Right now, they see a wounded dog in the division, and they didn’t like the way the Cowboys came into this season basically anointing themselves Super Bowl Champions before the season began.  And, you know, they’re smelling blood and they’re gonna give it everything they’ve got.

–Troy Aikman

**

Wow, that was an awful Cowboys team we played today, and makes you wonder if things will be all that different when Romo comes back.  Aikman and Buck made this point a lot during the game, but quarterback play was only part of the problem.  What about stopping the run (we averaged 5.9 yards per carry), running the ball themselves (3.4 yards per carry), or protecting whoever is playing quarterback (4 sacks and tons of pressure)?

In the rubbing it in department, behold and enjoy the following G-Men quotes:

Plaxico Burress: “I mean, they had a star on their helmets so it was a Cowboy game to me.”

Justin Tuck: “They still had us outnumbered 10 Pro Bowlers to none, so I don’t see where all the sympathy is coming from.”

And even some words of wisdom from our favorite Cowboy shit-talking choke-artist, Patrick Crayton:  “In games like this against teams like this, if you don’t bring your A-game, you will get your ass whooped like we got our ass whooped tonight.”

It’s too early to write the Cowboys off, but making the playoffs would require quite the ill run.  It’s possible, and if they make that run, watch out come playoff time.  But they really have no room for error as they pursue the Wild Card.  At 5-4, they’re not catching us for the division.

Good God, that team is a mess.

**

But we’re not.  The 2008 New York Giants: Another week, another statement.

Ah, where to begin here?  Obviously the D, which allowed only one touchdown and 183 total yards, forced 4 turnovers, and was so dominant that even a downright bad performance by Eli didn’t get in the way of a blowout.

All three defensive units were nearly flawless.  We’ll start with the linebackers, who haven’t gotten much love this year.  Danny Clark made a team-high nine tackles and was generally all over the place, shooting gaps and making plays in space.  Is this guy rounding into Kawika Mitchell, redux? 

Chase Blackburn filled in for Brian Kehl – whose toe injury forced him to miss practice this week but isn’t serious – and did an admirable job.  This guy’s such a good player – even when Wilkinson comes back, wouldn’t you rather see Blackburn splitting those weakside snaps instead?  He needs to be on the field.

And Antonio Pierce made two big plays.  The first was when he stripped T.O. deep in our territory after Eli’s weird fumble.  The second was on the Cowboys second series, when he ran stride-for-stride with Jason Whitten down the seam and forced a perfect throw from Johnson that didn’t come.  Tony P has been assailed for his notoriously poor coverage of that seam route, so it’s only right to give credit where it’s due here.

Moving over to the D-line, Tuck was a force.  Coming into the season, we knew he was good, but it was still a question whether he would blossom into a truly elite player.  Eight games and six sacks in, that question is close to being definitely answered.

Tuck had the 2.5 sacks yesterday, but the guy I noticed the most, on a play-by-play basis, was Kiwanuka.  ‘Nuke was way too quick for Flozell Adams, and after being named the Defensive Player of the Week last week, he had his second excellent game in a row.  He only had one sack, but he routinely beat Flozell to the edge and forced Johnson/Bollinger to step up and get flustered.

It appears ‘Nuke is fully recovered from both the high-ankle injury from Week 1 and the leg injury from last year and is ready to explode into a full-fledged pass-rushing force.  I still think he plays too high and can be undisciplined against the run.  But he can straight-up abuse left tackles with below-average quickness, like Pittsburgh’s Max Starks and Flozell the Hotel.

As for the interior guys, I actually didn’t notice that much, but holding Marion Barber to 2.8 yards per carry speaks for itself.

