Lack of losses make Sunday’s tough to take
We’ve been spoiled.
In the words of Chris Rock:
“Yes I said it. It had to be said. Somebody’s got to say it.”
It’s not our fault the team has been this good for this length of time and through Sunday had gone only losing one time in the previous 344 days.
That’s a lot of days without a loss. It’s almost as if you are just immune to winning.
On Sunday, the second loss of the season game at Giants Stadium. The game was close for a half before turning ugly and the final score was dressed up to look prettier than it actually was.
It was an off day against good team who happens to be a division rival. It happens. Such is the world in the NFC East.
I guess you really can’t win them all.
Listen, sometimes you just get beat. I mean, the Eagles do have a good team even though at times they resemble a circus act. One with any reasonable intelligence had to have expected that they would give a far greater effort (especially on defense) than the garbage they put out there at home in The Linc in November. Hell, if they didn’t it would have been an indictment on their entire team in a game they desperately needed to win to keep their playoff hopes from going six feet under.
The loss dropped the world champions to only 11-2. Looks like people will not be holding any funeral processions for us any time soon lamenting our defeat. With that and a combination of the Carolina Panthers victory on Monday night, their lead in the NFC as a whole is down to a single game.
For as great as this season has gone so far, nothing has been decided yet and with one small slip up, can find ourselves needing to once again go on the road in a potential NFC Championship Game in order to gain entry to Super Bowl XLIII.
This is why there is some panic in small circles of Big Blue Nation.
Everything was going so well for so many weeks this season that even I may have slightly had the impression that this road to repeating would not be as treacherous as I would have thought.
Now, questions arise as to whether this juggernaut of a team, who was looking to cruise into that big game, has just met a little turbulence, or a massive speed bump.
You learn quickly that attempting to win a championship (much less two in a row) is not easy. Not when you are shooting for it and anything less than that is considered failure.
Let’s face it, last year none of us went into the 2007 season expecting anything. I figured that if they go 8-8 that would be good enough. Even through the playoffs, nobody expected them to do anything. Suddenly, before you knew it, they were world champions.
This year was shaping up to be very similar. I expected nothing and neither did most “experts” (otherwise known as a highly paid person who really doesn’t know anything more than you or I). The only person who felt the Giants could and would repeat as champions was Bob Glauber of Newsday.
As the wins piled up and the early season favorite Cowboys began to fall, people started paying attention closer to the Giants. When they took down Pittsburgh and Philadelphia on the road and ran off a seven game winning streak, it became clear that this team was perhaps the best in all of football.
The rules of the game changed. No longer was just making the playoffs acceptable. The NFC did not appear to have a viable second candidate to compete with the defending world champions.
Suddenly, with one shot of a gun, a lot of things began to change. Plaxico Burress, who was already in the running for Malcontent of the Year, got himself kicked off the team and could have potentially killed teammate Antonio Pierce or anyone else in the process had the bullet found its way anywhere else.
Because of Pierce’s involvement, he was forced to spend all of last week with the NYPD and dodging questions of reporters instead of worrying about how he would dodge Eagles blockers. It was all unnecessary drama that forced everyone to answer silly questions about gun ownership and the like and took the complete focus away from football.
Then Sunday’s loss came.
Football became the prime source of conversation again because that’s where the focus should have been all the time. Instead it was all of this other garbage masquerading around as “news”.
It wasn’t about bullet holes anymore. It was about the holes in the Giants defense that Brian Westbrook ran through. The lack of holes the offensive line did not create for its running backs.
It was the hole in the offense created by Burress’ full time absence from the lineup.
Now here we are, with the focus back to football again. There is this need and want to eliminate the stench that came from last week’s performance. Eli Manning said it best this week when he said that the team had not gotten used to losing and they didn’t want to experience it again. This is a good thing.
Losing does stink.
It is why each loss (and they’re have only been two) gets dissected from every angle and met with such incredible scrutiny.
Do we nitpick more than most fans? It is very likely. Only this time, we all know what’s at stake.
There is no surprise here.
The culture has been changed around here now. It is no longer hoping it is expecting. A certain standard has been set and it has found its way to even us fans.
In a bizarre way, we almost never expect them to lose anymore. Somehow, almost in a blink the way we think about them is so completely different than any of us could have predicted.
This is a good thing.
Yes, they are allowed a loss. It’s ok. Even the greatest teams in the history in football lost two games in a season. It is not a means for indictment or an FBI investigation.
Now, as they head to Dallas on Sunday night in another big game that they seem to be playing every week, we look for them to take out their anger on the team they hate the most.
The Cowboys may be a desperate team trying to hold on for their playoff lives, but playing this team coming off a loss is not the best elixir.
Sunday night in Big D is a chance to get back on the winning track.
