Where Are We? I Don't Know.

The Doom That Came To the Secondary, and other Lovecraftian Tales

This Sunday, watching the Redskins play the New York Giants was a profoundly strange experience. As you probably could tell from my pregame post, I wasn't sure what to expect, but thought the Redskins would ultimately lose the game. Sure enough, that's what happened. I've lived through devastating losses to the Giants many times since returning to full-time Redskins fandom circa 2001, so I would expect to be feeling a very familiar emotion right now. Specifically, some crossbreed of frustration and despair--the certain belief that the team could have done better, combined with a deep-seated fear that they never, ever will. Based on past experience, the way the game ended on Sunday should have ruined my day and left fuzzy contrails of depression across my brain that would subtly drag down at least the first half of the week to come. And yet, that's not how I felt at all.

In fact, in terms of my feelings, this entire Redskins season thus far has been bizarre. I'm hearing other Skins fans express much the same. On the Redskins blog I follow most regularly, the Monday morning post was talking about how no one the guys who run the site know was really bummed about the outcome of the Giants game. Instead, they were all talking about how weirdly hopeful they felt after seeing it. Sure enough, that pretty much describes my feeling at this point as well. And the thing that seems to be affecting all of our feelings is a real optimism about the performance of Robert Griffin III. On the surface, though, this doesn't make any sense. I've seen far worse Redskins teams get their asses kicked by the Giants within the past decade, and I never felt the least bit good about it. Why should I feel better about seeing the most clearly talented team we've fielded in something like ...shit, probably 20 years, now that I think of it--still manage to blow games at the last minute?

Well, I've spent the past few days thinking about it, and I think I've come up with an answer. Back when I was watching the Giants beat the pants off the Al Saunders or Jim Zorn Redskins, when I was watching Patrick Ramsey scramble or Clinton Portis get injured or Devin Thomas drop passes, I was seeing a team that was about as good as it was gonna get, at least for that year, with that lineup. Watching turnovers, bad play calls, and stupid mistakes doom a mediocre team who were trying to talk themselves up into half-decent status, I just knew they would never make the grade, that they'd remain the half-stepping, short-falling gang of underachievers that I was seeing on the field right at that moment for the foreseeable future. And it killed me. I wanted to fucking scream, so many times, watching a team that could put together a solid drive, a decent quarter, sometimes even a good half when playing an equally mediocre team expose all of their weaknesses when confronted with a football team that actually had their shit together.

Last Sunday, the Redskins confronted yet another in a long line of Giants teams who have their shit together. Tom Coughlin, who reprises his role as the gunnery sergeant from Full Metal Jacket on the sidelines every week (do you think he calls Eli Manning Gomer Pyle?) seems to have the whole team walking on eggshells, but when they hit the field they play hard and make shit happen. They won the Super Bowl last year, for fuck's sake, and if anything they look even better this year. A week ago I wasn't sure that that was really true, but I hadn't seen them play this year yet either. Now I have, I know what's up with them, and I'm sure that it was difficult for the Redskins to even hang in there with them as long as they did. There've been enough callbacks to the infamous Denny Green postgame speech over the past decade to last everyone a lifetime, but considering that I expected the Giants to, in the end, get the best of the Redskins, I'm sure you know what I'm thinking.

So the question remains--why do I feel, actually, pretty good about where things stand right now? A little less than halfway through the season, the Redskins are 3-4. The offense is putting some things together, but after scoring three takeaways against the Vikings, we responded by turning the ball over four times to the Giants--hardly a positive development. And the secondary is so shitty that they singlehandedly blew the game for us. Yeah, I know, Santana Moss's fumble with 45 seconds left is what really took away our last chance to score, but his 30 yard touchdown catch with 92 seconds left should have been enough to win the game. All the secondary needed to do was prevent any big plays and keep Eli and the Giants from scoring for a minute and a half, and we'd have won the game. They couldn't even manage a third of that--Eli's 77 yard touchdown pass to Victor Cruz happened 19 seconds of game time after Griffin's pass to Moss. That pass should have been the one all over highlight reels on the Sunday night sports shows, but that's not what happened.

I prefer to remember the good times...

The thing that keeps me from being devastated by the eventual outcome of the Giants game has a lot to do with that pass, though. As Santana pulled it in and I saw for sure that it was a touchdown, I leaped off my best friend's living room couch and (once I'd calmed down enough to speak actual words) started yelling, "That right there! That's the difference RG3 makes! That's it right there!" And I was hyper and inarticulate at the time, but I was also right. His ability to stay upright in the pocket, extend plays, and make accurate downfield passes that complete scoring drives is the difference between RG3 and most other quarterbacks playing in the NFL today. And it's definitely the difference between RG3 and pretty much every other quarterback who has played for the Redskins in the post-Gibbs 1.0 era. Who else have we seen that could have made that pass? If you said Mark Brunell, who did it not once but twice in the final moments of an incredible 2005 win against the Cowboys, I'll give you that. However, not only was Brunell the best Redskins quarterback of the pre-RG3 modern era (this is probably gonna cause controversy, but it's a judgment call I'm willing to make), that game was also a fluke for him. At least during the Redskins phase of his career, it was--if anyone who watched the Jaguars regularly between 1995 and 2003 can tell me differently about his earlier years, I will totally take your word for it, because god knows I don't now, nor have I ever, watched the Jaguars regularly.

But anyway, the thing about RG3 is not so much that he hit that clutch pass to Santana Moss to give us the lead with a very short amount of time left to play--little enough time that the majority of the teams in the 2012 NFL would have been unable to come back--but that he was doing shit like that all day. Downfield passes were dropping into the hands of Moss, Josh Morgan, Leonard Hankerson, and others in such a way that they didn't usually have to even break stride to pull the passes in. This made a definite difference in the yards after catch our receivers delivered in the game. Even the one high-profile downfield pass I can think of that wasn't caught bounced off Leonard Hankerson's fingertips--and if he'd caught it, it would have been a gain of 50 yards at minimum. It's tough for a quarterback to hit long passes like that with any degree of accuracy. From what I've read (and I'm not going to cite sources on this, so you'll just have to trust my memory), only somewhere between 20 and 40% of long bomb-style passes are completed. The fact that, as a rookie in his seventh game of pro action, RG3 was not only completing such passes frequently, but a lot of the time delivering them so accurately that receivers didn't even have to break stride to catch them, puts his performance on Sunday in borderline-elite territory. He was out there throwing like Drew Brees, and he's a goddamn rookie!

