If They Don't Care....

The only thing left is to figure out what the headline of the NY Post will be tomorrow:

Big Blues
Big Blew It
Out-Mann-ed
Out-Fox-ed
Gi-Ain’ts
Midgets

Last week I was wondering how I’d feel if the Giants lost. The verdict is in and the winner is “Eh….whatever.” This embarrassment resembled the Super Bowl against the Ravens, but on a much smaller stage and against a much less impressive defense. After getting waxed that badly in the wild-card round, there aren’t a lot of “what-ifs” clouding my mind, which makes a season-ending loss much easier to deal with. The Giants did everything extremely poorly – stopping the run, stopping the pass, passing, running, special teams. The whole enchilada. The only excusable element is stopping the run – they talent at LB is so putrid that even perfect execution wouldn’t have shut down the Panthers RBs. Everything else just sucked in a major way.

In a performance so abominable, it’s hard to isolate any specific complaints. Here’s a try: the game was close in the first half (mostly because the league mandates that each team begins with the same score), so let’s start there. A big play in the first half was an illegal contact penalty on Justin Tuck on a 3rd and long. It gave the Panthers a first down and they went on to score a TD. You might be wondering, “who’s Justin Tuck?” The answer is that he’s a very promising rookie defensive end. If you already knew who Justin Tuck is, you might be wondering, “why is a very promising rookie defensive end in coverage on a 3rd and long?” That’s kind of where I was. I’ve been over this concept several times in this space so I’m only going to beat the horse until I get through the first layer of muscle – let your pass rushers rush the passer. Let you coverage guys cover the receivers. Let your guys do what they’re good at. I know it sounds simple. That’s because it is. Unfortunately, Tricky Tim seems more concerned about the mental masturbation of scheme development than letting his players do their job.

Continuing to ride Mr. Lewis for a moment, as I stated in the preview, Carolina has one – just one – receiver that can hurt you. You might have noticed him. He wears #89. They threw about 75% of their passes to him in the first half. Knowing this, as we all do, we would hope that we could devise a plan to use the tools at our disposal to limit Mr. Smith’s contribution to the offense. Makes sense, right? A normal person, like you or I, would probably think, “Let’s put Will Allen on him and give him safety help over the top.” Not Tim Lewis. His tool for covering one of the most dangerous receivers in the NFL….you guessed it, Terrell Buckley! He was sitting on his ass a month ago. He turns 35 this year. Perfect matchup. Brilliant. In fairness, Allen did line up against Smith on a number of plays, but just using Buckley on Smith one time is one time too many.

The injury to Antonio Pierce was the turning point of the season. The difference between the defense with and without Pierce is both massive and shocking. This is not an excuse; it’s more a disturbing observation. Injuries happen, and generally linebackers should not be considered irreplaceable. The loss of Pierce was exacerbated by the losses of Emmons, Green, Blackburn, etc., but Pierce was really the guy who made the defense go. The Panthers picked up huge chunks of yards on the ground, and the game becomes very simple when you can do that.

On offense, the Giants did nothing. Absolutely nothing. The only guy who I’m not going to blame is Tiki. He’s done enough to earn a pass. The OL was mediocre against a tough Carolina front 4. The holes in the running game were small and short-lived and the pass protection was spotty. Eli did nothing. He didn’t make any plays and he gave a few away. The receivers were dreadful. Plax and Shockey spend more time bitching than they do catching and running. The Giants have a lot of cap space tied up in the passing game and they got nothing out of it today.

Overall, the Giants played their worst game of the year in the biggest game of the year. Everything sucked. Credit is due to the Panthers, who had a solid gameplan and executed it flawlessly. Overall, this season exceeded expectations and should be considered relatively successful, but that in no way excuses the hideous performance by Big Blue today. This was only the 3rd playoff loss ever in Giants Stadium – the Vikings collapse and the Flipper game being the others – and it was obviously the most lopsided. The Giants were outplayed, outcoached, outhustled, out-everythinged in every single phase of the game. It was a travesty.

This morning I was walking around lower Manhattan on a gorgeous day, regretting that I had opted not to go to the game. This evening I’m sitting in my apartment eating Chinese food thanking my instincts and laziness for deciding not to go to the game. You can bet that I’d be a thousand time angrier if I’d spent 200 bucks on those assholes. See you next year.

It’s on to hockey and college hoops.