Giant goose-egg

SRAM readers probably think that this entry is going to be a big gloat over Eli's abysmal day yesterday, coming as it did on the heels of our dismantling of the Eli Myth that emerged about halfway through the regular season. But this blog is not about gloating. Nor is it about retribution. We take the high road. While the rest of the world is saying "Me, me me," SRAM says, "Us, us, us". We're all in this together.

So it turns out that Eli stinks. Are we surprised? Do we feel the need to dwell on this? Recount his 4 turnovers yesterday? Remind our readers of the last time a home team got shut out in the playoffs? Not at all.

On the contrary, today I'm (okay, back to "I") here to defend Mr. Eli. The pundits spent the day patting themselves on the back for their magnanimity and big-picture-seeing for not pinning the blame on Eli for the loss. Way to go, guys. But to a man they all missed the real reason for the Giants' goose-egg: the Giants defense.

In my opinion the most underrated statistic in football is number of plays, and that's the stat that tells the story of the Carolina-NYG game. Carolina had more rushing attempts yesterday than the Giants had total offensive plays by a count of 45-31. Throw in passing plays and the final tally stands at a staggering (staggering in the sense that it's unbalanced; you know how you're off balance when you stagger? That's what I'm getting at here) 71-35. And time of possession is even worse: 42:45 - 17:15.

So how is a team supposed to score when they only get 35 plays? How is Tiki Barber supposed to have his normal game when he only gets 13 carries? Sure, the 3 interceptions were killer, but Eli was still 10-18 for 132 yards on the game. A pretty "healthy" yards per attempt, no?

Now, of course it's a two-way street. The Giants had few plays because they couldn't sustain a drive. But offenses will struggle, and when they do, the defense needs to get the ball back to them for another chance, multiple times, so that the offense can get untracked.

Knicks in the playoffs?

Wilbon blew Kornheiser's socks off this afternoon on PTI with his bold prediction that the Knicks would make the playoffs. But a look at the standings reveals that the 10-21 Knicks are a mere 3 games out of the playoffs right now. Not that bold!

What Wilbon omitted to mention was that it's the Eastern Conference's continued pathetic-ness that allowed him to go out on such a supposed limb, as evidenced by the Baby Bulls' 14-19 "playoff-worthy" record. Not that the omission is terribly surprising, of course; after all, Wilbon spent the first week of the NBA season proclaiming the resurgence of the Eastern Conference and the supposed weakness of the West. That's right: the first week of the season. Yes, it's never too early to make sweeping generalizations.

Paterno

Just a word on the idiotic NOW-Paterno story: since when does anybody in the sports world care about what NOW says? But the sports pundits love to comment on it because it makes them feel like real reporters tackling real-life issues.