So much for the nationally-televised coronation….  I’m sure most of us had forgotten how much losing sucks.  It’s been a long time since we’ve felt this way, which I guess underscores how lucky we’ve been this calendar year.  And hey, at least we’re not the Cowboys.

I started to worry – I always worry, but seriously worry – during the drawn-out pregame hype on ESPN.  All throughout the week, I had no problem indulging in the media love-fest surrounding the Giants, but as it crescendoed an hour before the game, it began to take on an ominous edge in my mind.  The “humanizing” segment on Coughlin featuring the Snees (Chris and Tom’s daughter) was an especially surefire sign that things had become too good to be true.  At that point, I knew a letdown of some kind, at some time, was imminent.

I just hoped it wouldn’t be last night.  But as I keep telling myself, we weren’t gonna go 16-0.  Even great teams will occasionally turn in terrible performances.  And last night, the 2008 Giants – who have become a great team over the last eight games by discovering an ability to play consistently well on both sides of the ball – laid their first egg.  It was a terrible performance, to be sure, but one that is now in the past while we are still in first place at present.

Or so I keep telling myself.  Because last night’s loss was not only brutal, it was worrisome, particularly because of our pass rush.

Neither or front four or are many blitzers could get close to Anderson all night.  Play after play, he was able to sit back, calmly scan the field, and find the open man.  Pretty quickly, he got into a rhythm where he was making his reads and firing strikes.

This makes it two out of three games where our pass rush has let us down (the Bengals game, the 6 sacks notwithstanding, was the other).  After that game, the Star-Ledger’s Mike Garafolo took stock of our pass rush over our first few games.  His conclusion was that while the sacks were there, the quarterback hurries were actually way down from last year.  Last night, neither the hurries nor sacks were there.

This points to two things that should really concern Giants fans: 1) We miss Osi and Strahan a lot more than we wanted to think at the beginning of the year.  Sure, Tuck’s great, but Kiwanuka and McDougle might not even be good.  At the position, it’s possible that we’ve gone from historically good to merely above-average.

And 2) Our blitzes were completely, utterly, scarily ineffective last night, which makes you wonder if we’re tipping them in some way.  There was talk after the Bengals game that we were tipping them, but that quieted after the Seattle blowout.  Maybe its time to start thinking about that again, as well as the uncomfortable possibility that the league may have caught up with Spags.

Could it be that our pass rush is a shell of what it was last year?  After last night, it seems possible.

While the pass rush was worrisome, there were some things last night that were merely bad.  There’s a distinction there: the bad stuff you expect will turn around.  The worrisome stuff you’re not so sure.

The play of the secondary, for instance, was bad.  But with all the time Anderson was given and with the confidence in his protection he accumulated, those guys faced a real uphill battle.

Obviously, Aaron Ross – a universally popular Giant, it seems – had a truly horrific game.  The first big play to Braylon – you rarely see Ross miss a tackle like that – the second big play to Braylon, and the fourth quarter touchdown to Braylon were all back-breaking plays and were all Ross’ fault (though it’s hard to kill a guy for suddenly getting a cramp).  On the touchdown to Darnell Dinkins, Ross was playing the deep safety position, and seemed a little slow coming over the top to help Pierce.  The good news is that he appears to be okay.  Good player, awful game.

The tackling was pretty bad last night too.  Repeatedly, the Browns were able to slip out of the initial tackle to pick up a couple extra yards to put them in “manageable” situations (the announcers were so big on that concept last night).  Against the Bengals, the tackling was poor too.  In both instances, this was probably a function of being on the field for so long but it’s still something to watch going forward.

In terms of the merely bad stuff offensively, there was obviously Eli.  It was a bad performance, but one that can be shrugged off – all quarterbacks, even great ones, have them.  And aside from the interceptions, Eli was actually pretty decent last night.  (I know, I know…  If my aunt had balls, she’d be my uncle, but still.)  His throws were generally pretty sharp, and he completed 18 for 28, or 64% of his passes, which is actually a hair better than his 2008 completion percentage and significantly better than his career mark.

The rest of the offense was fine.  We ran the ball very well and put up 373 yards of total offense, only 57 of which were full-fledged garbage-time yards gained during that bizarrely time-consuming drive at the end of the game.  (What the hell was that, anyway?  No, we weren’t going to win the game, but it was still mathematically possible.  You don’t give up, Tom!)

So in the end, you can shrug off some things about this game.  Eli and the secondary played poorly, but that’s in the past.  The pass rush, however, and to some degree the tackling, are things to worry about going forward.

Some of the coverage of the Plax’s comments today has been pretty misleading, and, I believe, kind of misses the point.

ESPN’s article, which has occupied the site’s top spot all evening, led with: “An unapologetic Plaxico Burress rejoined the New York Giants on Monday, noting he didn’t lose any sleep after he Super Bowl champions suspended him for a game.”

The beat writers are a little more even-handed, knowing that Plax being Plax isn’t nearly as bad as Manny being Manny or T.O. being T.O.

