1) It being December 31st, we ask YOU what YOU would do with the coaching staff of the NY Giants. See the POLL on the upper left and vote.
2) The Pro Bowl selections were released on Tuesday. Speaking for myself, others may or may not agree with me but I find these contests somewhat misleading.
- They can be a lagging indicators of success in prior years.
- They can be rife with mistakes.
- They have fans like us, most of whom do not know the entire league well enough, vote. That is 1/3rd of the makeup of this! Heck, 90% of fans could not even tell you the starting linemen on their favorite team, let alone the quality of LBers on another team. So when the balloting amongst players/coaches is close, the last 1/3rd of the vote can swing it wildly depending on the popular perception.
- They do not incorporate the specific ROLE a player has on his squad, ie the kind of offense or defense he is playing in. As an example, an offensive player on a team that shares touches more may end up with less stats because of the mouths they have to feed.
- A guy playing through an injury with 95% of the production will not get noticed, even though his efforts was perhaps significantly larger than a year ago when they voted him the Pro Bowl.
- Weather for a player in a dome or San Diego vs that of a player in the Northeast
So with all of this qualified, the Giants’ lone selection was Shaun O’Hara. You could easily make an argument for Steve Smith. Kevin Boss will probably never have an opportunity to become a Pro Bowler as long as Gilbride is his coordinator. Tuck suffered through an injury. Webster’s play fell off in the latter part of the season.
3) One person we know who has extensive knowledge of the entire league, Wonder, shared some of his views of the Pro Bowl selections:
“It’s all a big fat joke..for Faneca….alias- the human turnstile at pass-blocking to be in pro bowl is a joke..whereas David Harris is UNEQUIVOCALLY the BEST ILB in the AFC…wouldn’t trade him for ANYONE…certainly not an over the hill Ray Lewis who is not at 100 percent all the time..we all get old, right ??…and STINCHCOMB ??? are you browning kidding ??? mediocre at best..at least they kept Debrickapussy off… but Ray Rice over THOMAS JONES ?? the TOUGHEST runner inside/outside in the league and does NOT fumble… the list goes on and on….NO TONY GONZALEZ ??? must be a misprint !!!”
4) Did you notice how they moved (“flexed”) the Jets game from 1PM to 830PM on Sunday night? As in Sunday night January 3rd? There is no problem with football being played in winter. How about winter at 1PM. How about more than 6 days’ notice? How about ticket holders, PSL HOLDERS, people who have to pay a premium for these events… how about if they can treat these people with a little more respect?! Like not moving their game 7 1/2 hours. Like playing in daylight, when temps are 10-15 degrees higher? Do you think the money these fans make grows on trees? You are asking these people to go to work the next morning on significantly less sleep. Odds are the game won’t end until ~midnight, they won’t be out of the parking lot until 12:30AM, home by 1:30PM, maybe 2AM considering many of these people are still from Long Island, asleep at 2-230AM and awake by 6-630AM for work. Very nice. Flex that.
5) Preview for Sunday’s Vikes game?
- Minnesota has lost 3 of the last four after going 10-1 out of the gate, so they are 11-4 and tied with the Eagles. They need the win.
- Simms noted last weekend that it is not Favre who is tiring, it is the WRs.
- It is one game, but you do want to give it your all and improve the level of play. Normally, we are talking about 1 or 2 spots in the draft- that will not make or break your draft. As Accorsi did in going up one spot for Shockey, trade up the one spot and do not get obsessed with the draft order. The Mayor fully notes 12 teams at 8-7 or 7-8. So there is a chance of swing ranging from picking at 11 to 22 (two teams from this group will go to the playoffs). For the Giants, who cannot make it to the playoffs, it means a difference of picking anywhere from 11 to 20. The Giants opponents’ records are a total of 130-110, so we will be losing a lot of tiebreakers. What this means is that (w/o going through the opponents records of the other 11 teams) the Giants are probably looking at something between ~15-17 if they lose and 19-20 if they win, roughly speaking.
5a) The Week 16 loss, the 4 losses in which the team allowed 40 points, these things are not going away, so the need for change is not going to get glossed over by a win over the Redskins (in which Campbell considered that some players may have quit on the team) or Vikings. To be fair, the Giants had to answer many questions a week later.
6) The Osi debate continues. He talks too much for his own good.
7) This is one of the reasons why we blog. To inform. We said this in July, Garafolo said this (about Reese) in December.
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