As a Giants fan I have gotten used to lowered expectations. The Giants have never been a team that wins the Super Bowl in August-who picked them to win in 2007?-and since then they have in most seasons not been highly regarded. This year they came in with few picking them to do much and with their only bandwagon the Eli bashers-many of who are Giants fans.
For myself I couldn't but consider it an ill omen after they lost Week 1 28-14 to their arch rivals the Washington Redskins. The reason this boded ill for me is that these are the Redskins! If there is one thing the Giants have been able to count on year in year out is that their perpetual dominance of Washington only grows. Year after year, in fact the Giants going into week 1 had a 91-61-4 all-time edge against the Skins. Beginning with 1984 the Giants had a 32-17 edge-including their first Super Bowl in 1986 when they beat the Redskins in the NFC East title game to go 3-0 vs them for the season-and had won 6 straight-ie, 3 straight sweeps the last 3 years- currently before week 1. To be blown out like that against Washington then is big news for the Giants.
In week 2 they came back against the Rams winning 28-16 but-it's the Rams a perennial also-ran the last few years. Yesterday, however was big, and in fact cancels out the negative effects and implications of the week 1 blowout to as the Giants beat another NFC East archival, the Philadelphia Eagles. The Giants relationship to Philly in recent years has been more or less the converse of the Redskins. While we have owned the Skins the Birds have owned us having won the last 6 contests between us since 2008, including a 23-11 drubbing at Giants Stadium in the winter of 2009 to end the Giants chance at defending their Super Bowl title from the previous year. However last year was the nadir for Eagles' dominance of the Jints.
After losing the last 3 games to Philly by the scores of 17-40, 38-45, and 17-27 the Giants in a game with first place on the line in the East dominated 3 and a half quarters taking a 31-10 lead with under 9 minutes left then mangled to totally self-destruct losing 38-31.
Yesterday their 29-16 win then takes back the balance from losing to Skins in week 1 and a lot of the ugly taste from all those losses to Philly in recent years. Eli Manning, with his many detractors managed to throw 4 TDs and-believe it or not-have not a single interception for an almost perfect QB rating for the game of 145.7. Though he has the bad rap of throwing so many picks especially in tight spots, a little historical context is in order. In his first few years he tended to have interception counts on the high side, though he always had more TDs than picks. In his first two full seasons-2005 and 2006-he had TD-INT numbers of 24-17 and 24-18, In the Super Bowl year his full season numbers were a little worse (23-20) but he really came on in the playoffs with no interceptions and led 3 comebacks against much more highly regarded opponents(each were favorites of course).
In 2008 and 2009 he actually had very few picks compared with TDs thrown-21-10 and 27-14 respectively, so both years he had essentially a 2-1 ratio of TDs to INTs which is a superior mark for an NFL QB. Last year though he took a step back, throwing a career high 25 interceptions, though he also set a career record with 31 TDs and also threw over 4000 yds for the second successive year.
In concluding my savoring this reversal of Giants' fortunes I will note that the final score of all three games are very close to identical. In week 1 they lose 14-28, week 2 they win 28-16, week 3 29-16. The total points have been almost the same each week with 42, 44, and 45 respectively. What's more the winning team each week has scored "about" 28 points and the losing team as scored "about" 16 points-ie, 28 points is the mode for the winning team, 16 has been the mode for the losing team; after all 29 points is "close enough" to 28 when the winning team(in 2 weeks the Giants in the other week Philly) in the other 2 weeks has scored 28 while 14(the losing score in Week 1 for the Giants) is similarly "more or less" the 16 points scored in the other 2 weeks.
This kind of statistical whimsy is one of the main reasons I became such a big football fan in high school-it was another kind of math for a mathophile; another main reason is that while the NFL is full of numbers it is also full of history-how my teams and the other teams have performed year by year, their series vs series records like when we looked at in the Giants-Eagles and Giants-Redskins rivalries.
For those who similarly like to study the history of the NFL and series records I recommend
http://www.nfl.com/history
No comments:
Post a Comment