TDL’s Sports, Wrestling, & Otherwise

Seriously.

I’m….. ugh.

I’ve been putting off writing this column because I was scared of it. July and August are supposed to be the time to be excited for football regardless of how bad your team was last season. I mean we’re talking about a league of 32 teams where 12 of them are going to get into the playoffs and, since they went to four divisions, your team just needs to be less crappy than 10 of the other teams that didn’t win their division. It’s the brilliance of the the NFL. Even when they didn’t have a salary cap to make billionaires richer and screw the players and fans encourage parity, lots of teams made the playoffs. Once you get into the playoffs, anyone’s got a shot. This was one of the first years I was actually dreading football season. It was set to be the first season since the Ray “I got thrown under the bus for not being Bill Parcells” Handley era that I was hating the thought of baseball season being over.

But, a funny thing happened on the way to my dread. I started paying attention. What I noticed was: the NFC still kinda sucks. On top of that… no one in the NFC East is any better than they were last season. In the NFC East, it’s not so much “who got better” as it is “who got the least worse.” Should we make a list? Let’s.

1) Filthy Cowboys: It remains to be seen if Tony Romo will recover from his delicious failure. That’s the kind of play that can wreck a player. With “competent” back-up Brad Johnson waiting in the wings, Romo’s got some pressure. They downgraded from “Cadillac” to “Geo Metro” in the coaching department (funny story, Bill Parcells’s retirement home is in my home town now… nice place). New coach Wade Phillips gets to play the T.O. game with ESPN this season. If Parcells was unable to make Owens behave… what the hell is Wade Phillips going to do?

2) Filthy Eagles: The warranty on the “mobile quarterback” apparently expires at age 28. Donovan McNabb will turn 31 this November. This means McNabb either needs to change his game (difficult) or not get injured. They wisely let their good back-up go to the Bucs (which, I don’t know which decision was more inexplicable… the Buccaneers offering Rich Garcia $5M to “compete for the starting job” or the Eagles not using some of their $11M in cap space to keep him on board for McNabb’s inevitable injury. Now, the Eagles are looking forward to at least four starts by AJ Feeley or Kelly Holcomb. Most of their receivers have been in the league less than three seasons and they replaced Donte Stallworth with Kevin Curtis.

3) Filthy Redskins: Until they actually do something, I can’t take them seriously. The Redskins seem to go in to every season looking great on paper; Santana Moss and James Thrash are good receivers, Clinton Portis is a great back, Randel-El is a good return guy, their defense is serviceable… but they never perform. Last year, it looked as though Mark Brunell was heading toward one more great run, but that fizzled. This year, they’re listing Jason Campbell as their starting quarterback. He of the 76.5 QB Rating over 7 games last season. While I love all their offensive weapons, I don’t love the guy pulling the trigger.

4) The New York Football Giants: Tiki’s gone… while some Giant fans are petrified by this, I’m ecstatic. As much as the Giants supported him all through his career as a fumbling back, he’s found it necessary to take every opportunity to slam the organization and Tom Coughlin on the way out. Because, you know, Coughlin certainly didn’t fix any problems for Tiki….. like teaching him how to NOT fumble.

With one high-profile malcontent gone, public opinion has rapidly turned on high-profile holdout Michael Strahan. Strahan signed, at his request, a top loaded contract that paid him $9M/season at the beginning, with a signing bonus, and $4M/season toward the end. After his divorce paid Mrs. Strahan in the neighborhood of $18M, Mr. Strahan is holding out for more money. To the Giants’ credit, they seem completely unwilling to renegotiate with a 37-year-old who’s played two seasons worth of games in the last three. To the fans’ credit, they have not adopted the “just pay him” attitude that holdouts occasionally drum up for veteran players. After Strahan’s last season of talking a huge game and not really delivering, the fans seem ready to move on. Frankly, in a season where Coughlin has promised his locker room would not be a source of drama, I’d like to see Strahan gone. I’m guessing, as he just paid his ex-wife a boatload of money to go away, that he won’t be dismissing $4 million (or even $2 million, since he signed the contract while they were still married…. no clue how that works) so easily. Strahan will likely be back, and if he, Matthias Kiwanuka, and Osi Umenyiora can put together a healthy season… and some defensive backs can manage to go a season without getting hurt (UPDATE: In an almost comical if not so sad twist of fate, Safety Will Demps and Cornerback Sam Madison both got injured on the same play in the Giants’ pre-season game vs. the Ravens. Demps dislocated his elbow on a tackle and, at the same time on the other side of the field, Madison pulled the same hamstring that kept him out four weeks last season. The Giants’ crack training staff strikes again, keeping the guys nice and warmed up on a rainy, damp night. Good show, gentlemen) The Giants’, they have a chance for things to break right and play some good defense.