I mean, seriously, it's crazy how good the guy is. And on the ground, he's just as good--as is his most frequent backfield partner, Alfred Morris. People keep comparing that guy to Terrell Davis, and while I think such praise is premature, to say the least, at one point in the game, Fox flashed a graphic comparing Alfred's stats thus far to Terrell Davis's stats after 6 weeks in the NFL, and Morris actually has significantly more yards right now. Of course, he's also on track for something like 320 carries this season, which is good for us this year but could wear him out more quickly in the long run, and I'd hate to see that. At this moment, though, I have little to complain about, where Morris is concerned. OK, the fumble was awful--ruined a scoring drive that might very well have made a difference in the outcome of the game. But I've managed to convince myself that the fumble wasn't really Morris's fault at all; instead, I blame Tyler Polumbus.

For those who don't pay that much attention to guys that never touch the ball, let me explain the whole Polumbus thing. First of all, he's only our starting right tackle because Jammal Brown appears to be a piece of burnt toast. After four years as a New Orleans Saint, including the year they went to the Super Bowl--though he spent that year on IR with a torn ACL--Brown was traded to the Redskins, and has had trouble staying healthy ever since. In 2010, recovery from hip surgery slowed him down, but he started in 14 games. In 2011, he was in and out of the lineup, starting in 12 games. This year, he was injured in training camp, and had another hip surgery. We'll see if he can recover from this one, but in the meantime, our starting right tackle is Tyler Polumbus, one of the worst right tackles to start consistently in the NFL over the last five years. The Redskins are his fourth team--he was undrafted in 2008, and played for the Broncos in 08 and 09 before being waived by them during the 2010 preseason. The Lions claimed him off waivers, traded him to the Seahawks after a week, and the Seahawks kept him for a year and a half before waiving him midseason in 2011. The Redskins signed him two weeks later, and he's been playing for us ever since. Dude is terrible. He's a running joke at Football Outsiders, which makes it even more cringeworthy to see him out there every week as a Redskins starter. And, to bring this back around, Polumbus is responsible for Morris's fumble. How so? Because on the play before the one on which Morris fumbled, Polumbus got called for holding, nullifying a 15 yard run. Then the Skins tried the same play again, and this time the ball was stripped out of Morris's hands. If Polumbus hadn't gotten penalized, they'd never have run that play at all.

Whatever--maybe you buy that, maybe you don't. And when talking about ways in which the Redskins still have a long way to go, Polumbus is just the tip of the iceberg. It is at least nice to only be complaining about one of our offensive linemen rather than all of them, but now the secondary is the position group that needs a total overhaul. If anything, I think D. Hall has aged past his effectiveness at cornerback, and would probably be best in the role of strong safety, where he can play out the downside of his career. I've been made happy by the play of all of the rest of the Redskins secondary members at one point or another, but considering how many of them see the field regularly without managing to consistently distinguish themselves as real coverage threats, at this point I have to figure that any good plays they make are just the result of the law of averages, and someone with real talent would do a lot more than pull in an occasional interception or come blitzing in to stop a run behind the line once every other game.

And now Fred Davis is injured. Easy to let that get lost in the shuffle of the game, but I don't think we can underestimate its importance. With Garcon out, Davis had become RG3's #1 target, and while Logan Paulsen proved that he can be effective as a pass-catching tight end over the course of the second half, I'm not sure he can step into Davis's shoes. I know Niles Paul can't. Has anyone seen him catch a pass this year? The guy's as bad as Robert Royal was. We resigned Chris Cooley, which is an important move on the cosmic scale of good karma, so I'm glad it happened. But can the guy come back and be the #1 tight end he was four years ago? I have a feeling those days are behind him. I guess we'll see.

Still, though, I feel good. I have hope for the future. Between RG3, Alfred Morris, Leonard Hankerson, most of the offensive line, and several members of our defensive front seven, I feel like I'm seeing real positive development in the Redskins as a team. Kyle Shanahan continues to get positive results out of the Pop Warner-style stacked backfields I was babbling about last week (I saw a new four-man backfield pre-snap formation during the Giants game, but I didn't write it down and now I don't remember what it was), and whether he's running or throwing, RG3 is the kind of player that sets even the best defenses back on their heels a bit. This team isn't the same sort of half-stepping squad of underachievers that used to bedevil me in past years. They make great plays every week, and seem to be moving in enough of a positive direction that I don't feel like an idiot having hope for the future. Whether that will last through a few more of the inevitable losses that I expect to see this season remains to be seen, but I'm cautiously optimistic. Hopefully for the 2012 Redskins, such a feeling will not be the prelude to certain doom that it often has been in the past.

Do We Have A Problem Here?

Does this guy represent a legitimate concern?

So... the New York Giants. I can remember a time in the last decade when it seemed like we'd start every season with a game against them, and every season, they'd spank our asses and send us into the season with an opening day loss. It was always some kind of horrible omen for the rest of the year--even the year when Jim Zorn had just become our coach and we followed that game by winning 6 of our next 7 games, it turned to shit in the end. I always felt like the Giants were the hardest team in the NFC East to beat, and not just because they were the most likely to end up winning the division in any given year, either. With the Cowboys and the Eagles, there are decades of hot-blooded rivalry to call up, much psychology and spiritual mumbo-jumbo to tap into for inspiration and special quasi-supernatural on-field powers to embody our generally mediocre team with for a few hours on a Sunday afternoon. The fans get riled up and holler for blood, and things happen, you know? That first Zorn year, we beat the Eagles twice. That was not really in the cards for that Redskins team, and yet it happened. And the situation with the Cowboys... well, we all know it's complicated, and considering we have the mother of all Cowboys matchups this year--a Thanksgiving day game in Texas Stadium--I'll have plenty of time to talk about it later.

