Review: Giants vs. Eagles (Win 42-7)

The Giants left us with mixed emotions yesterday.  They
 played one of their best games of the season in destroying a Philadelphia
 Eagles team that had given up by the score of 42-7.   It left the
 G-Men with a 9-7 record, identical to last year’s regular season and
 potentially with a springboard to go one a great super bowl run again. 
 Minutes later things really looked up when the Lions down by 2 points took
 possession of the ball with a few minutes left in their game.  Fate had
 different plans as after punting and forcing the Bears into a third down, Jay 
 Cutler scrambled for a first down and essentially clinching victory for the
 Bears.   The Giants have no one to blame but themselves as they put
 themselves into postion to need to rely on others.  I ran into a rabid
 Bears fan at around 4:30 PM and he was downright obnoxious.  After that I
 started routing hard for the Vikings who knocked the Bears out a few hours
 later.  It almost made the day okay.

The season was clearly a disappointment.  The Giants had a
quality team but a combination of a very difficult schedule along with less than
inspired play hurt their chances.  They did get old overnight and the
coaching staff did a poor job of recognizing it.  This is especially aimed
at Perry Fewell.  He was still living in 2011 thinking that a 4 man rush
will always get to the quarterback.  Yesterday the Giants blitzed for the
first time in awhile and the extra pressure made all the difference in the
world.  On the offensive side, there want too many adjustments that could
have been made.  David Diehl clearly is now over the hill and that severely
affected line play once Sean Locklear went out.  We will discuss that in
greater detail in our seasons post mortem later this week.  Column favorite
Hakeem Nicks was not healthy most of the year and they should have moved away
from him earlier rather than starting him at 70% effectiveness.  Yesterday,
they didn’t play him much and it was a huge help.  They also should have
turned to David Wilson a bit earlier.  
 
Ahmad Bradshaw had a good game putting him over
the 1,000 yard mark for the season.  Manning missed his 4,000 yard
milestone.  David Wilson got the start and played well averaging 5 yards a
carry, consistent with his season average on his 15 carries.  The ball was
well spread around amongst the receivers and Stevie Brown amazingly had his
8thinterception of the year. Eli had a career high 5 TD passes.
Kenny Phillips played well when in especially against the run.  His health is so
unreliable, but he is still a difference maker for this defense and I hope he is
re-signed this offseason. It may be fortunate that he was so injured this year. 
His market value may be at an all time low allowing the Giants to get him back
for a one year $2-2.5m deal.  Before the season he was probably looking at
 $5-6m per season contract.  

The win yesterday will definitely allow Giant fans to go into the
offseason with a slightly better feeling about the team than the one they had
following the 2 prior weeks horrible losses.  For some of us, it is a large
consolation that we can turn our attention to the New York Knicks who are poised
to make a deep run this year.