Russell Wilson

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.

The Life of a Youth Soccer Coach (Tick Tick Boom)

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I know ISIS has beheaded two American journalists, and that these fundamentalist fucktards are now a serious threat to America and Europe. Russia’s Vladimir Putin is suffering from a mid-life crisis, which most guys deal with by purchasing a sports car or becoming familiar with a pretty, young Kremlin intern, but Putin scratches his fear of mortality by invading nations.

Obama has a lot to worry about, but I have my own shit to contend with today. I need to develop a practice plan for a Boys U-10 soccer team. U-10 translates into a bunch of easily bored eight- and nine-year-olds, who like to play tag and dodge ball more than they like to play soccer.

When I volunteered to “help out”, I never envisioned that I would have to do research on how to run a practice but soccer has become a tad more complicated than when I played at the same age. I was more concerned about getting the right number of oranges for a team snack than I was about developing a practice plan.

Being conscientious, I started watching videos demonstrating practice drills that had been rehearsed multiple times for our viewing pleasure by suburban white boys with tidy haircuts. And then I strayed into strategy and tactics, where I read posts describing the perfect formation for 6 v. 6 and this got the competitive juices flowing. I had decided on a 3-2 formation, because my team would be able to take advantage of 1 v. 1 match-ups offensively, My central defender would anchor the defense and the two fullbacks would move forward individually, when it was available, to provide support for crosses into the box. The sweet taste of victory hung in the air waiting for Luis Suarez to take a bite out of it.

Luis Suarez

At our first practice, Coach Dave quickly realized that any talk of strategy would have to be tabled. The drills I had researched were going to improve their skills, but none of the boys appeared to be all that jacked to practice two-touch passing or then move on to one-touch passing. Any drill with tag or freeze in its name was preferred to anything resembling a well-researched soccer drill.

Fortunately, I had done further research on “fun games” for the kids, which involved me running around after balls and narrowly avoiding the colossal pile of fresh dog excrement near one of our game targets. If I saw the motherfucker who didn’t pick up his dog’s hazmat pile of shit, I would have thrown it at him and his dog. I’ve always thought that if a person experienced an irate, crazy mofo, who picked up dog shit with his bare hands and threw a Russell Wilson shit spiral into their face, the asshole would never forget his or her doggie doo-doo bag again.

I’m hopping over dog shit. I’m sweating. I’m trying to keep an accurate record of the score. The kids are moving closer and closer to the targets to gain a competitive advantage over their opponents. I’m stressed out, because I have never coached soccer and I suck at the game. I have been a dismal failure at this game for my entire life, which includes being unceremoniously cut from my high school’s freshman soccer team, and now I am the Drew Carey of youth soccer. Come on down!

Ronda Rousey and an admiring Joe Rogan 

The kids then want to scrimmage, so I play for one of the sides who is short a player. A few minutes into the scrimmage, I clock a kid in the right eye with my left hand, as I make a strong Giorgio Chinaglia striker move in the box. The kid goes down like a Ronda Rousey UFC opponent, but I resist the opportunity to trash-talk his weak ass. (Actually, the kid went down briefly and then jumped up and got back into the fray.) As one of the kids said, “The coach hit him.”

Yep, the coach hit him. Maybe I should concentrate on passing the ball to my teammates and staying out of the penalty area with my Giorgio Chinaglia arsenal of offensive moves. My team lost, but I made the winning team run sprints to know the pain required of victory. Nah, I didn’t do that, but it’s not a bad thought for today’s practice.

Giorgio Chinaglia of the New York Cosmos 

Today’s practice is going to feel like playing soccer in a Hawaiian lava field with piles of dog shit scattered all about. I will run off a few pounds. Coach kids on a game that I lack any talent for, but when has talent ever stopped a committed American? I’ll make these boys into a winning juggernaut – not kidding about that – and life will get a little less stressful after tomorrow’s away match.

That’s if we win. If we lose, I’ll be at the computer seeking to find how I create a soccer juggernaut from the fragile minds and bodies of young boys. Uh … no coach was able to do anything with me on a soccer field, but I have a good feeling these boys are a lot more talented than a young, sunburnt Sheridan.