But the Giants always felt to me like they could defeat any of our spiritual vibrations and cosmic psych-outs with the cold-eyed rationality of a team with a better on-field product. They felt like they refused to even play the game on our terms, as if walking into Jack Kent Cooke Stadium and falling under the spell of the spirit vibes swirling through the place was something they could just choose not to do. And then they'd spank us in front of our home crowd and make us all feel like idiots for even having gotten so psyched up in the first place. And in the Meadowlands? Forget it! I don't even feel like you could have a more intrinsically soulless sporting arena than one that is not only in the wrong state (yes, I know, the Redskins play in Maryland, but that's different. I'll tell you why it's different some other time. Now go help your mother with the dishes--the grownups are talking), but one that is shared with another team that plays the same sport in the same league. The Meadowlands doesn't even have its own franchise identity, and calling it "Giants Stadium" when the Giants play there and "The Meadowlands" when the Jets play there doesn't change that situation one iota. The Redskins have no spiritual powers in the Meadowlands, and neither do the Giants, but the Giants don't need it--they defeat us with math problems and an angry, rationality-based denial of the spiritual nature of football as a sport. For a team that once boasted Lawrence Taylor as their star and Bill Parcells as the sideline captain, the Giants have certainly undergone a significant change in their overall vibe since I returned to being a devoted football-watcher in the early 2000s. They've become the team of science-happy supervillains, or something like that. There's just no reaching them on the spiritual level, which is why games with them in recent years have always played out exactly as badly as they seemed like they should on paper.

So then, how do we explain last year? In a season where the Redskins only managed to win five games, how is it that their only two convincing wins came against the Giants, a team that would back into the playoffs with the minimum passable record, suddenly hit a hot streak, and go on to win the Super Bowl? I must admit that I don't have a concrete theory about that. In fact, I think it's going to take watching the Redskins play them this year to really even start to figure them out. The kind of Skins fans that comment on sports websites, and do other dumb internet-based stuff like that (as opposed to brilliant internet-based things like blogging for Armchair Linebacker), were doing a lot of gloating last year about how the Redskins had beaten the eventual Super Bowl champions, not once but twice. And I shouldn't even need to say this right now, but that was some stupid shit to be proud of. Even in the regular season, the Giants won four more games than we did, regardless of how they did against us. And the Redskins wouldn't have had a snowball's chance in hell against any of the teams that the Giants beat in the playoffs. The Giants were a better team last year, just like they always are. Sure, the case could be made that if the Redskins had played in their other 14 games last year the way they played against the Giants, we could very well have dominated the league. But why in the hell would we expect them to do that? Those games weren't predictive of our 2011 performance; I'd say the game against the Panthers was more accurate as far as the eventual template for that season went. But whatever; I don't want to talk about the 2011 season. At all. Ever again.

The only time Grossman actually looked good.

What I do want to talk about is that, though I haven't personally encountered it yet, I'm sure there's a significant portion of vocal Redskins fandom out there talking about how we've got this week in the bag because it's just the Giants and we beat them twice last year with Rex Grossman at QB! Yeah... not so fast, folks. For one thing, that kind of overconfidence has already worked out badly for us at least once this year--with the Rams game, which I was calling a trap game so often in the week leading up to it that I probably started sounding like Admiral Ackbar at some point. The Vikings game made me think the Redskins were pulling it together and starting to figure out how to work within their limitations and accentuate their strengths, but after all, it was just one week. Meanwhile, last week, the Giants delivered a sound beating to the 49ers, who should by all rights be one of the best teams in the league right now. Of course, the Giants beat them in the playoffs last year too, which didn't seem like it should have happened either. This brings me back to my earlier point that I have no idea what's going on with the Giants at this point. Eli Manning has seemed over the past couple of years like a better quarterback than ever before, like he's finally reaching the level that Peyton has played at for a long time now. The Giants running game is always a bit spotty, with no clear-cut #1 back, but they still put up some yardage on the ground week in and week out, and both their offensive and defensive lines are obviously skilled. And yet they don't seem to play in as dominant a fashion as they did a few years ago when Eli wasn't as good and their running game didn't do as well. It's a mystery to me, and what it means for the Redskins is equally mysterious. After all, the Giants' only two losses thus far have come in their only two divisional games. So what does that mean?

All I feel like I can say for sure about this upcoming game is that the Redskins should not get too confident. The win against the Vikings was nice, but it's in the past. Things are still wrong with the team, and considering how Eli Manning has been playing lately, he's in a prime position to exploit the secondary, which might very well be our biggest problem right now. This game could be a real struggle, and the only way we'll probably come out on the winning side of it is if RG3 and our offense can hang in there with the shootout that I expect Eli and the Giants offense will give us. Ultimately, we'll probably blow it if for no other reason than the fact that if we can win, we'll be leading the NFC East, and I can't imagine that happening at any point over the course of this year. But then again, I don't feel any more confidence in that statement than I do in much of anything else I've written in this post. Sorry guys, half a dozen posts in and I've defaulted to wishy-washy indecisiveness. I would think the game tomorrow will shake me out of these doldrums, but right now I've just got no idea. Guess we'll see.

The World Is Filled With Morons But Who Cares? And Other Observations From Super Bowl XLVI

I have a startling confession to make: I hate the Super Bowl. Okay, that’s not completely true. I have a sort of love/hate relationship with the Super Bowl. I love the game and what it represents but I hate the event that is the Super Bowl, the giant annual episode of Hee-Haw that would make even Robin Williams nauseous with its parade of LOUD NOISES and dull-eyed stupidity.

I didn’t plan on writing this. After all, I am in the midst of a long and hopefully fruitful spirit quest and my Indian guide said that breaking my hiatus to comment on the mortal world was both dangerous and short-sighted, but I told him to kick rocks because I don’t need him, I have The Great Willie Young to lead me down the path of wisdom and, so, well, here we are. The banal truth is that while watching the damn game and the circus which surrounds it, I realized I had to write about it and even though no one will probably read this since it isn’t about the Lions or about Lindsay Lohan deep-throating a Kardashian or some such bullshit, I don’t really care because sometimes – increasingly rarely for me if I’m being completely honest – the spirit just courses through me and I am but a slave, dancing at its behest, and I have no choice but to hit you with the Good Word.

