Despite the teams 12-3 record and now home-field advantage throughout the playoffs, the (drive by) media and many specters of the league has continued to find ways to overlook the Super Bowl champion Giants.
Personally, I am amazed that we are even having this discussion.
This should be as ridiculous of a topic as callers to WFAN asking why the third string running back isn’t getting more carries.
By the way, for those that haven’t noticed, the Giants are 52 Derrick Ward rushing yards away Sunday from having two 1,000 yard rushers. Where do you think these extra carries are going to come from?
Yet I cannot let this go.
I have noticed it since the end of last year’s Super Bowl.
I noticed it in training camp.
I’ve noticed it since the start of the season and outside of a few fleeting weeks when all of the other “chosen teams” were finally biting the dust, vacuumed up by their own mediocrity and subsequently thrown in the garbage disposal. All it took was two losses to bring the talking heads and initial non-believers back out of hiding to say that the Giants were again not that good.
When I bring it up, opposing fans think I am crazy, but I actually think I have a case here.
Here goes:
The Giants do not get any respect.
You may not want to hear it, but someone had to say it. I know it may be hard to say with a straight face when your team may be on its way to winning back-to-back titles, but it has been eating away for so long that it cannot be controlled any longer.
It’s true. It’s damn true.
When the Giants beat the Patriots in Glendale this past February, it was looked at as a fluke. Just because Eli Manning and David Tyree combined for the greatest play in the history of football (which it was) should not have taken away the team’s incredible defensive performance. But that’s ok. I’ll take the championship and move on.
All through training camp, the only news you heard was about Brett Favre with the New York Jets and the Dallas Cowboys on Hard Knocks talking about how much of a fluke it was for them to lose to the Giants in the playoffs last year.
There seemed to be an awful lot of “fluke” talk going on.
When the prognostications came out before the season opened up, the Cowboys and the Philadelphia Eagles were ranked ahead of the Giants. Mind you, these were the same Eagles who were 8-8 in 2007, had missed the playoffs in two of the last three years, and a team that had lost to the Giants twice last season. Just because they add a cornerback with butterfingers (ok, that pass in the Super Bowl was a little high, but Mel Blount would have had it), suddenly that vaulted them into elite status.
Why I’m not sure.
Both of those teams after the first quarter of the season were being listed as #1 and #2 in the league with the Giants bringing up the rear...in the NFC East!
The media always has a fascination with Dallas and tries to have one with Philadelphia only because they don’t want to continue to feature negative stories about their town and fans so they bend over backwards.
When both of those teams suffered defeats to the Washington Redskins and were knocked back down to Earth, the media had a new team to enter into a short term love affair with. Quietly, the Giants went about their business of winning with little fanfare.
In actuality, this was a good thing. It’s not that I craved the media attention, I was just looking for acknowledgement that they were the best team. Even the players began to wonder.
It took for the Giants to go through the gauntlet of Pittsburgh, Dallas (even with Romo hurt) and winning at Philadelphia for everyone to start taking notice that perhaps (shockingly) the defending world champions were actually this good. Not just good, but the best team in the NFL.
The wins kept on coming, the Cowboys kept trying to recreate the old show “Dallas” and the Eagles continued to find their season headed right down the commode along with the Redskins. Finally, the (drive by) media had no other choice but to finally jump on the bandwagon.
It was easy to notice what was going here. The media was only on the Giants wagon when they couldn't come up with a better alternative. With no "pizazz" team to choose from, reluctantly, the proper "respect" was given to them.
Arizona was supposed to have a high flying offense to overtake defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo and his defense. They could not do it.
All you heard was about the Ravens defense before they showed up in the Meadowlands. 207 rushing yards and a 30-10 victory later, they were silent.
The bandwagon kept on growing and got a little too crowded right around the time the Eagles; desperate to save their season, beat the Giants at home.
All of that game after seven days of nonstop Plaxico Burress gun stories in which the whole damn team was question on if they had firearms and if they ever felt in danger. It was if the game was now an afterthought and the Giants played right into it.
It jumped off even more when the team was beaten up by the Cowboys defense. The offense had not scored a meaningful touchdown in two games. Running the ball and finding open receivers was becoming harder now that Burress shot his self right off the roster. The first agita point of the season had found itself and it became popular again to jump back off the wagon as doubt began to creep in as to where this could be headed if things were not corrected.
Translation: Winning its next game.
Out of nowhere came the Carolina Panthers, who by virtue of one Monday Night win over Tampa Bay where they gained 299 yards rushing, they were anointed as the NFC’s best team. Mind you, before that game they had yet to defeat one quality opponent the entire season. Those stinkers they were putting up against Detroit and Oakland were apparently missed by the football public. Their undefeated home record covered up the fact they were only 3-3 on the road before finding themselves in the Meadowlands this past Sunday. No one gave the Giants a chance even at home against this alleged juggernaut.
Down 21-10, the Giants rallied, but did it by running in, out, around and through the Panthers defense, amassing 301 yards on the ground. When it was over, and the world champions were victorious, the same clowns that had jumped off had finally found their way back on.
All this while, the team has been looking for some respect. Maybe in some ways this is better. The defending world champions still being treated as “The Little Engine That Could,” like David trying to slay Goliath a second time as if the first wasn’t good enough.
The late former San Francisco 49ers coach Bill Walsh used to have a feeling about this and echoed it to his players.
“They (the media) want you to lose. They want you to lose so damn bad. The same media that pats you on the back? They have nothing to lose. When you lose, your jerks. Everybody wants your ass. No one is on your side.”
Bill Walsh – San Francisco 49ers Head Coach, three time world champion
So now here we are. The playoffs begin for the Giants in two weeks and now they will be favored to go to the Super Bowl.
Any less would be considered abject failure.
Quite the jump from where this same team was five months ago when training camp started.
It appears that if the Giants are to gain that sought after respect that they have been and we have been craving all year, we will have to a take a lyric from an old Aretha Franklin song:
“Take care, TCB.”
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