Will The Public's Confidence Get to the Giants?

It’s been a while since the last blog post, but I couldn’t let this entire New York Giants playoff run go by without something. Anything. I just have been one big ball of confused emotion during this playoff run. It wasn’t that I didn’t think the Giants had this in them (I did), but I thought that this team had too many big injures and too many inconsistencies to go more than one game in the playoffs. They seemed like they were doomed to have that one, head-scratching game. That whole last paragraph and everything about this playoff run could have been a VHS-style grainy replay of the 2007-2008 football season, except for one thing: the public (and even the Giants website) is picking the Giants.

The Giants website is even overconfident about the team (NYDN)

Don’t get me wrong, I have confidence in my team and I’m happy they’re confident in themselves, but every time the general public starts picking the Giants en masse, the Giants play like a mess. There are many, many differences between 2007 and 2011 but the biggest difference is that the Giants are finally at the point where many people don’t think they can lose—and that scares me to death.

I can’t shake that feeling that this team is going to win either which means that I’m definitely setting myself up for disaster. Why am I so confident? As they say in weight loss commercials, past results don’t predict the future, but the Giants beat the Patriots earlier in the season when their offensive line was terrible and disorganized, Ahmad Bradshaw and Hakeem Nicks were out with injuries, and the Giants defense could be described as porous…at best. Now? They have a confident O-line (hey 2007), a defense that’s playing like no one can stop them (yo 2007), and health at the right time of year with role players stepping up for those who are out for the season (what’s up 2007). Oh, and the Giants have three top wide receivers, two tight ends who can catch the ball and three running backs who can work the screen out of the backfield with an ELIte quarterback at the helm and a defense that is so bad that they’ve employed a wide receiver (Julian Edelmen) as the cover DB against the other team’s best receiving threat*.
*Side Note: If you’re a Ravens fan, one of the worst things about that AFC Championship game besides the missed FG, the dropped TD by Lee Evans and, well, the lack of time out before that FG try, was the fact that Edelman was covering Anquan Boldin and a DB from the practice squad (Sterling Moore) was covering Evans and the Ravens couldn’t exploit it. They didn’t deserve to win. 

Let’s not forget that this Giants season could have been over, though, if not for a blocked kick by Jason Pierre-Paul, Tony Romo missing a wide-open Miles Austin, the Packers receiving corps forgetting how to catch the ball or Ted Ginn, Jr. staying healthy. I mean imagine how disappointing the end of this Giants season would have been had they not showed up for the second half of that Jets game and never gotten to that Cowboys game with something to play for at the end of the season? I hate to get all Sliding Doors on you, but this Lucky Charms run would never have occurred had it not been for a few breaks, a few defensive backs running into each other, and a few whistles going the right way.

The Giants seem to have Tom Brady’s number like few teams have in the past 4 years. 3 wins in 4 years would be an amazing achievement. Go back and let me know how many teams have beat Tom Brady twice out of two times in one season as the Giants are trying to do this year. I’ll wait.

And that’s the thing the most frightening about this game: it’s not about the Giants offensive prowess or their momentum or anything else: if the Giants can’t stop Tom Brady, nothing else is going to matter. Eli Manning plays from behind like few quarterbacks before him, but Tom Brady, if he has time, will thread the Giants defense. Yeah, I know the Giants defense has been dominating lately, but they are the same players who got lit up by Rex Grossman, looked dead against the Saints, and couldn’t stop the Seattle Seahawks during crunch time.

So there’s my contrarian view, trying to turn around this awful jinx of people picking the Giants.

Now back to why I love this team: they are a bunch of scrappy, chip-on-your-shoulder guys who seem to play above your head. ESPN recently went through the entire Giants roster and showed how they got to the Giants—check it out here. Sure they have five of their last six first-round picks starting on Sunday, but the rest of the team are full of great stories. Here’s something crazy: 4 out of the last 5 2nd round picks for the Giants are on IR this year (the 5th is Linval Joseph). They are built by either high draft picks that people questioned (like JPP), or late-round, practice squad, or undrafted players like Bradshaw, Victor Cruz, Jake Ballard, Danny Ware, Henry Hynoski, and Chase Blackburn. They have built this team into a TEAM which was far from what I felt when the Giants of 2010 collapsed in the second-half of the year.

This is not a team that doesn’t frustrate you at times. They can’t run the ball (especially to the edges) yet a few times a game you’ll see the double tight-end set on the left side of Eli and know that he’s about to pitch the ball to Brandon Jacobs who will run in slow motion for a 2-yard loss. They have a really hard time finishing out teams, letting some of their really bad opponents back into games they should never have been close to in the first place. And they sometimes take a while to get pressure on the quarterback, waiting until the second-half of the game to really get the pass-rush going.

So on Sunday I’ll be rooting for a team that’s tough to watch even when they win. I’ll bang the table and throw something at some point during the day and wonder whether the Giants can actually get over the ghost of Myra Kraft (and as a Brandeis alum, that’s the only thing I would be 1% okay with if the Patriots won—well, maybe less than 1%, but higher than 0%).

But I think the Giants can do it. I think they can find a way to thread the needle against the Patriots pass rush, build off their special-teams success from San Francisco, and have Deon Grant step up to stop Rob Gronkowski (even if it means stepping on his ankle). And I’ll be praying that the Adam Vinatieri Curse and the Bridget Moynahan Curse both come full into effect to overcome that everyone seems to be as confident in this Giants team as I am. Let’s go Big Blue!