Okay, like I said, I both love and hate the Super Bowl. It’s easy to get lost in the endless hype and idiot noise that bleats through our TV screens and hollers at us from our computers in the weeks leading up to the event and it’s easy to then determine that the best course of action is to build a shack deep in the woods and spend the rest of your days growing your own, uh, let’s say fruit and vegetables and hunting Sasquatch and fucking sheep because at least the goddamn sheep don’t know or care who Betty goddamn White is, but in the middle of all that is an event that is profoundly important. Okay, fine, in the grand scheme of things, compared to world hunger and war and that goddamn neighbor who won’t stop making all that goddamn noise, it’s not all that important, but within the confines of the football world – which is the world we technically write about here at Armchair Linebacker, although I’ll admit that can be a little hard to discern at times – it is the fucking moon landing. For football players, for dudes who have spent their entire lives getting up and running at 6 AM on the beach every day just to get a tiny little edge over the other dude and who have made the devil’s bargain, sacrificing their brain power past the age of fifty for a shot at meaningless glory, it is everything, and that is a revelation that is taut with both high drama and almost obscene and maudlin tension. Once you realize and understand that, it’s impossible not to get caught up in the actual game, no matter who’s playing.

But it’s also impossible to ignore the dumb hype and bleating chaos which surrounds the whole goddamn event, a circus of the dumb, a circus of the absurd, a circus which makes me wish a tiger or a lion would leap through my TV screen and devour my eyeballs and my ears before my spirit horse could whisk me away to a better place. A person could spend an entire year in a coma and as long as he wakes up on Super Bowl Sunday and watches the whole obscene event from start to finish, he will be completely caught up with the rest of the world. Every catchphrase, every hit song, every meme, every star, every movie, everything that has been relevant over the past twelve months will get beaten into the dirt, resurrected and then cannibalized before being beaten into the ground yet again. Hey, look! There’s Betty White! Why not drag out the Where’s the Beef lady while you’re at it? It’s just a parade of wild and dumb noise, of hee-hawing bullshit that appeals to the idiot center of the lowest of the lowest common denominator. It is a world of the dumb and the insane in which tiny dogs moonwalk for no reason, horses fart flames and jackasses sitting at home guffaw and stuff their face full of death and corn flavored hate. And then a midget rides onto the field on a tricycle and Madonna shows up, cackling like the vampire spawn of Satan himself and then our eyes are peeled back like in Clockwork Orange and we all slowly go insane while a dystopian horror show plays out before our bleeding brains. A man in a dress bounces around on a wire and some clowns show up and start singing that goddamn Party Rock song and then there’s a choir because there’s always a choir and then we cut to a commercial of Christina Aguilera fighting with some hick and hey, there’s Betty White again! And she’s intimating that we all want to fuck her! USA! USA! USA!

And . . . breathe. I’m sorry. I kinda got carried away there. But every year it’s the same and about halfway through the game, after hearing for the billionth time some lummox prattle about how “I only watch the game for the commercials!” like it’s a startlingly new thought never experienced by man before, I begin to sharpen my knives and longingly eye the drain cleaner, wondering just what the barrel of a gun tastes like, and I wonder why I even watch this madhouse of the human spirit at all. But then, just like every other year, the game started again, and there was Tom Brady and there was Eli Manning, fighting to be the man who landed on the moon one more time, and in the wake of that simple truth, nothing else mattered.

It’s easy to shit on Tom Brady. He is not a well-liked guy. I get it. He’s rich, he has a hot model wife, he wears Uggs and he generally carries himself like a GQ model. You won’t find him sitting in his Wranglers, drinking beers with the boys. People hate that about him. But none of that matters. Not really, anyway. For all his money, for all his success, for all the times he gets to go home and hump Giselle Bundchen until the rest of the world fades away and he passes out in a hazy cloud of semen and drool until his butler shows up to wipe him off with a diamond studded jizz rag (actually, that would hurt, so, uh, never mind . . .) he is still just a dude trying to land on the moon one more time, and when he’s on that field, none of that other shit matters and that meaningless pursuit of glory becomes his green light across the water, his Daisy Buchanan, and then he’s just Gatsby, like the rest of us, chasing that one thing that actually can give the man a moment of peace in his soul.

And then you have Eli Manning. He’s the anti-Brady. At least that’s the role in which he’s been cast by most fans. They want to project onto him the image of the hard working blue collar good ol’ boy, the down to earth hero they can have a beer with and shoot the shit. He probably votes Republican and believes in the flag and Budweiser and hot dogs too. He probably has a firm handshake and he’s the sort of man you want your son to grow up to be. Yessir.

But not really. He’s almost as rich as Tom Brady. He probably lives in a New York penthouse and he would have his butler wash his hands with soap made from crushed babies if he was forced to shake your filthy hands. But again, none of that matters. Because once that clock starts winding down, he’s just another man in pursuit of a dream, a man in pursuit of his own moon landing.

Every year, by the time the 4^th quarter of the Super Bowl arrives, the dumb commercials and the endless noise all seem to sort of fade away, as reality and the forces of nature reassert themselves and cause all that nonsense to blow away like so much cotton candy caught in the wind. The Super Bowl is an event, a celebration of everything banal and stupid about our Idiocratic society. They should get President Camacho to flip the coin before the game every year. And it’s easy to get caught up in all that bullshit. We all do, whether it’s in laughing like dumb animals at horrible 3^rd grade level jokes designed to sell you some shit you don’t even want or whether it’s in cringing and considering taking up shack building or suicide as a hobby, we all get caught up in it and we let it define the Super Bowl, both the event and the game year after year.

But then Mario Manningham makes the catch of his life along the sideline and then it’s impossible to ignore that there is something real at stake here, something pure. And it’s pure because it’s trivial, because it’s meaningless, because it’s unquantifiable. This isn’t about money or fancy homes or supermodel wives or any of the things we hold up to the rest of the world in order to proclaim our value. It is the pursuit of meaningless glory, of victory, of something that means nothing and in meaning nothing means everything. Because it is not for anyone else. It is pure and it is honest and it is landing on the fucking moon not because you can ever hope to own the moon but because it’s landing on the fucking moon. It’s winning the fucking Super Bowl. It’s the mountain top, the goal, the thing that kept you sweating under the sun while a fat old man screamed at you and told you that you were a fucking shitty football player and that he would throw you off the team if you didn’t run just a little bit faster, hit just a little bit harder, want it just a little bit more. It is the reason why you pick up a football for the very first time, and in the truth of that, the importance of the Super Bowl, its pulsating heart, is revealed.

You can laugh at Tom Brady and you can shit on him all you want but it doesn’t change the fact that he wanted to win this fucking game more than you’ve ever wanted anything in your life. He’s going to see Wes Welker dropping that pass for the rest of his life and it’s going to weaken his knees and hit him deep in his gut, in that place that churns up life’s memories and makes everything else seem a little bit dimmer. That’s his now. For the rest of his life, that’s his.

