A GIANT Win

The Giants had a rude welcoming for the Cowboys to their new $1.15 billion home digs, beating them last night 33-31 on a field goal as time expired. The win was a big one for the Giants for a number of different reasons:

1. Let's hear it for this passing attack. Although the Cowboys secondary is not good, all we heard all preseason is "how are the Giants going to replace Plaxico Burress?" Well Mario Manningham (10 catches for 150 yards and a TD) looks like a good candidate. He and Steve Smith (10 catches for 134 yards and a TD) are turning into Manning's favorite go-to guys. You can't get overly excited about one game (look what happened when we tried that with Hixon last season), but they torched the Cowboys.
   
2. They are now 2-0 in the division and hitting the soft part of their schedule. Their next 3 games are against Tampa Bay, Kansas City and Oakland. They should win all three. There will be a tendency to look ahead to the rest of their schedule (pretty brutal), but if they can get 5 wins and 3 road games out of the way by mid-October, they're looking pretty damn good.
3. They won despite injuries. Chris Canty and the entire secondary (it seemed) were out. Justin Tuck (injured on a "bush league" play) and Hixon left early. Danny Ware was out. The secondary that did play were playing hurt. They have a few weeks to get the whole team healthy for a brutal 4-week, pre-bye run against New Orleans, Arizona, Philadelphia and San Diego.
4. Eli Manning (25 for 38, 330) led yet another 4th quarter comeback drive. He's getting very good at those. He's calm and collective. Even after a 1st down holding on the final drive knocking them back 10 yards, he never panicked. He also has been very good at limiting mistakes. Look at what happened to Tony Romo when he tried to force the ball in. Eli rarely tries to do that. Now he gets to go up against a Tampa Bay defense which has allowed 564 yards and five TDs through the air in the first two weeks.
5. This team can still play much better. They've had little to no run game the first two weeks. The run defense is still shotty. They haven't gotten as much pressure on the QB as they would like (they had no sacks in this game).
6. They won despite a less-than stellar run attack. That can't be overstated. This team ran over everyone last year but has been able to find ways to win games in other ways so far this year when the run hasn't always worked. I think that they'll get their run game on track, but I think that knowing they can win in other ways will help them be confident down the road.
   
7. The fluke plays are going their way. That's a good sign for a team that has been burned by some of those recently. If there was ever a play that made you confident your team was going to win the game somehow, the ridiculous INT off of Jason Witten's shoe was just that.
8. They beat Dallas on the road. They ruined the Cowboys' housewarming party (picture via ESPN). That's a big win.

You can't get too excited because they do have a lot of injuries and lot of problems to fix...but this is a great start for Big Blue in the 2009-10 NFL season.

(Side Note: I've meant to write this for a while, but I was sad to learn that the Giants LoHud blog and Ernie Palladino are going to no longer be a part of LoHud. With Peter Abraham announcing his leaving this week, this is a huge week of losses for the LoHud blogs. Those two were some of the best sports blogs out there. No matter how many amateurs such as myself write blogs, nothing will compare to what the professionals with the inside access have to report. It's a sad part of the economy and the state of the newspaper business, but I'll miss Ernie)