular-season game, it could be all over but the shouting. They need to finish 10-6 to my mind to secure the final wildcard. Either Pittsburgh or Baltimore, Jacksonville or Indianapolis will be right up there with them at 10-6.

A 180 degree different team than the brash Jets are the Giants. They have exceeded my expectations in the last couple of weeks particularly, defeating Jacksonville and then Washington handily, despite the loss of their top two receivers and all kinds of people on the offensive line. They too have gotten what they deserved but in a totally different way than the Jets.

And they absolutely needed those victories too. The Giants must face the Vikings, the Eagles and the Packers before once again facing Washington in the final game. Any of those first three teams is capable of beating the Giants, especially the Eagles and Vick and Green Bay and Aaron Rodgers.

There are at least eight teams vying for the 6-team playoff spots in the NFC and all of them might in truth be better than the Giants, especially in their injury-riddled configuration. For now, this tight-end and running back oriented offense seems to be working, especially since their defense has dominated when it has had to.

But all you can ask as a sports fan is that your team will be competitive deep into the season. Both our local football teams have certainly been that, and, barring a total collapse, an unlikely event even for the Jets coming off the worst beating of their lives, they should keep us interested until well into the New Year.

For Mets fans, who have had their post-season hopes dashed right around the middle of July the last few years, the “hot stove” portion of our baseball year has been a vacuum, which is almost a blessing for fans who have been mostly disappointed by the free-agent acquisitions of our past.

Sometimes doing nothing looks pretty good, although I wouldn’t at all mind trading some high-end butts right outta here, beginning with Jason Bay and Carlos Beltran. But if the 2011 season started with the same butts in the dugout as in 2010, it wouldn’t be too terrible. An outfield of Bay, a healthy Beltran and Pagan, and an infield of Wright, Reyes, and the two rookies on the right hand side could be very interesting.

Of course the Yankees are a different story. Their fans’ expectations never end. The Yanks relative inactivity thus far, except for the re-signings of Jeter and Mariano, has got to be disappointing. Cliff Lee is the foremost target and the Yanks are just biding their time, awaiting Lee’s other offers to come in before putting their money on the table, a really clever thing, although I hate to give them the credit.

For the most part, all these sports teams get what they deserve in the end, except in cases of a ridiculous number of injuries, something the Giants seem to have overcome for now.

Let’s hope the Jets can learn to deserve something other than an ass-kicking.

And rest in peace, Dandy Don........

Tuesday in New York

It’s another Tuesday, it’s raining, there’s nothing particularly that needs doing so I’ll just vedge(sp) and take the hour or so it will take me to whine.

First of all, the Monday Night Football game was horrid…totally unwatchable. Why can’t anybody figure out in advance that Arizona is just barely a professional team at all? To match them up with any team is risky. What team wouldn’t have beaten the Cardinals last night? Detroit plays harder. Buffalo definitely plays harder, and smarter too. The Rams, now that they have a real live quarterback, would dance rings around that sorry bunch from Arizona.

Of course, the Giants won. That makes me happy since I thought it would take their best effort to knock off even the likes of Jacksonville. It’s really a tribute to them from the coaches to all the remaining healthy players that they were able to come from behind to take the lead and then hold it against a Jaguar team that was still trying to show some fight. The Jets won too on Thanksgiving but they were once again nothing to write home about.

The Knicks have been doing better than expected and the Nets started really slow but are showing signs of life. All of the above is promising better times for New York fans this winter, and maybe even into the March Madness of college basketball. And by that time, spring training will have started. Life is good if you’re into sports and not so much into shopping and Cyber Monday crapola, the teetering economy or global warming.

Another melodrama that will keep the NY area humming until the wee hours of February is the Derek Jeter negotiation. I’m enjoying it immensely so far. The one question, it seems to me, that no one is asking is how the Players Union and the MLB Commissioner’s office feel about rewarding a player for his marketing value. There is the power of precedent to be considered. Why shouldn’t every player want to add value to their contracts? Wouldn’t the Commissioner want the Yanks to take a hard line on this icon talk?

All this is great stuff for a Mets fan. There couldn’t be a wider division between the parties. And, while it’s hard to envision Jeter playing for any other team, the Yankees have essentially told Jeter to get other offers. But other teams will be skittish about being a pawn in that game. So any offers will come late, only after they are convinced Jeter may really consider a uniform without stripes. How great would it be for some team that would be willing to pay Jeter a premium for his market value? A Detroit or a Boston (just to drive the Yanks crazy) might enjoy getting some attention and more fannies in their seats for just a few million dollars premium per year. Then the question will really be how much the Yankees want Jeter and how much Jeter wants the Yankees.

