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I'm defending Eli..


Nas

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It has always been common knowledge that Plaxico Burress is not only a poor route runner, but a lazy one as well(as very well pointed out by Theisman for a change last Monday) and Tim Carter is not what I would call "Torry Holt like" in his precison and technique as a route runner. With that said, its apparent, the Giants miss a fundamentally sound WR like Toomer greatly. Aside from Shockey, who runs crisp routes(yet does forget which way to go from time to time)there is not one reciever out there now that is what you would classify as a fundmentally sound router runner. I am almost starting to believe that Plaxico's atheletic ability as a WR as opposed to his fundamentality as one is killing ELI. It's almost as if the way PLAX plays WR(out jumps guys, tips balls to himself, etc)is the way that ELI Manning is playing QB in attempting to get him the ball. I have seen ELI Manning look his best when he was finding the open Toomer on good solid pass routes. Think back to the Washinton and the Philly game this year, Toomer had good games and ELI's passer rating, comp%(all the things that mind bogglingly anyone seems to care about) were quite good. DO not get me wrong, Plaxico Burress is an added advantage to this team with his height and athletic ability, but I think that ELI is playing QB as to how he plays WR. I think that is trickling down all over and its affecting his game. What this team could use is a good solid possesion type WR who runs solid routes and gets open, sadly at this point in the season that will be difficult.

 

I never understood how Philly was able to land Stalwarth and we couldn't. The guy is a far better all around player than Plax.

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Well that's because Sehorn was busy checking out his lipstick... But still that game the Ravens had the better game plan and it was the exception to the rule... now.. it feels like we're the rams (as disgusting as that sounds)

And Kerry Collins had a terminal case of "Happy Feet"; he was feeling the Raven's rush in the pre-game warmups. He was psyched out by all of that "we are going to dismember you" bullshit they were spouting. Sehorn was playing out of position for his whole career. Fox' genius was in disguising the coverages so that you could not figure out at the snap what part of the defense was in man or zone coverage. Sehorn would have been better off at FS (he really could not tackle either) where he could free-lance and ball hawk to his hearts content. Other than Everson Walls there has not been another Giants DB who could consistently be counted on to intercept passes they were expected to, and coming up with the spectacular interception where most others could not.

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And Kerry Collins had a terminal case of "Happy Feet"; he was feeling the Raven's rush in the pre-game warmups. He was psyched out by all of that "we are going to dismember you" bullshit they were spouting. Sehorn was playing out of position for his whole career. Fox' genius was in disguising the coverages so that you could not figure out at the snap what part of the defense was in man or zone coverage. Sehorn would have been better off at FS (he really could not tackle either) where he could free-lance and ball hawk to his hearts content. Other than Everson Walls there has not been another Giants DB who could consistently be counted on to intercept passes they were expected to, and coming up with the spectacular interception where most others could not.

Don't forget about Mark Collins...

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Don't forget about Mark Collins...

Yeah you are right; also Mark Haynes. But the main reason why I did not mention those two guys is because they were the full package... they could cover very well...provided very good run support... and were very much team guys (especially Collins). Lastly they were able to cover right out of college with none of this having to work them into the scheme bullshit. Walls and Sehorn were in my opinion more free safety cover type guys, who could fill in at CB one on one with the low to middle echelon opponents. But could not keep up with the speedy types.

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I never understood how Philly was able to land Stalwarth and we couldn't. The guy is a far better all around player than Plax.

I wouldn't go that far. Very inconsistent with the hands, and doesn't have the overall ability that Plax has. And Plax garners much more coverage than Stallworth does.

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I just watched clips of Eli playing in the 2004 Cotton Bowl. He looked like a different quarterback! He was making all the throws he doesn't seem to make as a Giant. I know, it was only one game and not on the level of the NFL, but I needed some hope going into tomorrow. :TU:

 

COME ON ELI!!! PROVE THEM WRONG!!!!

 

 

Please... :ph34r:

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Great article in the Daily News by one of my favorite sports writers

 

Relax folks, got to give Eli a break

 

Ben Roethlisberger won a Super Bowl last year with what turned out to be a better Steelers team than anybody knew they still had. Philip Rivers has a chance to go to the Super Bowl this year with the Chargers. The Giants could have taken either one of them in Eli Manning's draft and took Eli Manning instead and now, because Rivers is going good with a much better team than Manning has around him right now, the drafting of Manning is supposed to be a bigger mistake than $40 million for Carl Pavano. Give me a break.

Eli Manning will be 26 on the third day of next year. Going into a big game for the Giants on the road against the Titans today, he has played 35 games at quarterback for the Giants and started 33 of them. He has thrown 46 touchdown passes and 39 interceptions, thrown for 7,007 yards in his NFL career. But because Roethlisberger did what he did in his first two years with the Steelers and Rivers has shown such early speed behind center for the Chargers, it is now officially determined, with Giants fans who probably are related to the ones who used to boo Phil Simms before he won the Giants a Super Bowl, that not only are Roethlisberger and Rivers better, they would have the Giants much better positioned to win a Super Bowl than Manning does.

 

As if all the precincts have reported.

 

Apparently you could have thrown either one of them out there when Tom Coughlin did about halfway through the 2004 season and he would have finished that season with the promise that Manning did and then thrown 24 touchdown passes and nearly 3,800 yards in '05 and put the Giants into first place and the playoffs before pulling the kind of rock he did against the Panthers.

