Football Week 3: ELIte.

     I don't have a lot of time to post today, seeing how my forth coming huge breakfast of pancakes and bacon isn't going to eat itself and then I have a birthday party to go to (and god forbid I actually write these early).  But I am going to address my feelings on a player I have come around on after many years: Eli Manning.

I have always rooted for Eli; I am a younger brother myself and I know what it is like to try and live up to your older sibling.  I always wanted to see him succeed.  But his progress as a player was maddening.  He would look brilliant one game and like he had never seen a football before in another.  Even when he won the first Super Bowl, it was more because of the defense and blind luck than any extraordinary skill on his part.

Ahhhhhh, but the key word in that last sentence is "first" - it is easy to luck your way into one Super Bowl, but two?  That is highly unlikely (Jim Plunkett not withstanding).  Eli has become one of those players that makes every one around him better.  His calm demeanor makes everyone else around him relax.  And Eli is at his best when the stakes are highest, which is a trait shared by some of the truly great quarterbacks of all time (Joe Montana, Bart Starr).

Any lingering doubts anyone could have had about Eli and his skill and his place on the team and even his place in the pecking order of quarterbacks should have been put to rest on Thursday.  Without a starting RB and missing his 1st WR, he dismantled the Panthers.  He made Ramses Barden(!) look great.  Barden has been buried on the depth chart for 3 years, and when his time came, he made the most of it and Eli made him believe.  And now I believe, completely.  Eli has gone from being ridiculed by his veteran teammates to having his teammates ready to run through walls for him.  Eli is no longer compared to Peyton.  Eli is his own man with his own skill set and what is quickly developing into a Hall of Fame resume.  I don't know if he is the best quarterback in the league (Aaron Rodgers, Drew Brees, Tom Brady) and I don't know if he ever will be.  I don't think that matters.  I was wrong about Eli Manning, heck, most of us were.  His personality is "aw, shucks" and his body language is almost comatose, but on the field, he is a stone cold killer and best of all, a winner.

Are You Ready For Some, Well, You Know...

       Football!!!

       OK, I got that out of my system.  The answer is yes, I am more than ready for some.  The Mets season fell apart sometime around the all-star break, so it has been a long seven weeks or so.  Just as baseball opening day brings springtime and hope, the kickoff of football brings autumn and despair.  It is fall and everything is dying (to paraphrase a prophet).  Tonight specifically matches up the team of my childhood - the New York Giants - verses a team I might hate more than the Yankees, the Dallas Cowboys. 

One might wonder why I hate the Cowboys more than the Yankees...the short answer is the fans.  Now, if you are specifically from Dallas or even just from Texas, this does not apply to you.  But, and whoa is it a big but, lemme address this to all the other Cowboys fans, the bandwagon jumping, carpetbagging, intolerable jerk-offs who I wouldn't cross the street to piss on if they were on fire: you are not special.  You are not "America's Team."  You are the most insufferable human beings who ever existed and that includes the Klan and the Nazis.  You deserve Tony Romo as a quarterback. You deserve Jerry Jones as an owner and god willing, he will live to the age of 100 and make Al Davis look like Wellington Mara and Art Rooney's love child in the meantime.

This is the only page of Cowboys I have in my binders and I am not even sure how this one got in.

Did I mention I am not fond of the Cowboys or their fans?  How did this happen?  Well, growing up in New Jersey in the early to mid 80's, you were surrounded by "Cowboys fans" - basically soulless, loser fans who jumped ship on the Giants or Jets because they sucked during the 70's and early 80's.  I find these kinds of "fans" to be just awful people.  It says a lot about someone when they do this.  Oh, and did I also mention there is a lot of overlap between these "Cowboys fans" and Yankees fans.  Yeah, despicable doesn't even begin to describe that phenomenon.

Those folks who jumped missed a hell of a ride in the late 80's and early 90's.  And when they were winning their Super Bowls in the mid 90's...dear lord...you would think they had been Cowboys fans their whole damn lives.  Ugh.  Just thinking about it makes me physically ill.  Let's see some more Giants cards to cleanse the palate. 

So what do I predict for tonight?  I hope the Giants defense terrorizes Tony Romo and maybe get a solid deja vu killer hit that breaks a bone or two and knocks him out of the game.

I hope the offense dominates the Cowboys piss-poor secondary and runs up the score. 

I hope the Giants unleash a new hero or two like they seem to do every year.

Ok, I admit, that page is a bit of a mess, but hey, my football pages are still in flux...

And finally, I hope Eli Manning delivers on the proverbial six touchdowns and that the Giants win this game something like 77-0 to set the standard for shutout domination. In the end, I hope the Giants dominate this division and make the playoffs, only to lose in the Superdome for the right to go to the Super Bowl, but that my friends is another post (come back Sunday...).

Wow, football kinda brings out the anger in my blogging, huh?