The team is clearly in the driver’s seat. The Yankees can function quite nicely without Jeter. While they’d take a lot of heat in the first Jeter-less year, especially when he’d get his 3000th hit for say, Kansas City. Heh-heh,. They’d look better and better as Jeter would get older and older. It’d be virtually impossible for Jeter to score his hundred runs per year for any other team but the Yankees, who have continually surrounded him with hitters in their own right.

Juan Uribe, about five years younger than Jeter and the San Francisco Giants postseason wunderkind, just signed a 3-year contract with the Dodgers for 21 million. Based on that figure, I’d say Jeter’s worth about 10 to 11 million per year. The Yankees offered him 15 mill for 3 years, a figure already that included market value. I’d understand totally if the Yankees felt that Jeter was holding them up. They would be entitled to be thinking Jeter should accept a pay cut from his last contract, his 10-year 189 million deal. The Yankees should stick to their guns, and if they do, things should get really interesting. And what if they withdraw their 15 million offer? Then what?

Meanwhile, the Mets have done almost nothing. Today I heard that their pretty fine left-handed specialist in the bullpen, Pedro Feliciano, turned down arbitration, which would seem to indicate that the market is good. It would also seem the Mets want to keep their better players, definitely a good sign for us Mets fans. The Mets need pitching though and I’m not crazy about the free agent starters. I wouldn’t mind seeing them shop Jason Bay and/or Carlos Beltran for a couple of pitchers. And I’d rather see them get young guns with limitless potential than see them go for broke with a veteran commanding a high salary.

A second baseman wouldn’t hurt either. But there are plenty of second basemen. It’s just not that critical a position. I was happy to see Florida’s slugging Dan Uggla go elsewhere. His fielding has always been atrocious and the Mets fans wouldn’t be tolerant of that. Uggla will be fine in Atlanta though, and Atlanta may be ready next year to challenge the Phillies seriously for the Division Championship. Whatever the Mets do next year, it’s difficult to think they’ll overtake either of the top two contenders.

The Knicks play the Nets tonight and it should be a barn-burner. Although the Knicks are the better team, they’ll be without their starting center Ronnie Turiaf, a factor that should hurt them a lot being that the Nets Lopez will be firing from all directions. But the Knicks have found an unlikely answer to their 2 guard spot in Landry Fields, who doesn’t really score so often as he does all the other things. He shoots well though when he does shoot, he rebounds and assists, goes for loose balls and, well, you get the idea.

The Nets need two more players to compete. Newark anyone?

Magic Will Decide the Series

On the eve of the greatest World Series since 1986, when the Mets prevailed over the Red Sox in seven games, with heroes named Keith Hernandez and Gary Carter, Bobby Ojeda and Ray Knight, Sid Hernandez and Mookie Wilson, Lenny Dykstra and Darryl Strawberry, I gleefully look forward to witnessing another Series for the Ages, one featuring great pitching, great hitting, great home parks and even better home crowds. And perhaps magic too.

This grand event comes on the tail-end of a week of Yankee whining, coming off a Series featuring failed Yanks pitching and even more dismal Yankee hitting. You couldn’t write home about Yankee fielding either as Arod and Jeter played deep and then couldn’t make the throws. A Yankee-hater loves hearing Yanks fans whine.

But, even better than that, the Yankee future looks ridiculous. While other serious teams (like Boston) seek to shed their older players while they still have value and well before their inevitable decline, the Yanks will pursue the long and painful path. Keeping all these old guys while limiting their playing time and plugging in utility players, mixing and matching with lesser players to ensure a decade or so of future futility. Oh baby! Bring on the Don Mattingly years.

They’ll re-sign Derek Jeter, of course, justifying it with nothing but non-baseball reasons, i.e. he’s a legacy player, he’s the captain, he’s the franchise, yada yada. And Mariano Rivera, at 41 years of age and already showing signs of decline in 2010, will also be eagerly courted. Having already re-signed Arod and Posada, that pretty much ensures they’ll be an old tired club for not just next year but well beyond.

So, at the same time as I can look forward to this Series, and be happily oblivious to the outcome, as both teams were my favorites in their respective leagues, I get the security of knowing the Yanks will be worse, maybe much worse, and the Mets will get better. (As this is written, the Mets are pursuing at least two of the finest General Managers in the game today).