Praise for the secondary begins with Corey Webster – or as Chris Berman calls him, The Dictionary – and his two picks.  The great thing about Webster’s first pick – the one he brought back to the Dallas 27 – was that it came right after that sideline circus-catch by Roy Williams.  Webster covered Williams very well on that play, but a perfect throw and a semi-miraculous catch beat him.  Such is the nature of playing cornerback or defense in any sport: If the offense executes perfectly, they’ll do what they want to do.  But the offense doesn’t always execute perfectly, which was apparent on the next play when Johnson badly overthrew T.O. and the ball sailed right to Webster, who provided great coverage for the second play in a row.  If you have a short memory and do your job play after play, you’re gonna get good results.  That’s how you play cornerback.

Let’s also use this opportunity to praise Webster’s season in general and how far he has come.  His improvement has been well-documented, but it bears repeating: he has evolved from a complete bust into a truly excellent player, though it will take a while for his reputation to catch up to the quality of his play (another Super Bowl ring will help, though).  I never thought I’d say this, but has Corey Webster become a guy you don’t want to challenge?  (And yes, he got beat by T.O. on that short touchdown.  But he had no help in the middle of the field because we brought a blitz.  Tough assignment.)

Then there’s Aaron Ross, who I didn’t notice in pass coverage (good thing) but who I did notice in run support (also a good thing).  Ross had 5 tackles including 3 solos – I continue to be impressed with the angles he takes and how surely he wraps up guys, usually by going low.  And for all those people who panicked so much after the Cleveland and San Francisco games?  I think you were overreacting.

Terrell Thomas started at nickelback and played well, making a big play when he separated T.O. from the ball on 3rd down on the Cowboys eventual scoring drive (The ‘Boys converted the 4th down on the next play.  Oh, and that touchdown drive was illegitimate anyway – that personal foul on Tuck for driving Bollinger into the ground was bullshit.).  Apparently the G-Men are very high on Thomas, and after today, we can see why.

After Thomas was injured on that play – I don’t know the status of that one – Sam Madison came in and provided excellent coverage of Roy Williams on an endzone fade.  At that moment, the following thought crossed my head: Holy shit we’re deep!

That goes for the safety position too, where James Butler headlined the action with his second athletic pick in two weeks.  Butler sprained his knee during the game, but he’s confident he will play in Philly next week.  James Butler… I think us fans are coming around.

Kenny Phillips and Michael Johnson chipped in with five tackles apiece, and another forgotten veteran, Sammy Knight, made five stops also, all of them solo.  Yep, we’re mad deep…

**

Offensively there was a lot to like too.

Obviously the running game, which ran for a clean 200 yards on 34 carries.  As always, the O-Line was the big star here.  Aikman – who, as loyal NYGMen commenter Dan pointed out, has gotten to know the Giants very, very well over the past few years – heaped his usual praise on the fatties up front.  At this point, there’s not too much more to say about them, other than to say definitively that they’re the best in the league.

I’ll once again avail myself of FootballOutsiders stats to prove my point: The G-Men rank third in adjusted line yards (run blocking) and second in adjusted sack rate.  No other team ranks nearly so well across the board.

As for the running backs, Jacobs bounced back from a rough game last week to average 6.9 yards per carry, including two Tiki-esque zig-zag runs in the second half.  He ran over guys and he juked guys out of their cleats.  He was terrific.

Derrick Ward was his usual super-competent self, a performance that included a number of key first downs.  Ward might be one of the most underrated players in football: how confident do you feel with the ball in his hands?

And Ahmad Bradshaw, stashed in the doghouse though he might be, turned in an impressive performance in his brief outing nonetheless.  That guy seems to rip off an awesome run every game.  (Here comes the weekly ritual: We need to get this guy more touches – it’s criminal how underutilized this resource is.)

As for the receivers, there’s Boss and his soft hands, Smith and his nose for the first-down marker, along with Amani and his solid awesomeness.  No receiver stuck out, but there was nothing to complain about.

Except maybe Plax, who dropped those two passes (including a touchdown), and had that miscommunication with Eli on Jenkins’ pick-six.  But while it wasn’t a good game for Plax, I can’t kill the guy. 

