The Good The Bad and The Ugly
The good
Eli Manning through for a career high 384 yards passing, it was his 9th career 300 yard game, but his first ever at Giants stadium. Eli’s deep balls were thrown with pinpoint accuracy today, and he and Mario Manningham worked the sidelines to perfection. According to sources Eli had a special meeting with the receivers on Friday to discuss routes that would be of vital importance against the Falcons. Clearly the back shoulder fade was amongst those discussed as the Giants hit the route several times.
Mario Manningham had 6 catches for 126 yards and did his best Amani Toomer impersonation on the sidelines. It’s still early in Manningham’s career but he and Eli seem to be developing a good repoire. When you throw for 384 yards you can’t give the credit to just one wideout, kudos to Hakeem Nicks and Steve Smith as well.
On October 28th Ed Valentine of Big Blue View wrote a letter to the New York Giants on behalf of Kevin Boss. The letter was simply a reminder that he, Kevin, was on the team and that he could be used, at 6’6 253 pounds, in the red zone. Message received. Since the letter Boss has 4 td’s and seems to be the number one target in the red zone. Kudos to the Valentine, now if he could only write a letter introducing Bill Sheridan to his secondary.
The offensive line did a solid job of keeping Eli clean, allowing only one sack.
Lawrence Tynes kicks em when they count, unfortunately he often doesn’t kick em when they don’t. I know, I know they always count but the sentence looks better as is, leave me alone.
While the defense did not show up, Michael Boley did. He finished with 13 tackles and 1 sack against his old team, nicely done Mike.
Corey Webster struggled last week but had a nice day in coverage against Roddy White, who finished with a meager 4 catches for 45 yards.
Aaron Ross waited 10 weeks, but he finally hit the field Sunday and played safety in the dime package. The more reps he gets the more Aaron Rouses job security comes into question.
The Bad
There was no semblance of a running game. The offensive line did not create wholes and the backs didn’t help much. Bradshaw and Jacobs were held under 3.5 yards per carry and the longest run of the day was Danny Wares 13 yard scallywhatzy (didn’t feel like writing gallop/scamper so I went with scallywhatzy, what? Don’t judge me). Fortunately the running game was bailed out by #23 Chris Houston who couldn’t cover my grandfather (to Houston’s credit my grandfather is 6’7 and runs a 4.3 40, but that’s besides the point, no wait, that is the point)
Bruce Johnson, who has been a great addition at the nickel, blew a couple of assignments and had his first bad game.
Other then some early plays by Barry Cofield the Giants tackles are simply not getting a push up front.
I often wonder how good the Giants would be if they played with safeties, for now they continue to play with 10 men and occasionally Ross in the dime.
Lawrence Tynes now has 4 misses inside 40 yards this year. Robbie Gould of the Chicago Bears hasn’t missed inside 40 in his last 46 tries. The message? Tynes isn’t very good, but still hit one of the biggest fg’s in Giants history and seems to come up big on game winners.
Jeff Feagles continues to struggle, at 78 he may finally be done, sad.
The defense gave up 14 points with less then 6 minutes to go in the 4th quarter. Bill Sheridan is not winning fans over, especially considering this unit is almost the same as the one Steve Spagnuolo coached last year. Well the same 10, I’ve already expressed my feelings about the guys the Giants are calling safeties.
The UGLY
Two late hit penalties that should never have been called. One came on a play where Chris Snelling was touched on the back, literally touched and the second looked like a penalty but after reviewing it it was clear that Rouse hit Snelling while one foot was still in bounds. The officials then missed a face mask call on Ahmad Bradshaw, but to be fair it was hard to tell if the player had the face mask held or did he simply have his arm across ab’s mask.
The Giants called heads in the overtime coin toss. What? Are you kidding me? Ok, it came up heads, and thank the lord, because no one believed the Giants D was gonna stop Atlanta, but who calls heads? Tails is always the way, always. Well, I guess not today, but almost always.
Tony Romo is my fantasy qb (were not getting into this, but no I do not root for the Cowboys, EVER) but on a 4th and 2 today he threw a pick to London Fletcher. I yelled out “that’s my quarterback man,” and realized I sounded just like TO after the playoff loss. I wasn’t the only one who noticed, my buddy faz then repeated the line 19 times until I mentioned Blair Thomas (he is a die hard jet fan and didn’t speak to me for 10 minutes when he finally did I quickly mentioned Vernon Gholston the workout warrior, we didn’t speak the rest of the day). For the record had fletcher batted the ball down they would have had better field position so I was actually rooting for Washington. As it stands I am down by one point thanks to that pick, unless Brent Celek catches one more ball (we are in the 4th quarter with 6 minutes to go and he is 2 yards away from that one point…uggh)
My last Ugly (about tony romo) was UGLY.
Giants play on Thursday in Denver, the scheduling is ugly.