Why do I like the Rangers so much? How about Nolan Ryan making a mockery of the Yanks obsession with pitch counts? How about keeping their manager on board despite his problem with drugs? How about their working with Josh Hamilton, the MVP in the American League to everyone outside the New York area, to help him beat an even more pronounced drug problem?

How about the way they developed their youth, evidenced by the successes of Michael Young and Nelson Cruz, Ian Kinsler and Elvis Andrus? How about their mid-season moves, out-Yankee-ing the Yanks for Cliff Lee and acquiring one of the best post-season catchers ever in Bengie Molina?

Okay, that’s enough rhapsodizing on the Rangers for, in the Giants, they’ll be facing another team that will be the most dangerous team the Rangers have faced this post-season. In fact, it was the Giants that let Molina go, only to replace him with arguably the best rookie in the National League, a young fella named Buster Posey.

If any team has better pitching than the Rangers, it would have to be the Giants. Lincecum, Cain, Sanchez and young Bumgarner are, one thru four, arguably better than Lee, C.J. Wilson, Colby Lewis and Tommy Hunter. They have a great closer in Brian Wilson and a great setup guy in Javier Lopez. They match up well with the Rangers closer Neftali Feliz and Lopez beats anybody the Rangers throw out there, in either Oliver or O’Day, Holland or Ogando.

I have a feeling the Rangers will be missing that setup guy. If baseball champions are characterized by pitching alone, then the Giants have a distinct advantage. Even giving the Rangers the Cliff Lee starts, Games 1 and 5, they’ll be in trouble against Cain and Sanchez and possibly Bumgarner too.

For what it’s worth, I think Lee will win Game 1 in San Fran. Then the Giants will tie the Series in Game 2 behind Cain. Then the Giants will take the lead in Texas in Game 3 with Sanchez pitted against ALCS hero Colby Lewis. There will then be a furor over whether Cliff Lee can go in Game Four. He won’t. Bumgarner and Hunter will duel evenly in Game 4 but the Giants relief pitching will give them Game 4, making it 3-1 Giants and with the Series headed back to that city by the bay.

But Lee will pitch in Game 6, probably again matched against Lincecum. The Rangers, now with Lee and with their backs to the wall, will take Game 6, thus creating a Game 7 scenario of Matt Cain for the Giants going head-to-head with C.J. Wilson. This matchup will favor the Giants again and, I’d have to think, unless the Rangers can pull off some more playoff magic, he Giants could very well win this 2010 World series.

The magic could come from Hamilton or Cruz, Kinsler or Andrus. The Giants have their own list of potential heroes but do they really match up? Posey and Huff, Uribe and Torres? I don’t think so. It’ll be pitching that wins the Series for these Giants, and if not, they won’t win it at all.

It’ll be up to Matt Cain and Brian Wilson. If they can’t keep the Rangers under 3 runs in that deciding game, the Series will go to those magic Rangers. If Cain can hold those Rangers bats down for 7 more innings (he’ll have already won Game 2 to get to this point), he’ll wind up being the Series MVP. If not, then the MVP will go to one of those other guys in red, and my money would be on the wunderkind, Josh Hamilton.

I could live with either result, I’m sure, but all things considered, I’d have to side with the Rangers of Ryan and Hamilton, Michael Young and Ian Kinsler.

Besides, the Cowboys are dead. Texas needs a real America’s team…..

Looking Forward to Rangers-Giants

What could be better?

The Yanks are losing and should be losing even worse. The Phillies are in bad shape, in fact the same shape the Yankees were in about 24 hours ago, and that is down 3-1, and facing complete annihilation. Of course, if the Phillies can win tonight, and, like the Yankees win their Game 5, they’ll at least be headed home to that bandbox in Philadelphia.

The Yankees will be in Texas with a whole huge bunch or gaggle of wild-eyed Texans, facing a tough pitcher nobody outside of Texas has ever heard of, one Colby Lewis, who did pretty well in that Game 2 against them. On the mound for the Yanks is Phil Hughes, who is a pretty fair pitcher himself, but who got beat by these Rangers pretty easily.

But for the Yankees, they have one big thing going for them, the fear of elimination. The Texans should be playing a little looser, whether that works well for them or not. In the Yanks minds will be a healthy fear of losing.

The Rangers have nothing to really worry about as they’ll have Cliff Lee going in a final game if it’s needed. Every Yankee will feel that pressure of losing, thus finishing 2010. They will have been the wildcard in 2010, They’ll have been the winner of their ALDS with the Twins, 3-0. They will have been the ALCS losers in 6 games to the Texas Rangers. That will be their legacy.

