In My Mind I'm Goin' to Carolina

Was there ever anything so old as an old running back? As I watched the Panther running backs, DeAngelo Williams and Jonathan Stewart, run roughshod over the poor, defenseless Bucs last night, I was able to appreciate the difference between some of these older backs, the Jamal Lewises and Freddie Taylors of the world, and the new breed of lightning fast, turn-on-a-dime, fake you out of your jock variety of back.

They made Ronde Barber look like an old plodder, on both sides of the field, and, if the thought of retirement had never occurred to him before, I’m sure last night he may have had his first. Both these fine young Carolina running backs made cuts that shouldn’t even be possible at the speed they were going.

I never really like to get into stats, you can read that anywhere, but these two romped for an average of seven yards per carry. Both of them. Most of it was done on their own. But that, I think, may be the key to controlling them. Don’t let them be on their own. That they made it that far, one-on-one with only a scared cornerback between them and paydirt, was the big mistake.

Our Giants may have some trouble on their hands, even with a healthy Brandon Jacobs and a Plaxico look-alike who can actually catch the friggin’ football. Because, even if they take the measure of everyone else in the league, they’ll still probably find Carolina at the end of the line, that line that separates the also-ran from the Super Bowl.

But there is hope. The Giants front seven is tougher and faster than that of the Bucs. They should make it tougher to find a seam, or to get around the end. They have some pretty tough tacklers in the secondary too, but I wouldn’t want to see them put to the test.

The really scary thing about the Panthers is that they can pass the ball too. Even with a not totally healthy Jake Delhomme, that Delhomme to Steve Smith combination is tough, very tough, and they’ve connected way too many times for any team facing them to think that they could maybe put eight men in the box. Smith would certainly demand double coverage, practically all the time.

And, oh yeah, the Panthers play pretty good defense too. They have the freaky Julius Peppers to deal with on their defensive line, and the other guys are no picnic either. Their defense is kind of suspect, though, as a few teams have discovered this year, but only those teams with strong running games themselves, and teams that could stop the run.

I’m speaking of Minnesota, who held them to ten points in a 20-10 win, and Atlanta, when Michael Turner lit them up for four big touchdowns in a wild 45-28 win. Their other loss was to the same Tampa team they dismantled tonight. That game was in Tampa and they were held to three points. The Bucs held both Panther running backs to a little over two yards per carry in that one, and there just weren’t that many carries, as the Panthers fell behind and had to pass. Delhomme was intercepted three times in that endeavor.

So, the key to beating them would seem to be to take an early lead, pound the ball at their defense, and stop their running game early. The Giants should be capable of that, but only if Jacobs comes back healthy, and Hixon starts catching the ball. Aside from the “x” in both their names, there just doesn’t appear to be that much similarity in their games.

All of this, of course, is looking way ahead, even though there are only three games left. The G-Men have to face the surprisingly tough Cowboys this week, and the Boyz may find the G-Men a soft touch after having to face the Steelers in Pittsburgh. Romo was running for his life most of the time, and I just haven’t seen that kind of pressure exerted by the Giants this year.

As the Cowboys have to win out to make the playoffs at all, the G-Men will be facing a terribly dangerous team. The loss of Plaxico hurts almost every phase of their game. Their running game suffers as the defense can focus on it. Their special teams suffer because Hixon may not have the same explosiveness if he has to run patterns all game. Their defense even suffers as the Giants may not be able to sustain drives to keep them off the field.
Antonio Pierce too was victimized a few times in the Sunday contest against the Eagles. One wonders what kind of effect his legal troubles may be having. It can’t be good. As leader of the defense, he has to set an example for his defensive teammates, and that’s kind of difficult if he’s not making plays himself.

So the Giants don’t have the cakewalk they appeared to have just a couple of weeks ago. The Eagles exposed their vulnerabilities. Our G-Men looked all too beatable, almost as defeatable as those crazy Jets.

The Jets would appear to be a schizophrenic team, beating the Pats and Titans only to lose to the Broncos and Niners. A closer look, though, uncovers even more serious problems than that. They cannot stop the passing game of their opponents.

The Titans tried to stuff the ball down the Jets’ throats. Their running game was effectively bottled up, and they didn’t resort to passing until the game was out of hand. The Pats have been hurting all year, and, even with that, Matt Cassel rang them up for 400 yards passing, and the Jets escaped with a 34-31 win.

So both the local teams should have a very trying end of season. The G-Men may lose their home game throughout the playoffs. The Jets may not make them at all. If it comes down to coaching, you have to like the Giants’ chances.

Cuffed Hands, Hired Hands, All Hands on Deck!