We’ve been spoiled.
In the words of Chris Rock:
“Yes I said it. It had to be said. Somebody’s got to say it.”
It’s not our fault the team has been this good for this length of time and through Sunday had gone only losing one time in the previous 344 days.
That’s a lot of days without a loss. It’s almost as if you are just immune to winning.
On Sunday, the second loss of the season game at Giants Stadium. The game was close for a half before turning ugly and the final score was dressed up to look prettier than it actually was.
It was an off day against good team who happens to be a division rival. It happens. Such is the world in the NFC East.
I guess you really can’t win them all.
Listen, sometimes you just get beat. I mean, the Eagles do have a good team even though at times they resemble a circus act. One with any reasonable intelligence had to have expected that they would give a far greater effort (especially on defense) than the garbage they put out there at home in The Linc in November. Hell, if they didn’t it would have been an indictment on their entire team in a game they desperately needed to win to keep their playoff hopes from going six feet under.
The loss dropped the world champions to only 11-2. Looks like people will not be holding any funeral processions for us any time soon lamenting our defeat. With that and a combination of the Carolina Panthers victory on Monday night, their lead in the NFC as a whole is down to a single game.
For as great as this season has gone so far, nothing has been decided yet and with one small slip up, can find ourselves needing to once again go on the road in a potential NFC Championship Game in order to gain entry to Super Bowl XLIII.
This is why there is some panic in small circles of Big Blue Nation.
Everything was going so well for so many weeks this season that even I may have slightly had the impression that this road to repeating would not be as treacherous as I would have thought.
Now, questions arise as to whether this juggernaut of a team, who was looking to cruise into that big game, has just met a little turbulence, or a massive speed bump.
You learn quickly that attempting to win a championship (much less two in a row) is not easy. Not when you are shooting for it and anything less than that is considered failure.
Let’s face it, last year none of us went into the 2007 season expecting anything. I figured that if they go 8-8 that would be good enough. Even through the playoffs, nobody expected them to do anything. Suddenly, before you knew it, they were world champions.
This year was shaping up to be very similar. I expected nothing and neither did most “experts” (otherwise known as a highly paid person who really doesn’t know anything more than you or I). The only person who felt the Giants could and would repeat as champions was Bob Glauber of Newsday.
As the wins piled up and the early season favorite Cowboys began to fall, people started paying attention closer to the Giants. When they took down Pittsburgh and Philadelphia on the road and ran off a seven game winning streak, it became clear that this team was perhaps the best in all of football.
The rules of the game changed. No longer was just making the playoffs acceptable. The NFC did not appear to have a viable second candidate to compete with the defending world champions.
Suddenly, with one shot of a gun, a lot of things began to change. Plaxico Burress, who was already in the running for Malcontent of the Year, got himself kicked off the team and could have potentially killed teammate Antonio Pierce or anyone else in the process had the bullet found its way anywhere else.
Because of Pierce’s involvement, he was forced to spend all of last week with the NYPD and dodging questions of reporters instead of worrying about how he would dodge Eagles blockers. It was all unnecessary drama that forced everyone to answer silly questions about gun ownership and the like and took the complete focus away from football.
Then Sunday’s loss came.
Football became the prime source of conversation again because that’s where the focus should have been all the time. Instead it was all of this other garbage masquerading around as “news”.
It wasn’t about bullet holes anymore. It was about the holes in the Giants defense that Brian Westbrook ran through. The lack of holes the offensive line did not create for its running backs.
It was the hole in the offense created by Burress’ full time absence from the lineup.
Now here we are, with the focus back to football again. There is this need and want to eliminate the stench that came from last week’s performance. Eli Manning said it best this week when he said that the team had not gotten used to losing and they didn’t want to experience it again. This is a good thing.
Losing does stink.
It is why each loss (and they’re have only been two) gets dissected from every angle and met with such incredible scrutiny.
Do we nitpick more than most fans? It is very likely. Only this time, we all know what’s at stake.
There is no surprise here.
The culture has been changed around here now. It is no longer hoping it is expecting. A certain standard has been set and it has found its way to even us fans.
In a bizarre way, we almost never expect them to lose anymore. Somehow, almost in a blink the way we think about them is so completely different than any of us could have predicted.
This is a good thing.
Yes, they are allowed a loss. It’s ok. Even the greatest teams in the history in football lost two games in a season. It is not a means for indictment or an FBI investigation.
Now, as they head to Dallas on Sunday night in another big game that they seem to be playing every week, we look for them to take out their anger on the team they hate the most.
The Cowboys may be a desperate team trying to hold on for their playoff lives, but playing this team coming off a loss is not the best elixir.
Sunday night in Big D is a chance to get back on the winning track.
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