For this post, check out the NY Times Fifth Down Blog.

Big game tonight…

Here’s a podcast interview with me on Seahawkaddicts.com, the excellent Seahawks fan blog whose lead writer, Michael Steffes, penned the in-depth take on his team that I posted yesterday.

To hear the entire podcast, a lot of which is comprised of informative Seahawks-talk between Steffes and his blog cohorts, click here. My interview starts at around the one-third mark of the podcast. For just the interview – on which I ramble on like this guy at times – you can click here.

And if you didn’t see it already, here’s my bye week analysis for the New York Times’ Fifth Down Blog. (Mine is the one that begins with “The hunky dory…”)

Not taking credit for the turnaround, Mets manager Willie Randolph admitted he gave Eli Manning a peptalk at a last year according to Dave Lennon of Newsday.

“I met Eli [Manning] right when they were on that run,” Randolph said today. “Not that I want to take credit for it, but I guess it sounds like that, I gave him a nice little pep talk. I saw him at a jewelry store. He got hot after that and never stopped, so that was kind of a cool. He’s a nice kid.”

As for today’s visit by Giants linebacker Antonio Pierce, Randolph was thrilled to have some of that Lombardi Trophy magic in camp.

More on Lennon’s blog at Newsday.

According to his blog over at the Bergen Record, Vinny DiTrani says Gibril Wilson may hit the open market next week.

The Giants winning the Super Bowl also addsd to Wilson’s bargaining power. Teams like to bring in guys from successful organizations to bring that winning attitude to the locker room.

And let’s not forget Gibril is a pretty good player.

To me, it will be a big loss, but the Giants have overcome those type of losses last year.

Art Staple on Newsday had this on his blog:

We’ll have a web story and one in the paper on the Shockey subject, and here’s the key part for now: Jerry Reese emailed me this response to a question about whether the Giants are shopping Shockey:

“He is our starting tight end.”

I’d say that stands pretty well. Shockey is still a valuable player, especially as a blocker — I think Kevin Gilbride could be pretty excited about the two-TE sets with Shockey and Kevin Boss for next season, especially since Boss has proven to be a very good pass-catcher and an improving blocker. Could be some very good decoy plays run out of those sets.

So don’t expect any type of trade. Besides the Giants need him IMO. Kevin Boss and Shockey can co-exist.

Not much going on today in Giant Land, so I figured I would put this up to make everyone feel happy.

As a caveat: This contains blue language and is not safe for work and parental guidance suggested and all that good stuff. If you get in trouble because of it, don’t come running to me.

Also you can find his SB Preview here. [Also very blue].

His blog is at TownieNews.com