The Day After Big Blew It

The reign is over. After falling to the Philadelphia Eagles yesterday in the divisional playoffs, the Giants fell to the task of trying to make sense of how the game—and the season—slipped away from them.

Unlike the Jets collapse, the Giants still seem to have earned enough capital with last year's Super Bowl win to keep the local media from calling for the heads of QB Eli Manning or Head Coach Tom Coughlin. That's not to say that either gets away unscathed of course. The News' Gary Myers says that Coughlin was the coach who last season "outsmarted Bill Belichick," but yesterday "was outcoached by Andy Reid...lost his magic touch." Manning is accused pretty much across the board as looking like "the Eli of old," but Howie Long may have been the only one to have called Donovan McNabb's potential to dominate his opponent before it actually happened.

And of course you knew that sports writers were waiting with bated breath to bring up how big of a factor Plaxico Burress may have been yesterday had he not been given a breather by the team following the shooting mess he got himself into midway through the season. The Post's Steve Serby points out that Eli's overthrows wouldn't have been an issue with a 6'6" receiver on the field and says that once Plax was taken out of the equation, "The red zone became a dead zone for them."

And while most of the Giants ducked the Plax factor, the Eagles weren't shy to bring it up in the locker room yesterday. Safety and defensive leader Brian Dawkins told the press, "When he's not there, a huge, huge part of their offense is taken away." Giants GM Jerry Reese said that the door is "absolutely" open for a Plaxico return "if everything goes right."

As for the defense that received the most credit for the team's Super Bowl trophy last year, most couldn't fault a squad that basically shut down Brian Westbrook for most of the day. And yet they were not the force that made last year's MVP Tom Brady look vulnerable for the first time in his otherwise flawless season. Mike Lupica sums it up best, "We wondered how much they would miss Plaxico Burress yesterday and Michael Strahan and Osi Umenyiora. They missed them all, mightily."

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By Billy Parker in News on January 12, 2009 6:47 PM

Comments [rss]

bornbrednewyorker

Eli blows. Last year a lucky chuck up and a blown interception by Samuels won them a game they could have easily lost. He stunk all year and he stinks in general. This was the real Eli, no leadership ability and limited skills.

bxbrian

Billy Parker's headline FTW

grandzu

Coach blew it...should have elected to give the ball at the beginning of the game.

Defense blew it...couldn't stop a third and 20? Zero sacks?

QB blew it...couldn't throw an accurate throw to save his life!

Wza

They were outplayed..nuff said.

lushintransit

The Giants lost because for some reason someone thought telling Eli to shoot balls into the wind when no one was open was a better idea than running Jacobs up the middle when they knew he couldn't be stopped. They also told 230+ Jacobs to run up and down the lines rather than forward.

woodendesigner

I think it's about time they were called the New Jersey Giants BECAUSE THAT IS WHERE THEY PLAY. Don't need them and don't want them.

berniegoetz

Half of Eli's passes looked more like hucked stones at a Scottish games.

jaycjay

"The Post's Steve Serby points out that Eli's overthrows wouldn't have been an issue with a 6'6" receiver on the field"

That's just dumb. Of course you can overthrow a 6'6" receiver, and Eli has overthrown Burress in the past. Unless Serby's contention is that Manning kept forgetting Burress wasn't there and was making throws thinking they'd be in Plaxico's reach?

What Serby actually wrote was, "You can throw high if you have a 6-foot-6 receiver." But of course in reality most of the time he'd still be throwing either over Burress' shoulder, or near his outstretched hands. A miss is still a miss. It's not as if Manning-to-Burress ever had a 100% success rate, right?