TDL’s Sports, Wrestling, & Otherwise

I needed a couple of days before writing a Giants post-mortem. The loss was nothing like That Mets Game a few months ago, especially because I went in knowing the game was a toss-up. The easiest bet on the board last week was Giants +7.

(Fun side story: my ex-roommate went to Vegas last week for the World Series of Beer Pong. He doesn’t gamble except he makes exactly two roulette bets every time he goes on a trip that involves gambling. He bets black or red twice, betting no more than twenty dollars. He allows each person with him to give him twenty dollars, no more, no less. At some point in the night, he always delivers each person eighty dollars. This has never failed. Since I didn’t make this trip, and remembered the Roulette Game late, I asked him to spot me the $20. Later in the night, he calls me to confirm that I now had $80 dollars. Since it was free money at that point, I had him put it on the Giants cash line (+220). That made this game extra fun and extra awful)

As for the season, I guess it’s an improvement over last year. A first round playoff loss, but with points this time. As for the players themselves:

Tiki Barber: “Thanks for the memories and Go With God,” is all I can say for Tiki. Tiki made his retirement plans early in the season and we’ve spent the last four months hearing about it. How he’s convinced he’s going to be on the NBC Nightly News and not just another face on football commentary. He signed a four-year, $10 million dollar deal with the Mouse, which will land him either on ESPN or ABC. I could go into a rant here about how he’s a really good runningback but, when he’s not talking sports, he’s just another guy in a suit, like the hundreds of kids coming out of college every year with degrees in “communications” with “a concentration in sports journalism.”

Sadly, this is not the Giants’ biggest hole. They have one of the worst pass defenses in the league and, while I refuse to look at mock drafts before the season is even over, I’m sure that most of them will have the Giants taking cornerbacks or safeties in the first rounds, with a running-back not being selected until the third round at the earliest.

Michael Strahan: You have the season sack record and you’ve spent the last two seasons on the bench. The NFL Network, at the very least, has a comfy chair waiting for you to analyze pas rushes. He’s the defensive leader, but is another one of the guys who likes to air the team’s dirty laundry in public. I love Strahan, but it’s time for him to retire, too. He’s 35, he needs surgery on his foot. If he’s lucky, he’ll be ready for training camp next season. If he’s not, he won’t start the season. The Giants spent a bunch of money on Levar Arrington last year. I’d be very happy with a pass rush of him, Matthias Kiwanuka, and Osi. I’ll have to be, since that’s who I’ll have anyway. People killed Ernie Accorsi last season for taking Kiwanuka in last year’s draft. In retrospect, it was brilliant.

Jeremy Shockey: Has the amazing ability to go between “I hate him” and “he’s fine” almost weekly. I’ve decided that I’m going to think of it as “passion” and stop worrying. He’s going to make some big plays and he’s going to run his mouth. I think I’m OK with that.

Eli Manning: It’s not a mistake that he started looking extra awful after Luke Petitgout went out for the season. It’s also easy to forget we just watched Eli’s second full season and we’ve made the playoffs both times. At the very least, it’s time to find a new quarterbacks coach who can maybe teach Eli not to throw off his back foot, improve how he sees the field, and maybe, just maybe, work on his accuracy. Someone’s got to teach the kid how to hit a receiver on a short route.

Tom Coughlin: One of my rules about sports writing is “no complaining without a solution.” So, when it came time to complain about Tom Coughlin, I wasn’t sure what I would do. Most New York media hopped on the fire Coughlin bandwagon, but that was expected. The regular news guys really dislike Coughlin because he’s not as open, honest, and friendly as they like their head coaches to be. Tom isn’t a graduate of the “Joe Torre School of Media Relation” and, as such, the media can’t wait for Tom to get rushed out of town. The problem is: Tom is the last hiring Wellington Mara made before he died. It will be very hard for the organization to fire “Wellington’s Guy”.

That being said, there are exactly three guys I would be happy with as Coughlin’s replacement.

1) Charlie Weiss: He’s the “Parcells Guy” who people in New York seem to like. After Eric Mangini’s incredibly successful season, the Giants would likely rush to sign Weiss if they could. I’m not spending a lot of time on this because I don’t think any coach, after only 2 years, leaves THE college football gig to take the reigns of a mess.

2) Jimmy Johnson: The quintessential Filthy Cowboy. Johnson’s success with the Cowboys in my formative sports years is the reason I hate the Cowboys. He has said in the past the only way he’d coach again would be if it was a high profile job and if he could be both the GM and the head coach. With Ernie Accorsi, the Giant GM, retiring at the conclusion of this season, and the head coach on shaky ground, you have the perfect storm of circumstances to lure Johnson out of retirement. Again, not my perfect situation, but Johnson has three rings convincing me otherwise.

3) Bill Parcells: In even more of a perfect storm of circumstances, you have the GM and Head Coaching jobs both opened, Parcells’s hatred of the ongoing T.O. drama, and a heart-crushing playoff defeat last weekend. Addendum: NFL.com is reporting that Parcells may be the leading candidate for JUST the General Manager job for the Giants. This should terrify Tom Coughlin. If this somehow winds up happening, Tom will have the entire 2007 season to read “What if Bill was coaching” articles. Also, any Giant head coach with Parcells GMing will have the Pat Riley murder of Van Gundy over his head (seriously, has anyone seen the guy since Pat took over the Heat?).

More objectively, the team went 8-8 with the third highest strength of schedule in the NFC, won a tough division game on the road to get into the playoffs, played a good game against an Eagles team whose offensive line is playing on another level making a late comeback, and lost on a last second field goal. I don’t love what happened, but I can live with it. Frankly, if it were any team OTHER than the Filthy Eagles, I’d be rooting for the real life Rocky story.

The same thing I said at the end of last season, I’ll say again. I’m not looking toward next September with a sense of impending doom (other than trying to find a new apartment in New York City, but that’s beside the point). I can still honestly say that I think the team is making the right steps toward a championship.

And that’s really all any but one team can hope for come February.