Oakland Raiders

The New York Giants Lack of Talent Show

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For a little over a week, I have been suffering through a head cold that has made me question my hold on reality. It’s a cold/virus that refuses to relinquish its hold – my head feels like rubber cement has been injected between my ears – and it’s as if I am constantly wearing a damp shroud that is impersonating my melanin-challenged skin.

Throughout this week, I have been cheery and ridiculously delightful. If you believe that, you probably also believe Ebola is a great Scrabble word and not the current pandemic that threatens amateur bowlers in New York City.

The week wasn’t great, but then the New York Football Giants decide to ruin my Sunday night with a 38-17 loss to the defending Super Bowl champion, the Pete Carroll-coached, cheatin’ Seattle Seahawks. The Giants competed for three quarters, but were blown out in a fourth quarter that made me question dedicating any time to a football franchise that has as much talent as an episode of America’s Got Talent.

New York’s defense failed to grasp, understand, marginally understand, adapt to or have a fuckin’ clue with Seattle quarterback Russell Wilson and his mastery of the read option versus a defense that requires a bulk purchase of Cialis. Statistically, the Giants have never trotted out on the field a defense worse than what has been cobbled together for the last four games. This linebacking corps should be sent to Jon Bon Jovi’s Sayreville War Memorial High School; where next year, they could attempt to jump-start a high school football program that is in a Wallenda free fall from hazing incidents that would be more suitable to residents of Rahway State Prison.

This season is over. Expect big changes with the G Men. Coach Tom Coughlin will most probably be nudged into retirement. Giants general manager Jerry Reese, who I believe is far more culpable than the demoralized Tom Coughlin, needs to execute a great draft or unearth free agents that can play professional football at a high level to retain his job but it can be easily argued that we are far beyond that point. Reese has failed to build roster depth, which every successful NFL team needs to achieve, and that depth has to be created by finding sleepers in the draft or some goddamn fuckin’ free agent linebackers who can tackle! It’s not easy to find these draft sleepers, but the Giants are facing a formidable talent gap that leaves them closer competitively to the Oakland Raiders than the Seattle Seahawks.

Yes, the G Men are facing injuries at key positions, but that’s the nature of the NFL. Losing All Pro wide receiver Victor Cruz to a season-ending injury would negatively affect any team’s offense, but when the Giants offer the underperforming and maddeningly erratic Rueben Randle as a substitute for Cruz – someone needs to watch more tape on Randle because he makes me want to throw large objects through my television screen. Not crushed beer cans or pretzels, but this clown makes me want to throw Wile E. Coyote Acme anvils, computer monitors and smart cars through a flat screen.

Every time I watch a Giants game, Rueben Randle causes my blood pressure to spike. I contemplate slipping some nitroglycerin under my tongue to quell the symptoms of agita, because this motherfucker has been shortening my life. Randle would be an inadequate fourth or fifth wide receiver for most teams, but with the Giants, he was viewed as a passable second wide out heading into the season. The guy runs tortuous Lewis & Clark receiver routes, his reads suggest that he needs to be introduced to quarterback Eli Manning and his hands are better suited for pizza making than football catching. This is the twenty-three-year-old’s third season with the Giants, and Randle’s performance indicates that staying at LSU for his senior year would not have hurt this kid.

It’s not only Rueben Randle that causes an involuntary gag reflex from this diehard Giants fan. The offensive line is more porous than the Syrian border. Granted the offensive line is a work in progress, with rookie Weston Richburg starting at left guard and second-year right tackle Justin Pugh, and that doesn’t bode well for Eli Manning enjoying a comfortable post-game sleep nor should it prevent rookie running back, Andre Williams, from doing a comprehensive search for a New Jersey chiropractor. Pugh started the year strong but his play has deteriorated as of late, and Richburg’s claim to fame could be a Matt O’Dwyer nasty streak to make up for what he lacks in technique.

Looks like the Alewife stop on the MBTA.

Special teams have been mired in mediocrity. Could the Giants find a punt returner or kick returner that has the ability to make tacklers miss?

After nine games, the Giants are averaging 22.1 yards per kickoff return, which ranks 23rd in a 32-team league, and their longest kickoff return is 40 yards placing that as the 21st longest return for an individual team. Isn’t that below mediocrity? To put an end to that question, the Giants rank 29th in punt return average with an illustrious 5.8 yards per return. The longest return is 18 yards, which vaults the New York punt return team to 28th in the NFL. This is an impotent group that should be seeking Cialis handouts from the defense.

Please play the David Wilson card with me. The retired running back/kick returner was never a guarantee for this season, and I’ve always believed that Jerry Reese makes little effort to find explosive return men. Again, Jerry Reese needs to locate some talent.

After all of this palaver, the Giants sit at 3-6. There are seven weeks of Big Blue agony remaining in 2014, but where is the return on my investment? Should I commit approximately 23 additional hours (7 games) to watch an untalented football team, led by a lame duck coach, who has been provided a bevy of players that would have fought to make Donald Trump’s New Jersey Generals of the defunct USFL?

New Jersey Generals Doug Flutie & Donald Trump

My head may be filled with a substance that has muddled my ability for critical thought, but the better question to ask is: What is messing with Jerry Reese’s mind?