And then you have Eli Manning, who will remember Mario Manningham making that catch for the rest of his life and when he does, he’ll smile that goofy, hick smile of his and everything will seem brighter and better because of it. It won’t matter if he’s in the lead car of a parade or floating on a fucking iceberg off the coast of Antarctica while the rest of the world burns, he’ll always have that memory and he’ll always have the pure satisfaction that it brought and it will make him smile.

That is all completely insane when you consider that this is just a dumb game, and that win or lose everyone goes home and fucks their trophy wives and counts their money and beats the help. And yet, it’s completely true. You think it matters to the fans? Well, this is the summation of these dudes’ whole lives. Man is a stupid beast and he is never happy, no matter what he achieves or what he gets in life and that is because the deep dark secret that everyone is afraid of is that most things in life are utterly meaningless. The only things that do matter, that do provide long-lasting satisfaction are those perfectly pure triumphs, those conquerings of the soul, those moon landings that validate the emptiness of everything else, that make the tortured two-a-day past and the concussed and addled future worth it. Man is an explorer of the spirit, a mountain climber of the soul, and he is never satisfied by anything other than climbing his own personal Everests, no matter how trivial they seem to be.

And tonight, Eli Manning and the Giants are celebrating because they climbed Everest. They landed on the moon. And they’re celebrating because of inches, because of fractions of inches, because Mario Manningham somehow made that catch while Wes Welker dropped a ball he never drops. They’re celebrating because the world is weird and strange and today it smiled on them and they believe, deep in their hearts, that it smiled on them because they willed it, because they pushed and pushed and pushed and as a result affected the events of the world. It is the ultimate manifestation of the arrogance of man, that secret desire which rests so deeply within all of our dumb hearts – if they fought hard enough, if they believed and struggled and bled and just pushed and pushed and pushed, they could control destiny, they could control the world. That, my friends, is power and power is the one thing we all desperately want because the truth is, is that we’re all powerless. And that’s why it’s so satisfying when you can clutch it in your fingers for just a fraction of a moment, long enough to achieve your stupid and absurd dreams. And that’s why winning – and losing – a Super Bowl means more to these dudes than anyone wants to admit. But deep down, I think we understand it, and that’s why we watch. Fuck the event. We watch for the game, for that crowning moment, for the fucking moon landing.

And just like Eli and the boys are celebrating, Tom Brady and his dudes have an empty feeling inside that they’ll never fill. They’ll blame themselves and each other. Wes Welker will never be the same again. He just got engaged to a hot new fiance but if you think that’s enough to make him shrug his shoulders and say fuck it and count his money and forget this ever happened then you don’t understand human nature. At all. We’re all Gatsby. That’s the great truth of that book and that’s the great truth which drives everything we do as a species. This one loss will diminish Tom Brady’s whole life. And by that, I don’t mean people’s perceptions of him. I mean his perceptions of himself. When he’s lying on his deathbed, he’ll weigh his life out and this game will flash before his eyes. That is enormously tragic and enormously compelling and that’s why the Super Bowl is the fucking Super Bowl. The rest is just noise.