If there’s anything I care less about than Rutgers football, it would have to be a Thursday night NFL matchup between the Oakland Raiders and anyone. If the powers that be were doing their best to try to turn football fans away, they couldn’t possibly pick worse games to televise.

I mean, gimme a break. Even before the season, somebody should have figured out that the Raiders couldn’t match up with any NFL team, never mind one that, by rights, should have been contending for the AFC Championship.

Oh well, at least it wasn’t an all-night discussion about Plaxico. Or who may have driven him home, or to the hospital, or concealed information from the police. At least I didn’t have to see any more of the biggest Fascist of them all, the too honorable Mayor Bloomberg, chip in with his two cents.

What’s scary to me is that incredibly rich and powerful people can say anything they want and get away with it. That the Mayor of New York can pretty much call the shots, and let any judge within the confines of his city know that the Mayor won’t settle for anything less than a conviction, that he won’t stand for anything less than the maximum sentence.

To me, that’s a much worse offense than shooting yourself in the leg accidentally. Plax’s offense is something that only happens to stupid people. It’s pretty much confined to those brazen enough, or insecure enough, to carry loaded guns around. What the mayor’s doing could be perpetrated on anyone.

He’s tried the case in his mind and he knows what the outcome had better be. He dictated the ending. Hell, not just the ending but pretty much the process too. I’m sure Plax’s life will be hell for a long, long, time and only the lawyers will be the happier for it.

At this point, I’d rather they throw the Mayor’s butt in jail. The charge could be obstruction of justice, or bribing an official of the city government. To me, New York deserves a classier mayor than this small-time Hitler. This is the same guy who had no problem with the sweet stadium deals both the Mets and Yankees perpetrated on the City.

Not that I care that much about Plaxico personally. He could have shot somebody, especially carrying heat in a crowded environment. But I don’t know the facts, really, nor does anyone, not really. That’s what trials are for.

Okay, enough about Benito Bloomberg. I’m glad I don’t live in his city. We have our own problems here in New Jersey, and not the least is Governor Corzine and his band of crooked legislators, corporate lenders, tax leviers and toll increasers.

I really did mean to write about sports today….. honest. I’ll be getting to it soon, I’m sure, but my little diatribe certainly has made me feel a little better, almost as good as that nice warm feeling I got from the news that O.J. Simpson would finally be spending some time in the slammer.

The Giants will be playing the Eagles again. It seems as if they play them every other week. With just 16 total games on the regular season schedule, it seems a little ridiculous to me that we have to play division opponents twice each. This division just isn’t that exciting…. the Redskins, the Eagles and, thank God, the Cowboys.

Even though it’s totally absurd that a Dallas team could finagle its way into the NFC East, and it’s a tribute to the corruption in the NFL, I thank my lucky stars that they’re a good team, and an interesting one too. The Eagles and Redskins just aren’t. Sure…they’ll win their share of games but it will be boring. Clinton Portis and a cloud of dust for the Skins; for the Eagles, Number 5 and DeSean Jackson and…..well, really nobody else.

At any rate, I expect the Giants will rise above all the stupidity this week and put a beating on the Eagles. If they’re still able to get their practices in, they should win the game. These are high-character guys, guys who bring their game each week, or try anyway.

The same, alas, cannot be said for the Jets. The Jets hired hands travel to San Francisco to play the suddenly Singletary-enlivened 49ers. The Jets don’t travel well, at least not to the West Coast. They managed to lose to the same team, Oakland, that got pummeled by the Chargers last night.

The hired hands have agreed, it seems, to play hard this time out, after their pitiful performance against the Broncos last week. Kris Jenkins, at least, has acknowledged maybe a lack of intensity in that loss that probably contributed a great deal to their failure to stop the Broncos running game.

Favre seemed to acknowledge the same thing, albeit in many more words. Hopefully, he’ll save some of those words for the Jets huddle this week. The 49ers are certainly beatable. But the Jets will have to stop the run, something they’re pretty good at doing ordinarily. They’re not so good against the pass, but the Niners don’t bring that much to that phase of their game.

My attention will be focused on the Cowboys-Steelers game. That one should be a real struggle, not really a Dallas “must” win, but close enough, given the rest of their schedule. It’ll be the tough Cowboys offensive line against the relentless Steelers defense, and conversely, a more determined Cowboys defense against a Steelers offense that hasn’t really knocked anyone’s socks off all year, discounting their man-handling of the Pats last week in New England.

The Steelers have lost three times, and once each to the NFC East G-Men and the Eagles. It’d be nice to make it an NFC East clean sweep. Whatever happens in this one, it’ll be a war. Demarcus Ware and Marion Barber are hurt, but it’ll be all hands on deck!