For one, the pick-six looked like it was Eli’s fault, at least judging by the body-language during the sideline conversation that was caught on camera.  On the play, Jenkins jumped the route, which probably called for Plax to break it off and run a streak.  Plax saw that, but Eli didn’t.  And wouldn’t that throw probably have been picked even if Plax ran did what Eli thought he was going to?

Secondly, Plax’s great blocking was on display during two key runs – Jacobs’ 31-yard run and Ward’s 17-yard touchdown run – on the touchdown drive that put us up 35-14.  (The awesome thing about that drive was that we answered the Cowboys’ scoring drive right then and there.)

So lay off Plax.  It was a rough game in a tumultuous season, but there’s much less to worry about than many people will have you believe.  He finally showed contrition this week and we’re 7-1 with an awesome passing game.  There’s no crisis.

**

So far, it has been almost all praise.  But now we get to Eli, who was pretty bad, no question about it.  To rehash, he went 16 for 27 (59%, not terrible) for a season-low 147 yards, averaging a sub-par, but also not awful, 5.4 yards per attempt (his career average is 6.4, and his 2008 average is 7.1).  The damaging things were his three turnovers, including an inexplicable fumble and the pick-six by Jenkins.

Today was Eli’s second truly bad game this year, the first being the Cleveland game.  But doesn’t it seem like there’s a difference between these games and the bad games he had in the past, when he looked completely shook out there?  In his bad games this year, he has looked a little reckless.  But I’m sure most Giants fans would prefer Eli to have a bad game due to this overconfidence rather than the underconfidence that characterized his bad games in the past.

A mitigating circumstance in all this was the Cowboys’ solid pass rush, which was really the only facet in which they were remotely successful.  And look at it this way: How ridiculous is it that we beat the shit out of the Cowboys when Eli had a bad game?

**

Other negatives were the kickoffs and the kickoff return game.  On the kickoffs, Carney’s boots have reached a critical point.  The problem is that we shouldn’t part with him as a field goal kicker – a kicker having an automatic season must be respected.

So it looks like we’re gonna have to carry two kickers.  Yes, this seems absurd considering Tynes’ kicks are no great shakes, but it’s honestly the best thing we can do.  Let’s just not dress Rueben Droughns and be done with it.

And on kickoff returns, doesn’t it always seem like the wedge doesn’t get up-field enough for Bradshaw, which causes Ahmad to slow down and tip-toe into it?  This has been going on all year – it prevents Bradshaw from exploding through a hole for a big return.  There aren’t many areas in which this team to improve, but it shouldn’t be too hard to get a lot better in these facets.

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.

With a strong start, the New York Giants look like they are well on their way to defending its championship.

Eli Manning’s development has made the Giants on the best NFL football tickets out there. But it’s more than the younger Manning. Plaxico Burress has become one of the top receivers in football and Brandon Jacobs has taken up the mantle of the great Giant running backs of the past.

And then there’s the defense, which is why most fans buy New York Giants Tickets. Justin Tuck has become one of the best defensive linemen in the game, which is making the loss of Michael Stahan much easier.

It’s a great form of entertainment.

After the game, fans can go into the city and take in the sights and sounds of New York. And on non-football days, take the wife to a play with Broadway tickets, paticuallySouth Pacific tickets.

From the Daily News, Plaxico Burress may be looking to get a new contract.

Drew Rosenhaus, Burress’ agent, didn’t deny that a few minutes ago when he spoke to reporters at the NFL scouting combine here in Indianapolis. There have been rumors for months that Burress is going to ask to renegotiate his deal – and those rumors have only gotten stronger since he caught the game-winning touchdown pass in Super Bowl XLII.

“That is going to be between myself and the Giants,” Rosenhaus said. “I can’t comment on that publicly.”

If Burress does ask to renegotiate, it could be one of many offseason headaches for GM Jerry Reese. If Michael Strahan decides not to retire, he’s expected to ask for more money. There are already several NFL sources who expect Osi Umenyiora to ask to redo his deal. And there was some speculation that Jeremy Shockey, another Rosenhaus client, was going to ask for more money – though that was before his season ended with a broken leg.

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.