NFL ACLB PREVIEWS - #13: NEW YORK GIANTS

PERTINENT DATA: 10-6 last year; 25 to 1 odds to win Super Bowl XLVI.
BEST CASE SCENARIO (Neil): The Giants always seem like they are in the mix in the NFC East and even though everyone is hooting like rabid monkeys about Plaxico Burress signing with the Jets and Steve Smith sneaking out like a thief in the night to sign with those animals in Philly, the thing that everyone misses is that both Hakeem Nicks and Mario Manningham are better receivers than those two dudes. It’s true. Plax is a bigger name but the only balls he’s been catching the last couple of years have been the ones bouncing off his chin on Rikers Island. Meanwhile, yeah, Steve Smith caught 100 passes a couple of years ago but even at his peak he wasn’t as explosive as either Nicks or Super Mario and now he’s coming off of knee surgery, so . . . yeah, the Giants offense should be just fine. The running backs are good and as long as Eli Manning doesn’t fuck up too much (I know, I know . . . this is a big if) the Giants should be able to score some points. Meanwhile, the defense is the defense. I don’t think it’s that great but if dudes can put their egos aside and Osi Umenyiora (Did I spell that shit right? Fuck it, I’m not checking.) gets his ass on the field, they should at least be able to get after the quarterback a bit. Even though they’ve already suffered some injuries in the secondary, that’s an area where they have some depth so, honestly, they should be fine. I don’t think they’re going to win the Super Bowl or anything, but they should be what they always seem to be – contenders in the NFC East who at least have a shot at falling ass backward into a Super Bowl berth. Wow, that’s probably one of the most straightforward one of these I’ve done. Sorry? You’re welcome?
WORST CASE SCENARIO (Raven): It looks as though the worst case scenario is slowly unfolding before our eyes. Eli Manning has always been a retard and Tom Coughlin has always been an overbearing dickhead. But winning the Super Bowl because that one dude learned how to catch footballs with his facemask gave them time to not feel the fickle wrath of the greater New York metropolitan area. The sand has just about run out of that hour glass of thankful respect though. This is a team with a whole bunch of bric-a-brac at most positions, where it's like they have more guys than most teams, but all of them are mid-range, and there's no star power. Seriously, what star power is left on this team? Their aging RBs who were in decline last year? Their WR corps of 9 guys that would be great #3 receivers in half the league? At look at that vaunted defense. Just two years ago it seemed like the Giants had a steady army of defensive linemen that were interchangeable and ran about three deep and would put fear into QBs for their endlessly pinned back ears and bull rush. Now that's depleted, injured, or disgruntled. The whole thing is coming apart, and it makes me happy. Fuck the New York Giants.
PLAYER TO PULL FOR (Neil): The most obvious choice here would be rookie linebacker Mark Herzlich since he is a cancer survivor and all that, and while that’s great and I wish him a long and happy life, I won’t allow this place to turn into a sap farm. Today, I write a feel good bit on Mark Herzlich, tomorrow I’m writing the sequel to Tuesday’s With Morrie called Wednesday’s With Mitch in which I detail a year of Wednesday’s spent wiping Mitch Albom’s ass and spoon feeding him applesauce while he wanders around senile, missing his pants and pawing at his useless old dong because he thinks I’m Chris Webber, and fuck you if you think I’m going to put up with that shit. There are principles at stake here. Yeah, yeah, I know that Mitch Albom isn’t that old and he probably has many healthy years left but his brain turned to mush long, long ago. You simply can’t deny such a fundamental truth. Anyway, I was supposed to be telling you to root for someone, right? Okay, so I guess the next most obvious choice would be Mario Manningham due to my nauseating Michigan homerism but I can already hear you bellowing at me, although that could just be the neighbor’s dog. I swear he’s learning words and I think he was sent from the future to kill me. The dog, not Mario Manningham, although I guess there’s always a chance that Super Mario has been sent from the future to kill me and I simply cannot in good conscience ask you to root for someone like that. So, with those out of the way, who’s left? Fuck if I know. Root for whoever you want to. Don’t root for anyone at all. Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a fuck. (It’s 2011, saying I don’t give a damn isn’t harsh enough anymore. I would gnaw on Rhett Butler’s wicked bones. Fuck him.)
PLAYER TO HATE MOST (Raven): If you read this blog regularly, you know I am a Redskins fan. And honestly, though I dislike all divisional foes, the Giants have always been my least hated, for whatever reason. I just didn't really think of them as a rival, kind of like if you get in a fight while drunk with a retarded guy in college. It's just something that happens and you don't make yourself hate the guy because actually you have to feel sorry for them. That's how I feel about Giants fans usually. I mean the team's not even in New York, but shitty New Jersey. If you're going to be New York in name, at least be near all that culture, all those museums, the arts movements past and present, the vibrant breathing cultural entity. Not in the fucking Meadowlands. But I'm sure this does not bother most Giants fans as they are usually uncultured retard drunks who would just make the city a less exciting place to be anyways. But like I said, I never really felt outright hatred for the Giants until the past five years or so, when Eli Manning came to the team. Both Manning boys are complete goober cocksucker assholes. Having grown up in the south, I can tell you firsthand there is nothing worse than the rich prep school hick fucker like the Mannings, both Peyton and Eli (plus their other brother, who probably also has one of those private school country club redneck names as well, like Dylan or Conner or something), and they drive to high school in a Beamer and feel like they own the world, yet when you get out of the confines of the south, they look and seem like a complete fucking hillbilly doofus. Except for-real hillbillies are resourceful people who make something from nothing and can survive in abject poverty for generations. The Mannings are the type of sheltered seemingly hillbilly dumb fucks who have always been fed off a silver spoon, and yet never bothered to culture themselves with all the privileges they've been afforded. It's sad and pathetic, and really about as American as possible. Let's not forget that Eli was actually drafted by the San Diego Chargers, but then stomped his feet and held his breath until he was traded to the Giants for Philip Rivers, before either of them took a snap in practice. Let's not forget this douchebag in an interview compared himself to his brother and Tom Brady and the very upper echelon of NFL quarterbacks this offseason. There really are few more contemptible people in the entire league than Eli Manning, and watching his mediocrity unravel, as it has the past couple of years, and even did the year he won a Super Bowl to be honest, it is going to be a joy. I will love seeing his stupid fucking face looking all angry sad, like he didn't get to go the British Virgin Islands for his summer trip before his Senior year of high school like he wanted, because his folks made him go to Maui on a family trip instead. Fuck Eli Manning and fuck everybody like him in my beloved South. Us real hillbillies are gonna rise up and slit your goddamned throats with homemade knives carved from sycamore branches, and we're gonna take over you plantation style McMansions, and fuck our crazy ol' ladies all over the back yard, and have like 39 little half-feral hillbilly children tearing up every room in that fucking place in five years time. You fuckers.
BEST NAME ON TEAM: As long as he is on an NFL roster, I will always find a spot to honor the greatness of the name Sage Rosenfels.
IN A PERFECT WORLD (Neil): The Giants perfect world always involves them hoisting the Lombardi Trophy but in my perfect world, Eli Manning would end up walking in on Peyton fucking the family dog, leading to Eli breaking down and sobbing in that hangdog drawl of his that makes him sound like he was the product of a fucked up union between Corky from Life Goes On and a female ground sloth. Why would I want that to happen? I don’t know, I’m kind of a fucked up dude, I guess. But really, I just think the Manning family has the potential to make a fine Southern Gothic type of story, some new age Faulkner or some shit like that, complete with a family dynamic fraught with petty jealousy (Eli hates Peyton because in his heart he always knows that Peyton will be number one, both to the rest of the world and more importantly to their dear old dad), rampant insecurity (that one brother with the narrow spine who has to spend the rest of his life convinced that he’s a failure, both to the rest of the world and more importantly to their dear old dad), and survival against overwhelming odds (The dog, who is just looking for a better life and is sick of suffering at the hands of Peyton’s perversions and more importantly is afraid of the stern hand of their dear old dad) and what better way to kick off that tale than Eli walking in on brother Peyton fucking the family pet? Look, I could have gone way darker here and I think you all know that, so just be glad I went the direction I did. I guess the bad news is that this would almost certainly be the lead story on Sports Center for the next century and we’d all quickly get sick of it. What is it with quarterbacks from Mississippi anyway? First you have all that Brett Favre bullshit and then Peyton Manning gets caught by Eli molesting the family golden retriever. What goes on in the Deep South? What goes on indeed? Those degenerates should all be ashamed of themselves. Don’t blame me, I’m just a humble interpreter of these times, strange and terrible as they may be. I didn’t make Peyton Manning fuck a dog. If you’re going to blame anyone, blame Archie. A man named Archie can’t be trusted. We should have seen this coming. That’s all I’m saying.
PROGNOSIS (Raven): The deadwood fortune sticks said the Giants, for all their glaring weaknesses this preseason, would go 9-7, just missing the playoffs. I don't know, I hate to question my own metascience, but I've seen nothing from the Giants to make me believe this to be true, but I cannot deny the methods I used - camping by the river, ingesting psychedelic mushrooms, playing with scrap sticks by a fire along a stretch of railroad track I love where there's a hidden rail yard the little 25-mile local line operates, which connects to the main line from West Virginia to Norfolk where coal goes one way and empty coal cars go back the other. 9-7 seems outlandish, but hey, who am I to deny the oracle?