Losing to the Seahawks sucks, but my night only got worse. Having prepared a pregame meal of nachos loaded with jalapenos, thai chili peppers, poblano peppers, onions, parsley and extra sharp cheddar cheese, my delicate innards were a maelstrom ignited by Giants’ dyspepsia and a poorly conceived menu choice for someone suffering from cold/virus related diarrhea. After the game ended, I then constructed a three-egg omelette, with a chopped-up Dogfish Head brat sautéed with poblano peppers and then splashed with a few spoonfuls of black bean corn salsa. Topped with kosher salt and fresh ground pepper, this was a truly tasty after game meal, but a couple of days of diarrhea had ravaged and exposed my sphincter muscles leaving them defenseless to the ferociousness of peppers who were organic agents of mass destruction.

My head hurt, my heart hurt, and my ass would have been a suitable landing site for smokejumpers. I was a complete mess, and thinking about the Giants was no solace. I would have viewed Mick Jagger’s solo material as a bitter salve to my current state, or being mandated to listen to the audio book of John Darnielle’s Wolf in White Van,  performed by Miley Cyrus, as a soothing balm to my torn up ass, heart and head.

Vintage Smokejumpers

Maybe that’s what I’ll do with my Sundays, come up with the most inane performers of audio books. The Bling Ring recited by Henry Hill? Robert DeNiro delivers White Oleander? This is clearly a niche market that has been ignored for too long, and my rejection of Jerry Reese’s woefully constructed Giants may give me the opportunity to flesh out this growth industry.

This is going to be a long winter.

Why Belichick and Brady Will Not Win the Super Bowl

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There is nothing more irritating than hearing from the Boston media and Masshole Nation that the New England Patriots are going to win Super Bowl XLIX in Glendale, Arizona. Let’s not let history prevent the ‘In Bill We Trust’ sycophants to believe in anything else, Belichick’s Patriots are nearly a virtual lock to be victorious in the final game of another arduous NFL season.

Though this would contradict history, there are very few folks in New England, who can envision a scenario, where the dynamic duo of Bill Belichick and Tom Brady do not capture their fourth Super Bowl. No coach in NFL history has ever gone ten years between Super Bowl wins, and that is the feat Belichick will attempt to achieve.

The longest span between Super Bowl wins was achieved by Joe Gibbs, in his first stint in Washington, where saying Redskins was politically correct within the Beltway and where his squads held aloft the Vince Lombardi Trophy in 1983, 1988 and 1992. Gibbs’ nine-year span is the mark that Belichick will try to overcome.

The history of football does not lie. It is a game that devours its young. It is a game that routinely destroys coaches by the enormous time commitment required; head coaches who burn out, breakdown and watch the game inexorably pass them by. The game holds no promises and a Super Bowl victory is far from guaranteed.

The oldest coach to win a Super Bowl was achieved by the then 65-year-old Tom Coughlin with his New York Giants in 2012. Ironically, the Giants victory came against Belichick’s Pats.

Bill Belichick will be 62 when Super Bowl XLIX is played on February, 1, 2015. In the history of the Super Bowl, only four head coaches have led their teams to a championship and been over the age of 60.

At the age of 61, Weeb Ewbank won Super Bowl III with his underdog New York Jets in 1969. Super Bowl XXXIV was garnered by the 63-year-old Dick Vermeil, who conquered burn out from his Philly years and led the St. Louis Rams to a title. 61-year-old Tom Coughlin’s New York Giants beat the greatest team ever assembled by Bill Belichick, according to Patriots Nation, ending the Pats’ 18-0 run into the postseason and securing the Giants a third Vince Lombardi Trophy in 2008. And cheatin’ Pete Carroll’s Seattle Seahawks shellacked Peyton Manning’s Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XLVII, 43-8, when Petey was 62,

Yes, a coach can win a Super Bowl in his sixties, and perhaps Belichick is the best candidate to do that but the history that suggests otherwise is immense. In 48 Super Bowls, only four winning head coaches have been in their sixties. An actuary would not place money on Belichick and his New England Patriots.

If the age of Belichick doesn’t dissuade a deep belief in the invincibility of Belichick’s 2014 Patriots, how about the age of starting quarterback Tom Brady? Brady is 37. At the age of 37 and 38, Denver’s John Elway won back-to-back Super Bowls in 1997 and 1998. At the age of 37, Jim Plunkett quarterbacked Al Davis’s silver and black Oakland Raiders to a 38-9 drubbing of a Joe Gibbs’ Washington group with a 35-year-old Joe Theismann under center. Elway and Plunkett are the two oldest quarterbacks to win Super Bowls.

The data would show that nearing the age of 40 does not equal Super Bowl wins for quarterbacks. As much as pundits like to laud the role of experience, the game of football is usually played best by young men, who can withstand the physical pounding of a sixteen-game regular season and then entry into a postseason playoff tournament. New England zealots will highlight the advances in conditioning and sports medicine that allow today’s athletes to defy the creeping effects of age, but that belief is not demonstrated in the history of the game.

Possibly a 38-year-old Peyton Manning or a 37-year-old Tom Brady can buck the odds, but their lack of youth is a problem that cannot be ignored. Manning and Brady are riding Canton-bound careers to football Valhalla, but age will win out. For those citizens in Patriot Nation, who fervently believe that Brady will play effectively into his forties, this would be a rationale only a senile Al Davis would offer. Clearly Manning’s Broncos and Brady’s Patriots appear to be the elite of the AFC, but this is a cruel game that is adverse to romance and fairy tales. Brady and Manning are staring at long odds as their bodies creep nearer to 40 than they do to 30.

The Belichick and Brady collaboration is nearing its end, and there may be one last title to grab, but ten years without a Super Bowl ring would suggest New England’s halcyon days ended some time ago.