The Rangers will be in this circus atmosphere, but could still feel the emptiness of year after year in Texas, all those years when they had hitting but no pitching, These are relatively young guys with a history together, guys like Michael Young and Josh Hamilton, Ian Kinsler and Nelson Cruz. It’s a tight bunch and they can all play ball. They like playing ball. They’re hungry for the World Series.

The Yankees just won the World Series. Would it be so bad to lose in Game 6 and avoid facing that horror of a pitcher, Cliff Lee, in Game 7? They’ll be missing their star slugger and fielder extraordinaire, Mark Teixeira. They’ll still have Robinson Cano, though, and between him and Arod and Granderson and Berkman, they have sluggers for sure. There’s almost nobody in that lineup that can’t inspire a little respect.

But these Yankees haven’t distinguished themselves in the field. Arod at third has been looking a little suspect to me, playing deep and not handling the soft grounders. Jeter could be quicker and, although Cano will still sparkle at second base, Berkman will have a hard time looking good at first with a bruised back that he got while falling backward and looking rather clumsy in the process. The catcher can’t throw people out. The right fielder plays hard but won’t get to some balls.

The Rangers have scary guys from 1 through 7 but tail off somewhat in 8 and 9 with our old friend, Frenchie Francoeur batting 8th and Bengie Molina batting ninth. But Molina killed the Yanks just the other night and Francoeur will be, you know, Francoeur, who, if I may say, has done quite all right with himself. Landing with a World Series team after spending a year or two with the Mets has got to feel good.

I like the Rangers Young, Andrus and Kinsler better than Arod, Jeter and Cano. When I think about it, it’s really Arod I have the problem with. But Jeter doesn’t inspire awe, especially when he makes that ridiculous jumping cross the body throw with nothing on it, or made only after a little stutter step while jumping?

The Rangers have a fast guy leading off in Andrus, a real veteran in Young to move him along, and in Josh Hamilton, the best hitter in the league batting 3rd. Hamilton only hurts you when his bat touches the ball, and he batted .359 on the season. Then you have this crazy old slugger batting cleanup, Vlad Guerrero, who’ll swing at anything and come up smelling like roses. Then Nelson Cruz, who just hits homers and doubles with alarming regularity. Ian Kinsler can yank them out of the park too. It’s a real killer 1 thru 6 lineup for sure, an All-Star lineup.

The Yanks are lack-luster at the top of the lineup. They have no speed game. They score big when their heavy hitters connect. That’s all. They have no other game.
From a purely baseball perspective, the Rangers are the better team and should win this series if they play their game. Will they play their game? I like their chances.

But the Giants have been my team all year too in the National League. That is, when all my attention wasn’t focused on the Mets. I even got to attend a game out there in San Fran, and watched Matt Cain putting away the Oakland A’s. My fantasy guys, Pablo Sandoval (the Panda) and peppery Andres Torres were good that day as was that first baseman of theirs, Aubrey Huff.

But their pitching staff is awesome and has been pretty awesome for this entire post-season. Lincecum, Cain, Sanchez and Bumgarner are as good as it gets. And that closer of theirs is pretty lights-out.

The Phillies after Halladay and Hamels don’t really match up to my mind, Oswalt and Blanton are good but not great. Oswalt proved last night that he can be had, even if his appearance was in a relief role, a role he never should have assumed in the first place.

But the Giants have momentum now, even if they have to face Phillies ace Halladay in tonight’s Game 5. Young and old, in guys such as Buster Posey and Juan Uribe, making all the plays and getting all the big hits, the Giants are very dangerous. And they already debunked the magic of Halladay in Game 1.

Anyway, I’m ecstatic, looking forward to a Giants-Rangers World Series. Isn’t everybody?

Big Blue and Little D?

Reflecting on yesterday’s NFL games and results, trying to capsulize the entire Sunday, my first thought was that the now 1-4 Cowboys losing to the now 2-3 Minnesota Vikings was the highlight of a somewhat moribund schedule.

Although both the Giants and Jets played pretty close games with Detroit and Denver respectively, the outcomes seemed little in doubt and the final results weren’t that surprising. And it was probably just an anomaly that all those losing teams are from cities starting with the letter “D”. (Dallas, Denver, Detroit for the memory-challenged).