New York Giants Draft Recap

 
For no particular reason, here' s a picture of ex-Giants defensive tackle Fred Robbins and his lovely wife.

Round 1 (15^th Overall) – Jason Pierre-Paul, DE, South Florida

When the names Justin Tuck, Osi Umenyiora and Mathias Kiwanuka top your depth chart, defensive end doesn’t seem like an area of need. After Week 12, the Giants coaching staff began to wonder if Umenyiora had become a name only. Once considered a dominant pass rusher, this “Cleveland Steamer” enthusiast racked up a mere seven sacks and played feckless run defense. He was eventually replaced in the starting lineup by Kiwanuka, whose contract expires at season’s end.


Defensive end doesn’t look so airtight now, does it?

With General Manager Jerry Reese’s one true love, Rolando McClain, off the board at number eight, the team took a chance on Jason Pierre-Paul, a raw pass rush prospect from the University of South Florida. So enamored with his size (6’4 ¾”, 270 lbs, huge wing span) and purported “freakishness”, Big Blue forgave his lack of NCAA experience, his vulnerability against the run and poor combine results. For this, Pro Football Outsiders thinks the Giants will pay. Here’s an excerpt from their SACKSEER NFL Draft Preview:

"So why do junior college edge rushers struggle so mightily when transitioning to the NFL? Most edge rusher prospects who play at the junior college level miss two years worth of their NCAA eligibility, and they are understandably "raw" when they enter the professional ranks. Although many coaches believe that such a player can be "coached up," the coaching staff can only devote so much of its valuable coaching resources to a single player. Moreover, many players who go to a junior college have significant or severe academic issues, and expecting them to digest a complicated NFL playbook while also "catching up" on their fundamentals may be unrealistic.


[snip]


The ability of Pierre-Paul to translate his particular brand of athleticism to pass rushing success is speculative at best. Overall, the general manager who pulls the trigger on Pierre-Paul better be very confident that he has something special -- so special that it will completely buck the historical trends."

The fuck. Where I generally admire an executive’s willingness to hedge immediate impact for long-term success, I take issue with Reese’s tact in this particular instance. The Giants built what many felt was a Super Bowl-caliber team last off-season. A bad hire at defensive coordinator (Bill Sheridan) and a couple of critical injuries (Kenny Phillips, Jay Alford, Antonio Pierce) knocked the team down a peg, but the core of a great team still exists. Built to win-now, a Band-Aid pick, like Derrick Morgan, Kyle Wilson or Mike Iupati, would’ve been preferable. Jason Pierre-Paul is a project and serving as an understudy to the existing triumvirate isn’t a luxury, it’s the only option.

Round 2 (46^th Overall) – Linval Joseph, DT, East Carolina

“PASS RUSH PASS RUSH STOP THE RUN PASS RUSH PASS RUSH PASS RUSH STOP THE RUN PASS RUSH PASS RUSH STOP THE RUN.” – Giants defensive philosophy, 2005-Present

A less Neanderthalic interpreation: rotate a variety of lineman, assemble them up in a variety of ways, create mismatches, get to the quarterback, but stop the run while you're at it. This is why the Giants place a premium on defensive line depth. Case-in-point, last March, with Barry Cofield, Fred Robbins and Jay Alford in tow, the front office still dropped a grip -- over $24M guaranteed -- on Chris Canty and Rocky Bernard.

“It was a group of us, just a group of give – now three dead, one in jail, it seem right now I’m the only one alive.” – Silkk the Shocker, ever prescient in 1997, channeling Barry Cofield in 2009.

It didn't work out well. Robbins and Bernard looked totally baked, because knee injuries on the north side of 30 will do that to you.  Jay Alford suffered his own in the exhibition season. Chris Canty’s torn hamstring sidelined him for half the season and mitigated his effectiveness when he took the field (13 tackles, 0.5 sack). Only Cofield played regularly or with any effectiveness.

Linval Joseph gives the interior of the D-line a unique weapon. Cofield's played nose tackle the last few seasons as a space-eater. The Giants feel Joseph will push the pocket -- a disruptive compliment to Cofield's functional competence. He's enormous at 6'4" and 328 lbs. He benched 225 lbs 39 times. What a beast.

Four of last season's DT-quintet return, but Linval will have the chance to play immediately. A time share at nose tackle with Cofield seems inevitable with Canty and Alford competing for the three tech spot. Peace out Rocky Bernard. At least you got paid handsomely.


Round 3 (76^th Overall) – Chad Jones, S, Louisana State


More than a decimated defensive line, lack of quality depth at safety ruined the Giants season. Kenny Phillips, the lone safety who could cover, missed the team's final 14 games with a career-threatening knee injury. With KP no lock to return, the team signed Antrel Rolle and Deion Grant and ditched two-thirds (C.C. Brown, Aaron Rouse, only Michael Johnson returns) of the worst safety corps in the NFL. Jones, is "instinctive" with "average range", making him a clear upgrade over Michael Johnson who had no idea where he was last season.


If Phillips does return, the Giants will have turned their biggest weakness into a strength and last season's frightful nightmares into Super Bowl dreams.


Round 4 (111^th Overall) – Phillip Dillard, MLB, Nebraska

The gaping hole at middle linebacker left by the release of Antonio Pierce  is matched only by the hole in the defense when he played there. (Pierce, always affable and ever the leader, just wasn't very good these last few seasons.) Many pundits felt that the Giants would address MLB sooner, but credit  Jerry Reese and (Scouting Director) Marc Ross for sticking to their draft board. The inside linebackers behind McClain, Sean Lee (knee injury) and Brandon Spikes (a +500 second '40' time) presented serious red flags.

As for Dillard, experts peg him as a "two-down linebacker", an excellent tackler who struggles in coverage. This selection signals (to me, at least) that new defensive coordinator Perry Fewell will not be using his "Tampa 2" scheme in New York. Dillard, nor Chase Blackburn or Bryan Kehl, possess the athleticism necessary to play middle linebacker in that defense.


Round 5 (147th Overalll) - Mitch Petrus, G, Arkansas


Petrus, the only offensive draft pick of the class, infuses youth into an offensive line that sprung leaks last season. Only a two year starter at Arkansas, he's ill-prepared to challenge Rich Seubert for the left guard job this season. But under the tutelage of offensive line coach Pat Flaherty, the future at left guard may be the present before very long.