NY Super Bowl My Butt

Thank God the Jets lost to the lowly Broncos yesterday. I was getting a little tired of the all-New York Super Bowl hype I’d been hearing all week ad nauseum. The Jets don’t have the character of a true Super Bowl team as they proved yesterday.

Think of the last few Super Bowl teams. New England, Indianapolis, and our own Giants. QB’s…Brady, Peyton, Eli…..Coaches….Belichick, Dungy, Coughlin. I could go on, traversing every position on the field but the Jets just don’t measure up to those Super Bowl teams.

Not to be unkind but the Jets succumbed to the theories of their own greatness. After beating the Pats and then the Titans, they really thought they were hot. It didn’t occur to them, maybe, that the Broncos were a totally different team, a team with a real live passing game.

It didn’t occur to them that there may have been a big difference from Titans QB Kerry Collins to Broncos QB Jay Cutler. All the way down their respective rosters, the Broncos are superior to the Titans. The Titans are just a running team. Stop the run and you stop the Titans.

The Jets weren’t prepared for any adversity on Sunday. You could tell that from the opening kickoff to the final gun. It was cold and rainy too, and Favre just really wasn’t interested. After all, who would notice a clunker thrown in on the last Sunday in November? It wasn’t a team in the AFC East, they had a cushion in the East on the Pats and the Dolphins, it was time to coast past the Broncos.

Surely, they thought, we could stop their running game. Surely, then they would stop the pass. Well, it didn’t turn out that way, of course, but the Jets didn’t react, even after it became quite apparent that the Broncos weren’t going to be content with just holding the lead in the AFC West. They wouldn’t be making any turnovers this day.

The Jets just weren’t prepared to play. I don’t put the blame on Mangini, although he can’t be held blameless. The same goes for Favre who was pretty dreadful in the rain yesterday. It’s a team responsibility, heart. The Giants have it, clearly. The Steelers have it, the Chargers don’t have it, the Jets don’t have it.

I wouldn’t even mind if the Jets had come back. But they didn’t. They were content to tuck their tails between their knees and go home. They are a seriously-flawed team, not from a talent perspective as from a character point of view.

Chad Pennington, I might add, did not have a character problem and still doesn’t, as evidenced by his bringing the Dolphins back to respectability. His Jets played with a lot of heart but they didn’t have the talent in his time. Now, they clearly have the talent but not the heart. A large part of the heart got shipped to Miami.

You see the lack of character all over the NFL. Plax’s gun incident is a very clear example. How easy it is for a man to go from the heights to the depths when he is conspicuously lacking character. All those physical attributes that make him such a talent on the football field couldn’t save him from the debacle that will be his life from here on.

It’s a good thing that Burress has been such a small part of the Giants’ success this year. The team seems to be carrying on without missing a beat. The beat goes on and it will go on without Burress. But it may not go on against the best teams in the NFL, a team that has a balanced offense and defense, a team such as the Pats were last year before they were beaten by the Giants with Burress.

Is there a team though that meets those qualifications this year? In either the AFC or NFC? I don’t think so.

You could possibly make a case for the Steelers. They have Ben Roethlisberger at QB, and some talent at the receiver position. They have a formidable defense too, and, in the person of Troy Polamalu, they have the most talented player in either league. They can run the ball too, but not as well as a Super Bowl team should. Their offensive line doesn’t seem strong enough to support either part of their overall offense.

Their potential to fulfill that Super Bowl contender position will be seriously challenged next Sunday when the Cowboys come to town. The Cowboys have Romo back, and he does not seem to be the Romo of last year, not from the perspective of character.

Romo seems to have grown into a leader this year, his injury and the subsequent Cowboys demise seems to have challenged his whole being, and his performance in the games since his injury seems to bear that out. He is one of those players who can make everyone around him better, at least this year.

The Colts have always been a team with character. They were hit hard by injuries this year, and seem to be a little slow in coming back from them. Their performance against the Browns yesterday wasn’t that of a playoffs contender though, unless it was the Browns that made them look bad, a Browns team that seems to lift its game against better opponents, as evidenced by their victory over the G-Men this year.

Who else is there? There are Carolina and the Bucs in the AFC, the Panthers with conspicuous talent on both sides of the ball. But I don’t think Carolina has the heart. They are a team much like the Jets. The Bucs may have the character but not as much talent as is required to reach the heights, at least on the offensive side of things.

A team that turned in that performance against the Broncos yesterday could never reach the Super Bowl. Forget about it. They probably already have.