The Cowboys, Boyz, Big Dee, take your pick, were awful. And to me, the symbol (I’m big on symbols) of their loss and whole problem was the penalty called on Miles Austin for excessively celebrating after their first touchdown. When one of a team’s best players commits a very stupid penalty after a week spent apologizing for stupid penalties having been the main root of their losing ways, it is a sign (not even a sign, a big poster) that the players just aren’t getting the message, or, even worse, that the team is getting the message but isn’t afraid of the consequences of ignoring it.

Now, I like Miles Austin. He’s a Jersey guy from right down the road in good ol’ Garfield, NJ. He’s my number 1 receiver on my fantasy team. But what the hell was he thinking? If he was thinking at all, the thoughts were only of himself. In a way, he took himself out of the game with that blunder as he only had one catch on the day, and who could blame Tony Romo for ignoring him the rest of the day? The Dallas touchdowns went to other lesser receivers, Roy Williams and Dez Bryant, one refurb and one rookie.

That excessive celebration penalty wasn’t even sufficient to keep Austin from committing a second even more egregious penalty later on, when he obviously shoved the cover guy on his way to a nice long touchdown. Of course the play was called back, his second big hurt of the day.

Then, as if to make light of the entire situation, Austin made a big show of shaking hands with Bryant after his touchdown. That was the final straw for me. I’ll be looking to trade him from my team. I can’t stand stupid players and I absolutely despise “stupid” when combined with “arrogant”. Austin was both.

After the game, head coach Wade Phillips just said, “We need to celebrate after we win the game”. That seemed to leave Austin’s rectum still intact. Austin didn’t deserve the courtesy. Romo had two costly interceptions and the whole kickoff coverage team let Percy Harvin run back a touchdown on a kickoff, but the biggest mistakes were Austin’s and I’ll blame him for the loss. But he only shares the responsibility with namby-pamby Phillips.

That Bum Phillips, Wade’s Dad and one of my earlier football heroes, him and that incomparable Houston running back Earl Campbell, could produce a son so devoid of emotion is a kick in the pants to evolution. That Dallas team needs a kick in the ass. Phillips is incapable of doing it. He should be removed, and quickly, while there is still a chance for redemption, albeit a very small one now.

Dallas doesn’t need better players and it doesn’t need better game plans, both of which Wade and his staff are perfectly capable of doing. The players need to feel accountable. They need to fear pain, whether that means two-a-days or running laps or public excoriation, whatever this politically correct world and union-dominated NFL will allow.

It’s been alleged that the crazy owner Jerry Jones likes Wade Phillips, which is pretty hard to believe, even given the countless examples of complements making great partners. Phillips hasn’t lost control of his team. He never had it. He doesn’t have their attention. He never did. The best Cowboys team under Phillips was his first one, the one that won the NFC East and lost to the eventual Super Bowl winner Giants in the playoffs.

Phillips’s 2008 team collapsed spectacularly after starting the season 9-5, losing to Baltimore in the last game played in their old stadium and then getting killed by the Eagles 44-6 in a must-win game. Although his 2009 team did gain a playoff berth and even won a playoff game for the first time under Phillips, they eventually lost to the Vikings for the NFC crown.

There is a disturbing legacy of failure in Big D. It can’t be fixed by building a new stadium or hosting the Super Bowl or spending even more on players. The Cowboys need a head coach. And I don’t even like the Cowboys. How could anyone?

The Giants do have a tough coach. I don’t like him either. But Tom Coughlin did turn his team around after their miserable defensive performances in Weeks 2 and 3. It’s probably more accurate to say that defensive coordinator Fewell turned it around, but, after all, he does report to Coughlin.

Since that Week 3 game, the G-Men have reeled off 3 in a row against the Bears, Texans and Lions yesterday to share first place in the NFC East with a surprisingly tough Philadelphia Eagle team, both at 4 and 2.

But the worm can turn in a hurry in the NFL. From next week, October 25th, to November 14th, a space of 20 days, the G-Men will face the Cowboys twice, sandwiched around a trip to a very loud Seattle stadium that has given the Giants trouble before.

It’s not entirely inconceivable that the Giants could lose all three games before having to travel to Philadelphia. The Giants could be fighting for their playoff lives by then. Dallas could be right on their heels.

Let’s be real. Football is a game of emotion. The Boyz will be fired up without any coach’s help. We’ll find out how big is our Big Blue.

Disappointing...Exhilarating...Maddening

Disappointing, exhilarating, maddening……these are the first words that come to mind this beautiful Saturday morning as I contemplate the action thus far in these 2010 MLB playoffs.