 

Now, without a starting left tackle and Amani Toomer and a wounded defense that even makes backup quarterbacks on the other team look good, it is apparently some kind of given that Roethlisberger and Rivers - now discussed in the newspapers and on the radio around here as if he were the second coming of Johnny Unitas - would be dragging the Giants across the finish line all by himself.

 

So this has become the midseason when Eli Manning is suddenly discussed like he's A-Rod in the postseason. If the Giants come back 6-5 to Giants Stadium next Sunday and then get clipped by Bill Parcells' Cowboys, Manning will probably hear the loudest boos of his brief Giants career, the kind that Simms heard before he delivered the goods in Pasadena in January of 1987.

 

Simms, the last No. 1 pick at quarterback for the Giants as controversial as Manning was, happened to be 31 when the Giants finally won a Super Bowl. He was in his seventh season in the league and had played 85 games at quarterback and the day he beat the Broncos in the Super Bowl with what I still think is the greatest single game any Super Bowl quarterback has ever played, he had 104 career touchdown passes in the regular season against 103 interceptions.

 

You know how many times Simms had been written off around here before he and the Giants started to look like a real contender a couple of seasons before Pasadena? All the time, that's how many. He wasn't ever going to be healthy enough, he wasn't ever going to be good enough. Here's how good he became: Good enough to be in the Hall of Fame if the voters ever stop penalizing him for getting hurt before he got the chance to win that second Super Bowl against the Bills in Tampa.

 

"Fans get impatient," Simms said once, with a smile. "They get more impatient around here. And they get real impatient with quarterbacks."

 

This was coming from the best and toughest quarterback the Giants have ever had. Even Parcells loved Simms so much, when Simms was on the same kind of learning curve that Manning is on right now, three years into this, that Parcells picked Scott Brunner to start ahead of him.

 

You make all this right by winning, of course, whether it is the fans or media with short memories and shorter patience. Eli hasn't won yet and might not win this season and might lose to the Titans today. He is having a bad, sloppy, uncertain stretch. He throws some bad balls at worse moments. Do I know that he's going to be a better Giants quarterback than Simms was? I don't. But the idea that after basically starting two full seasons for the Giants that we know all we need to know about him is dumber than Dick Cheney.

 

* * *

 

Derek Jeter had a splendid season and I will say again that he would have had my vote if I had one for MVP.

But Yankee fans acted this week as if Jeter had won the Triple Crown.

 

There was a time, back in the day, when my friend George King was covering Curt Schilling in Philadelphia, and became less and less enamored of the big guy's personality.

 

So he wrote one day that while there was no 'I' in team, it was probably no accident that there were two in "Schilling."

 

Same goes for Tiki.

 

I wonder if Tiki ever takes a quick step to the side, as if side-stepping another tackler, and then takes a good look at where his career was before Tom Coughlin became his football coach and what's happened to it since.

 

Or perhaps he's just too busy being such a Renaissance man.

 

Not only a Renaissance man, but perhaps the greatest truth-teller in the media since the team of Woodward and Bernstein.

 

In a perfect world, you know who does the media coverage of Tiki?

 

Tiki.

 

With two I's.

 

I can't help myself, every time I see Stephon Marbury refer to himself as "Starbury" I laugh.

 

By the way, if Starbury thinks Isiah's still got his back no matter what happens, he needs much better peripheral vision.

 

Before the winter's over, Mr. Minaya of the Mets is going to sign up some guys who aren't eligible for baseball's Senior Tour, right?

 

One of these days the Jets are going to look back at the 2006 draft and wonder why they didn't grab either Matt Leinart or Jay Cutler when they had the chance.

 

Attention must be paid to the Baltimore Ravens, who have the following three things:

 

1.) A quarterback in Steve McNair who's already played in a Super Bowl.

 

2.) A defense.

 

3.) A running game.

 

Tell me how many of the other contenders have all that going for them.

 

Willie Pep died the other day, at the age of 84.

 

He came out of Middletown, Conn., and gave himself a great boxing name, one up in lights in his sport by the time he ended his career the way a lot of them did, boxing nobodies for purses you could have fit inside his boxing gloves, in arenas not much bigger.

 

The last time I saw him, before Alzheimer's got him the way it has too many other boxers, was several years ago in a restaurant called Graziano's, just down the street from the Boxing Hall of Fame in Canastota, N.Y.

 

My mom grew up in Canastota with the great Carmen Basilio, and my aunt and uncle live within walking distance of the Hall, and it wasn't just Basilio who came out of Canastota, it was a welterweight champ named Billy Backus, who happened to be Carmen Basilio's nephew.

 

I was back there for a visit and walked into Graziano's and there, in town for some function at the Hall of Fame, sitting alone was Willie Pep.

 

I walked over and introduced myself and he looked up and smiled. "You know who I am?" he said.

 

I told him, yeah, I did.

 

"You ever see me fight?" he said.

 

I told him, no.

 

"You should have," Willie Pep said.

 

Here is one more dumb thing about the BCS, as if we needed one: Wisconsin goes 11-1, only loses to Michigan, but can't go to a BCS bowl because they only allow two teams per conference.

 

Nice.

 

Finally today, a happy birthday to my daughter, Hannah, who turned 8 yesterday.

 

She is our fourth, and our first girl, and I tell her this weekend, in the newspaper, what I tell her all the time:

 

She was, in all wonderful ways, worth the wait.

 

Originally published on November 26, 2006

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