What gives me hope on offense is this: Tiki Barber was a strong personality on the offense. He was, by default, the leader. I’m hoping, with him out of the way, Eli will somehow manage to get the offense under him this year. Otherwise, I think this is as good a test of Bill Simmons’s Ewing Theory as any other team in the league. Tiki’s gone, they have a decent receiving core and a some good, speedy, young receivers who show a lot of promise. Michael Jennings is a guy who was cut last season but looked decent. Steve Smith and Sinorice Moss are promising. Added with newly returned (and well-dressed) Amani Toomer and a hopefully more mature set of Jeremy Shockey and Plaxico Burress, the receiving corps (UPDATE THE SECOND: In the same preseason game as mentioned above, Michael Jennings tore his Achilles after catching a 10-yard pass from Manning. He didn’t get hit… he just fell down with a ruptured Achilles. Fire them. All of them. Right the f*ck now. Steve Smith is also out for a while with a concussion. I can’t blame them on that one other than not teaching a rookie how to defend himself properly.) is promising.

Another piece: according to Mike Hulse: “by the end of last season, the Giants’ offensive line consisted of Diehl, Seubert, Dancer, Prancer, and Vixen. It can’t be worse.”. This is true. The Giants’ season went south in a hurry as their linemen started to fall. That, more than anything, is a huge reason they started the season 6-2 and ended it 2-6. The Giants’ re-assembled their line and everyone’s healthy again. If they can stay that way and keep Eli from firing 60-yard jump balls off his back foot, there’s a chance.

And the final thing that really gives me hope: their schedule. Last season the NFC East was far more difficult than it was this season and they went 4-2, beating the Eagles when they had McNabb and losing during Garcia’s Cinderella stretch. They came within an eyelash of sweeping the Cowboys. In the first four weeks they get Dallas on the road, Green Bay, at Washington, and Philadelphia. This gets two tough divisional road match-ups out of the way early while everyone is healthy. Secondly, they get Green Bay, a team that no one other than Favre apologists really take seriously, at home in week two.

The next four games are the Jets at home (giving the Jets an extra home game this season, which we’ll get to some other time), the traveling comedy troupe that will be on the field in Atlanta, A 49ers team that may or may not be good depending on who you pay attention to (and, too many teams are calling the Niners as the “dark horse team” meaning they’re certainly not going to be the “dark horse team”), and then they travel to London to play the Dolphins. The Dolphins are losing the home game, which means the Giants get a neutral site game in the regular season. This is followed by their bye week.

Back from the bye week they get Dallas, at Detroit, Minnesota, and at Chicago. Of those games, exactly one is a problem, and it isn’t the defending NFC Champions. While the Bears decisively beat the Giants last year, I don’t think Rex Grossman is going to be able to duplicate his inexplicable success of last year.

The last month of the season brings at Philly, Washington, at Buffalo, and they close the season against the Patriots. The Giants will likely be playing a home game in Buffalo. The Bills have been applying blackouts to their local market for the last two seasons. There are also armies of Giants’ fans upstate. It’s very likely that Ralph Wilson Stadium is going to be sporting 75% Giants’ fans by the end of December. Then, they close the season against a Patriots team that will probably have had home field advantage locked up since early December. While that game doesn’t thrill me, I have the hope that no starters will be playing in it.

So, giving them the same divisional 4-2 as last season (which I think is reasonable… they should be able to steal at least one of those games on the road) and applying the should win, might win, and probably lose formula:

Should Win: Packers, Lions, Vikings, Bills, Falcons

Might Win: Jets, Chicago, Dolphins, Niners

Probably Lose: Patriots

They skip ALL the elite teams except one. The Colts, Ravens, Saints, and Chargers are nowhere to be found. If I give them 4-1 in should wins, 2-2 in might wins, and 0-1 in probably loses… I come up with a 10-6 season… an almost certain wildcard berth in the NFC.