Round 6 (184th Overall) - Adrian Tracy, DE/LB, William & Mary    


A defensive end at William & Mary, the Giants plan to convert Tracy into a 4-3 outside linebacker. He'll join fellow square pegs Bryan Kehl (a 3-4 OLB at BYU) and Clint Sintim (3-4 OLB at Virginia). Boo.


Round 7 (222nd Overall) - Matt Dodge, P, East Carolina


Dodge will compete for the punting vacancy created by Jeff Feagles' retirement. In the 7th round, teams knab prospects that intrigue them, such to keep them away from the undrafted free agent bonanza that follows the draft. Dodge fits that bill.

This doesn't help my opinion that California should be disallowed NFL franchises

I'm suffering through an awful case of the flu, so I'm struggling to come up with interesting things to say about the New York Giants. I will, shortly, but in the meanwhile I've decided to help out my brothers in San Diego by posting the most important fan video on youtube.



We need more of this, and less of the coach firing and kicker icing and Tom Brady murdering that has been going on in this 2008 season. For the good of the nation.

exciting weekend

I woke up at around 11 a.m. Saturday morning. Laid around 'til 11:30, got dressed, had to remind my boyfriend three or four times that it was time to get up, typical stuff. Usually, I am not such a stickler that it is time to get up, but this Saturday was Taco Santana Saturday! We met three female friends in Williamsburg to partake in real sodas made with sugar and not corn syrup, and delicious enchiladas and tacos (I had the enchiladas banderas). Really good stuff, and I highly recommend trying it out if you are in the neighborhood.

After we were done eating, we trekked to Little Jerusalem to go to Laurel's loft. While walking down Lorimer street, a Hasid child actually covered his eyes when the four ladies walked by (it's questionable as to whether or not Alex's presence also upset him--I didn't think it would be a good idea to ask the little boy). It is always uncomfortable when that happens, and I feel its mentally unhealthy to make the children hide from the outside world, to be honest, but it's not really any of my business.

When we got to the loft, Laurel presented us all with crazy cocktails, made of tequila, apple cider, blackberry juice, and lemon. Pretty delicious stuff, you should try it! It's supposed to be made with creme de casis instead of blackberry juice, but the proper ingredient was difficult to procure, it seems. After a few drinks, the main event occurred: eye-lash dying! I have an illegal-in-the-US kit from Australia. It didn't show up very much on Theresa and Lauren's (already dark) lashes but really made a big difference on Laurel.

After that was over, Alex and I headed to the city to meet up with our friend Megan, who was in town from D.C., and Moe, who was just laid off and in need of boozing. It becomes a little difficult to remember what happened after that point. Eventually, I found myself at Bushwick Country Club, where some overly chatty NYU kid bought me a tall boy of PBR and I now feel the need to re-evaluate my entire life because I had to type that sentence.

I am telling you this because, despite the fact that it is asinine and mundane, it is far more interesting than a recap of what my Giants did to the Seahawks.

The Continued Vince-Youngification of the Nation

Dear Plaxico Burress,

Skipping practice is one thing. You know, sometimes I call in sick to work when I am not actually sick, but rather just wanted to stay in bed and get laid and then couldn't come up with a good excuse for being late, so I e-mail feigning allergies or something. It's cool, everyone does this! What most people don't do is skip work without calling in and then refuse to take phone calls for an entire day, and then act all surprised when people are worried and angry with them. I mean, I have known one person who did that, but he was going to jail and flipped out during his 25th hour. So unless you were going to jail, which you weren't, this is not cool!

I have no idea what your excuses were, and quite honestly, with your injury history, I don't think the Giants should be running you down in practice and you should get some more time off than other players might, but goddamnit, your boss is Tom Coughlin, noted fascist disciplinarian. You seriously thought you were going to get away with this?

Thank god the Giants don't face a real opponent until sometime next year, or something. Because getting suspended for two weeks by the team might've actually fucked some things up for them in different circumstances!

Sincerely yours,
Ally

What do you mean, we have to work on Sunday?!

After a Giants game, I all too often feel like I’ve just gotten that report card from my non-existent kid’s first-grade teacher lambasting him for having ADHD. “Very talented, but easily distracted.” “Only puts in enough effort to get by.” Coughlin’s Giants are an inconsistent mess; a trait I thought was behind them post-Super Bowl victory. Despite the shaky first half against the Rams. Surely, they’ve stopped playing down to the level of inferior opponents. They can’t possibly actually be this lazy – they fucking won the Super Bowl!

Yeah, whatever, that would be way too easy on me and my fingernails and my cigarette-stifled lungs. Overtime? Against the Bengals? Really?

At least we didn’t lose to the Dolphins. That’s about all I have to say about the (admittedly exciting!) ordeal on Sunday.

A win is a win is a win, no matter how ugly or lazy or ridiculous the team looks in getting it, and, in fairness, Eli’s played exceedingly well all three games of the season, Justin Tuck has stepped up big-time, and Cincy did a legitimate number on the running game. But still, their habit of doing just enough to get by is vaguely terrifying, even when they’re 3-0. They spend half of every game looking like they’re on the brink of an epic fuck-up, only to straighten up and look amazing when necessary. But as anyone who was that ADHD kid in school knows, it’s all well and good to sneak out for smoke breaks when no one is looking and blowing off homework because you got the major shit, you can get by just fine that way. But when the teacher decides to throw some ludicrous pop-quiz curveball, you get stupid tripped up and of course those quizzes are inevitably weighted about 30 percent in the syllabus and then you get a C- in the course and your mom gets super angry. Ahem. Anyway.

The Giants’ first quiz is on November 2. I hope they haven’t spent the interim two months slumming so badly that they can’t even remember where they put their pencils, because the Cowboys? They’re gonna be prepared. So how’s about treating teams like the Rams or the Niners or the Browns as worthy opponents and actually play to win the game against them, guys? You’re better than this. Stop being distracted already. School started weeks ago — wake the hell up!

(Totally unrelated aside: Brian Dawkins’s amazing flying tackle sack of Roethlisberger, coupled with a strip and a recovery? Priceless. Dawkins never ceases to amaze me, and he is my secret rival team boyfriend. The other thing that amazed me was Roethlisberger disappearing off the field in some kind of a tantrum. I hope the doctors checked his vagina for sand while they were looking into his “hand injury.”)