There are at least three disappointments to me at this juncture, the failures of the Twins to take even one game from the Yanks , the fold perpetrated last night by the SF Giants against the Atlanta Braves and the very similar choking done by the Cincinnati Reds against the Phillies.

For sheer exhilaration, there was Tim Lincecum’s pitching gem of a complete game pulled off against the Braves in the first game of that Braves-Giants series. I also felt very much the same watching the Giants’ Matt Cain blank those same Braves over 7 innings or so. And then there’s Josh Hamilton of the Rangers who only does something great every single time. (Okay, he was the star of my fantasy team).

It was the umpires that were responsible for my maddening. But the umpires continue to blow calls, easy calls, game-altering calls, that your sister could have made correctly. (Okay, sisters, no mail please)..

Let’s take it from the top again. The single most disappointing team thus far has been the Minnesota Twins. What a sorry bunch. I’m sorry. When they see the Yankees on the field, they just go into choke mode. They had Sabathia on the ropes and they let him go. Then they did absolutely nothing against the old man with the mad stare, Andy Friggin’ Pettite.

Yeah, I know, the Reds did some fancy folding themselves. (The Rays were just outplayed totally, a result I was completely happy with). But I expected the Reds to fold. Didn’t everyone? There was real hope for the Twins, especially after their early good fortunes against the big guy Sabathia.

In the history of baseball, was there ever a worse location for a pitch? I’m referring to the ball left on a tee for Yanks first baseman Mark Teixeira late in that first game, the pitch that made it 6-4 after the Twins had been up 3-0. And did they have to pitch so boldly to Granderson or Berkman? And then there were the pitching decisions made overall by the Twinkies, who are doing everything possible to justify that name.

Francisco Liriano pitched valiantly for those Twins in that first game and was up 3-zip going into the 6th. The idiots in the dugout left him in way too long. They waited until it all unraveled, despite the Yanks killing him softly, with hit after hit after hit. When they finally brought in the relief in the person of Jose Mijares, they managed to snuff the rally but, by then, it was too late. The Yanks had taken the lead.

Then the Twins gave us Yankee-haters hope once again by staging a 2-out rally that featured another Cuddyer big bang enveloped by bases on balls, a strange way to score, I thought at the time, but the Twins would surely have better luck in their spanking new stadium than they ever had in that old dome.

But the Twins inserted still another pitcher into the mix, one Jesse Crain, who failed colossally. He managed to get Jeter out in the 7th on a hard line drive to center but he then gave up another hit to Swisher. His pitches had nothing. And the pitch that had the most “nothingness” was that ball up and in the middle of the plate for Teixeira.

The Twins had Yanks reliever Kerry Wood in a lot of trouble in the eighth inning, managing to get the tying and winning runs on 2nd and 3rd but then Girardi called in a guy named Mariano, you may have heard of him, last name of Rivera? He promptly ended things….again.

It seems as if it’s always the same guys, Posada and Pettite, Rivera and Jeter. The Twins see these guys and fold. Posada didn’t do too much in the victory yesterday but then he didn’t need to. In that first game he was pretty clutch. Pettite just scared the bejeezus out of them, possibly with that ridiculous stare. And of course Rivera just shuts them down. Jeter? Well, there’s still Game 3.

Okay, that’s enough about disappointing, I think. I have to focus on the finer things in life, such as, for example, Tim Lincecum. A little slip of a guy, that’s Lincecum. A bit of a flake, the Prince Valiant hair, the laid-back attitude, they all seem to contribute to the aura of the man, if that’s what you could call it.

The man just knows how to throw the baseball. Every ounce of his body gets behind every pitch to the plate. So he can overpower with his fastball when needed or he can just flick his wrist, take something off and watch the batter flail. Lincecum did it all in that first game and he did it for 9 innings.

How about some more on exhilaration? The Rangers have been awesome in all phases. For pitching, there were Cliff Lee and C.J. Wilson and Neftali Feliz For hitting, there were, well, just about everybody, Vladimir Guerrero and Michael Young, Ian Kinsler and Nelson Cruz and Bengie Molina. Hell, even Jeff Francoeur joined the festivities. Oh yeah, and there was Josh Hamilton.

Hamilton just does it all. Five tools? Is that all? It seems like more. He’s the best hitter in both leagues, both for average and for power. He’s a fast runner. He stole a base in Game 1 and made two great catches in Game 2, both to his left and right, and went sliding on his belly, broken ribs be damned.

Hamilton hasn’t shown off that throwing arm yet. And he hasn’t hit any tape measures yet. But there’s always Game 3 for that.