Tag Archives: New York Giants

I still believe in Eli

Eli Manning didn’t have a great season last year. And if you go by preseason football, he’s not looking much better. But I don’t care what people think. I don’t care if my brother-in-law Mike dangled Eli in front of my face in our fantasy league, proposing a joke trade for my starting wide receiver. I’ll take that trade Mike, and we’ll see who’s laughing come February. Because I still believe in the man that got the job done twice. I still believe in Eli.

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To everyone out there writing off the Giants based on a poor preseason performance, you’re all crazy. Nobody cares about preseason football. Not the players, not the coaches, hardly even any real football fans. The only people watching preseason football are ESPN announcers and statistics junkies. The on-air personalities, at least they have an incentive to pretend to be excited about the preseason. But the junkies? The guys that spend all of their free time calculating odds and constantly trying to put up the perfect fantasy lineup? They’re not even real fans. They’ve transcended fandom, to the point where football doesn’t even look enjoyable, not from their point of view anyway.

So Eli didn’t do that great last year. That’s all in the past. And considering their abysmal 0 – 6 start, I actually feel like a lot of their late-season accomplishments went unnoticed. But yeah, any way you want to spin it, 2014 wasn’t a great year for the G-Men.

But like I said, so what? Eli had one really bad year. You don’t think it’s possible to bounce back from one bad year? This is a guy that has two championships under his belt. Of course he’s going to bounce back. Let’s at least wait until the first game to start planning his early exit from the Giants.

And that brings me to another point. I read some article saying how rumors were leaking from the higher-ups in the Giants organization, about how many were starting to wonder if Eli isn’t in the beginning of his decline as an athlete. From a pure business standpoint, what kind of an attitude is that? Don’t you guys want to make money this year? Don’t you think that maybe you should be encouraging your starting quarterback, giving him a little bit of positive encouragement instead of gossiping behind his back? Why are you trying to undermine your own potential success?

Eli sure has a lot to prove, but I think that his history of success has entitled him to the benefit of the doubt following last year. Yeah, offense was terrible in general, but a quarterback can only pass the buck on so much of that responsibility. But until this season starts out in a nosedive like last year, there’s no reason to start automatically assuming that it’s not going to work out. If anything, we should be excited. Because at the very least, it would be really hard to match whatever happened last year.

Come on, the Giants have a great quarterback. As a fan base, we need to start acting like it. Eli, if you’re reading this, I just want to let you know that I still believe in you. I know you’re going to have a great year. I had a dream last night where you guys won the Super Bowl. It was awesome. I was sitting front row. You looked at me after a twenty-five yard touchdown pass, and you winked at me. Part of me wishes that I never woke up. And you’re on my fantasy team now. So my success hinges on yours. We’re in this together Eli, and I’m not worried at all. In fact, I’ve never felt more confident about anything else in my life.

NFL prediction: The Giants are going to win the Superbowl

The New York Giants are 0-6. It’s not looking good. But it’s going to start looking good. Yup, you’re hearing it first, right here, I’m calling it. The New York Giants, after a dismal start to the season, are about to go on an unprecedented winning streak, coming back from their lowest point in recent history. They’re going to win every single game, starting this Monday, culminating at the Super Bowl. It’s totally going to happen.

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It’s going to start this week against the Vikings. Not the first half though. The first half is going to be a rough game of football for the G-Men. It’s going to be everything that you’ve come to associate with the 2013 Giants, interceptions, incomplete passes, just bad football. The Vikings will be up at the half.

But that’s it. Once the third quarter starts, that’s the last that you’re going to be seeing of a losing football team. They’re going to come back and crush Minnesota, I’m thinking a final score of like 37 – 17. And it’ll feel good, finally, after seven weeks, a win. It’ll take a lot of the pressure off of Eli, maybe he’ll sleep a little better this week, maybe Coughlin will stop calling him up every hour, “Eli. Are you studying those plays Eli? Because you said you’d study them last week and we still lost to Chicago. Eli?”

Giants fans will let out a collective sigh of relief, but it’ll be anything but a celebration. One out of seven is hardly anything to get pumped up about, and they’ll go online after the game and all of their Jets fans friends will still be posting really annoying status updates on Facebook, like, “Hahahah too bad I wanted to see the Giants go 0 – 16, J-E-T- …” you know how it goes.

And even after the next week, when the Giants beat the Eagles, New Yorkers are still going to be a little wary. And can you really blame them? I mean, it would foolish to get your hopes up after only two wins, wins that were preceded by six consecutive losses. I still remember back to week three, and I read something like, OK, the Giants only have like a nineteen percent chance of making the playoffs. And then the next week, when they lost again, I read that the Giants haven’t been 0 – 4 since the early nineties. And then week five, week six, I’m sure it was something equally abysmal, like, statistically speaking, the New York Giants aren’t even predicted to finish the season at all, like somewhere around week twelve, they’re all just going to give up.

But three weeks from now, when the Giants destroy the Raiders, fans might finally start to allow themselves to enjoy maybe just a few fleeting minutes of subdued optimism. Three in a row is pretty nice, those losses start to recede in the rearview mirror of the city’s memory, and plus, remember how I said destroyed? It’s going to be a huge victory. It’s going to be like one of those 37 – 0 games that, by the end of the third quarter, people won’t even really be paying attention to the TV anymore, it’ll be too much of a blowout.

You’ll see the negativity, stuff like, “OK, whatever, the Raiders suck, and so do the Eagles. Let’s see the Giants against a real team.” And then week ten’s going to roll around. Packers: destroyed. Week eleven. Cowboys: obliterated.

You guys starting to get a feel for where this is going? The Giants are going to go on such an unstoppable tear, that nobody’s even going to remember those first six games. It’s going to be all about, who can possibly defeat the Giants? And only once the playoffs start, once they start making those video montages of the entire season, that’s when the early season difficulties are going to make for a nice narrative arc.

“Everybody counted them out,” that’s how it’s going to go, playing highlights of interceptions and sacks before detailing their unprecedented winning streak. And I’ll watch the video and think, everybody counted them out but me. I knew they were going to come back. I called it.

And this is me, calling it. When everything happens just like I’m saying that it’s going to, I’m probably going to be visited by all sorts of government officials and scientists, they’ll be like, “Do you have access to some sort of time machine that we’re not aware of? We’re going to have to bring you in for some studies.” And I’ll go, I don’t care. Because seriously, fuck the Broncos, fuck every other team, it’s going to be the Giants, winning the Super Bowl in New York. Definitely.