Yes, I’m almost certainly looking at all of this through rose-colored glasses. Yes, I’m ignoring the injury bug that’s infected the Giants for the last two seasons. Yes, I’m assuming the Redskins will have a Redskins-esque season. Yes, I’m assuming that the Giants can break their irritating habit of playing down to their competition. Yes, I’m assuming that Eli Manning will be, at the very least, as serviceable as he’s been the last two seasons. Unlike other writers, I’m not writing the season off as long as Eli’s the quarterback. At the end of the day the Coughlin/Manning duo are 2/2 in getting to the post-season.

But, I’ve talked myself into being excited for football season again… and really, in August, isn’t that what matters?

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.

I’m going to take the opportunity to write this while the Giants have not yet been eliminated from the playoffs. As a fan of a team in the NFC East, I’m contractually obligated to hate the three other teams in the division (it’s true, a representative shows up at your house when you buy a piece of paraphernalia with paperwork). I hate the Cowboys far more than the other two teams. There are a host of reasons for this: they’ve been the best, most consistent team in the division during my lifetime, they’ve been Giant-killers more times than I care to recall, Michael Irvin, Jerry Jones, their fans are as patently obnoxious as Yankee fans (even more so considering their insistence that championships won in the NFL before the creation of the Super Bowl don’t really count since they didn’t give out fancy trophies before then and their mind-numbing justifications for this argument), having to listen to Troy Aikman or Moose Johnson announce Giant games, and I’m going to stop there because I could go on. All that being said, the ending of the Seahawks/Cowboys playoff game could not have been more delicious if it was topped with a hint of cinnamon.

At the end of the season, Tony Romo was what we thought he was (with respect to Denny Green), a pretty decent quarterback who had a really good month. He’s also a guy who might never recover from this game.

When Drew Bledsoe got benched, Romo rose to the occasion. Much like a rookie pitcher who runs off a quick five wins before people catch up to him, Romo confused some defensive coordinators at first and why wouldn’t he? Up until him, defensive coordinators playing the Cowboys were planning on rushing Drew Bledsoe and forcing him to make bad decisions. That’s how you beat Drew, it’s well known. Suddenly, the Cowboys had a quarterback who could move around in the pocket and could land short, quick passes before pressure got to him. What people were forgetting, or choosing to ignore, was that Bledsoe beat Romo for the starting job at the beginning of the season for a reason. Had Romo been the better quarterback, Romo would have won the starting job.

In the course of only three months, Tony Romo has gone from the guy Cowboy fans could wait to see, to Dallas’s season-saver, to a shaky rookie, to a guy who delivered the first Stomach Punch Loss* to the Cowboys since the Leon Lett Field Goal Debacle of ’93. In my “I hate the national sports media” kind of way, I find this tremendous. I love it when media darlings don’t perform up to their hype. I love when Peyton Manning fails (although, now it’s almost getting to the point that, because everyone thinks he’s a choker, I want him to win), I love when Donovan McNabb fails, I love that B-Roth had an awful year, I love when Brett Favre fails, and I doubly love it when Tony Romo failed. I would much rather see an under the radar, low key, underdog guy comes through. This is why, if or when the Giants lose, I’d love to see Drew Brees or Steve McNair end up coming through.

*- I know some of my readership hates Bill Simmons, but the “Levels of Losing” column is the best thing he’s ever written. And, while I know the Field Goal Debacle of ‘93 was a meaningless game in the grand scheme of things since the Cowboys won the Super Bowl that year, every Cowboy fan remembers that game. One can also make an argument that this game is a Level One, That Game Loss on the chart. I contend that a game can only go on the “That Game” level if the subject has to become a hermit in Montana following the game. Bill Buckner, Steve Bartman, and Scott Norwood are subjects to That Game losses.

I just wanted to put this up tonight so I could say:

HAHAHAAHAHAHAHAH!!!! MY TEAM IS STILL IN THE PLAYOFFS AND THE COWBOYS AREN’T. SUCK IT, T.O. SUCK IT, JERRY! SUCK IT, ONE AND ALL! HAHAHAHAHAAH!!!!

And I’m done.