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.”)