Sure, Plax’s attitude during the interview was defiant, and he definitely said some ridiculous things.  But if you read the whole transcript – you can read it in four parts here – it’s clear that although he stopped short of apologizing, he knows what he did was unacceptable.

To wit:

–“Maybe I could’ve put a call in.”

–“I definitely let them down.”

–“They made the decision for the best of the team and I have a lot of respect for that.  They made the decision to suspend me for a week, which I was cool with.  We all agreed to it and moved on.”

–“Will I make the same decision?  Yes.  Will I handle the situation a little better?  Yes, I’ll put in a phone call”

So going forward, Plax gets it, or at least he gets it enough.  His defiant attitude during the interview was probably the result of feeling cornered by the media.  Plax is the proverbial “Proud Man,” and like many people, probably has a hard time distinguishing between an apology and a ritual of humiliation.  That’s a frustrating quality, but hardly a reason to write the guy off as a bad teammate.

Now, I don’t mean to excuse Plax’s actions or comments.  There was certainly a lot in that interview to make you angry.

His repeated insistence that he would do it again – or as he put it: “It’s like I told them, if I have a decision to make about my family or son and things like that, I wouldn’t change anything about it” – was pretty infuriating.

But do you think he really meant that?  It doesn’t jibe with the “apologies” above.  Rather, this struck me as a misguided tactic to get the media off his back by playing the family card.  But the problem, obviously, wasn’t his choosing his family over football.  It was that he didn’t call.  He knows that, but maybe he naively believed this tactic could make him a sympathetic character.  It backfired, and he wound up making himself look worse.

Also, it was weird when he said he only watched “a little bit of [the game].  I watched the first half.”  If an athlete losing $100 grand and shrugging his shoulders doesn’t infuriate the average fan, this might.  Didn’t watch the game?  For Heaven’s sake, many of us have watched it twice already!

But here’s the deal here: We can choose to get bent out of shape about what he said, or we can accept that this situation, while imperfect, doesn’t present an imminent threat to team morale.  It doesn’t even present a gathering threat.

As Ralph Vacchiano wrote in his live chat with readers last week, “I don’t think Burress and Coughlin have ever really gotten along.  They’ve peacefully coexisted more than anything else.”

Or as Plax himself said today, “We hit and miss sometimes and things like that.”

It’s a manageable situation, this Plax being Plax.  But you know what else was Plax being Plax?  Gutting out last season on a shredded ankle, adding a separated shoulder in Green Bay and then a torn knee before the Super Bowl.

So let’s move on and start thinking about Cleveland.

Now, I don’t know why, because they have a pretty stocked WR core, with Plax, Amani Toomer, and Steve Smith.

But here is what it says:

At least 10 teams have been in contact with the agent for the wide receiver who was released Friday by the Denver Broncos, including all four NFC East clubs, according to a source.

The 49ers, Bills, Bucs, Panthers, Raiders and Vikings also have reached out to agent Kennard McGuire regarding Walker. No visits had been scheduled as of early Saturday.

The Cowboys and Eagles have a couple connections working in their favor in pursuit of Walker. Dallas receivers coach Ray Sherman coached Walker in Green Bay. Walker is friends with Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb and the two have been training together in Arizona for several weeks.

On the official site, which may be the best site from any sports team, there’s another David Tyree article.

Before the fourth quarter of Super Bowl XLII, Tyree was the Giants’ relatively obscure fourth wide receiver. Yes, he had been a member of the 2005 NFC Pro Bowl team, but that was for his exploits on special teams. In the 15 regular season and postseason games prior to the Super Bowl, Tyree had caught five passes. They totaled 50 yards and not one included a trip to the end zone.

That changed early in the fourth quarter, when Tyree caught his second pass of the game, a five-yard touchdown from Eli Manning that gave the Giants a 10-7 lead over the heavily-favored New England Patriots. Ten minutes later, the Giants faced a third-and-five when Manning and Tyree teamed up on a miracle play that will be remembered by Giants fans forever. Manning somehow escaped the clutches of three New England pass rushers, steadied himself and threw down the field for Tyree, who jumped up, secured the ball against his helmet when safety Rodney Harrison ripped his left hand off the ball, then held on despite being mugged by Harrison.

The 32-yard reception gave the Giants a first down at the Patriots’ 24-yard line. Four plays later, Manning threw the 13-yard touchdown pass to Plaxico Burress that gave the Giants a 17-14 victory over the previously undefeated Patriots. The Giants were the NFL’s surprise champions. And Tyree was an instant folk hero who has been in perpetual motion since triumphantly leaving the field that night.

To briefly summarize, Tyree received some of the loudest cheers at last week’s ticker tape parade and Giants Stadium celebration, his great catch graced the cover of Sports Illustrated, he spent a day at the ESPN studios in Connecticut, jetted to California to appear on three national television shows, returned home to sit down with The New York Times, speak at a youth ministry at the Izod Center and then at the church where he worships. Oh yes, his wife, Leilah, is due to give birth to twin girls within a month. The couple has two young sons.

More at Giants.com.