Imagine what it must be like to be Tom Coughlin’s stomach. How it must grind with every missed blocking assignment, churn with every Eli Manning pass that doesn’t connect, tighten into knots with every penalty that the Giants take. Coughlin is a perfectionist who will do anything short of a felony to figure out a way for his team to win.
And he’s assembled one of the most talented teams in the NFL, if not the most talented. Most teams would gladly swap their offensive or defensive lines for New York’s, they have a quarterback who has led the team to victory in the Super Bowl, and the running game is the envy of the division.
And right now they plain suck.
Any hopes the Giants had of running away and hiding in the NFC East have been kicked to the gutter in the last three weeks. As good as New York was in its first five games, the Giants have done an inexplicable 180 over the last three.
The result is a 5-3 record, three consecutive non-covers and a drop from the top spot in the NFC East. After the latest defeat, a crushing 40-17 slapdown by the Eagles (the Giants were giving 1), there was locker room talk about changes.
One positive change could be the return of injured linebacker Michael Boley, who has missed four games; and defensive linemen Chris Canty, who has been out for seven. That would help shore up a defense that has allowed 112 points in the three defeats.
But no one seems to know what wide receivers will be available. Mario Manningham missed the Eagles game, and Domenick Hixon and Sinorice Moss were both knocked out of that game.
Having half-decent wideouts is a must for Eli Manning, who claims to be completely recovered from plantar fascitis on his right heel but more than likely is fibbing about it. He’s just not the same. Manning needs healthy wideouts to keep the passing game relevant and prevent teams from stacking the box to stop the power run game that Coughlin loves so much.
Help may be on the way, from the West Coast. Everyone’s favorite dysfunctional team, the San Diego Chargers, arrive in New Jersey this weekend. The Chargers had trouble at home against Oakland last week and are still not playing the way everyone thought they would at the beginning of the season.
The line opened at New York -3.5 in some books but has been bet up to -4.5 generally and as high as 5 as bettors bank on a New York rebound that would bring some relief to Coughlin’s tummy.
Meanwhile, preseason talk about three teams from the NFC East earning spots in the playoffs has cooled with the weather. Every team in the division has experienced rough sledding at one point or another. Still, in looking at the rest of the NFC, only Atlanta appears to have enough talent to beat out an East team for a wild-card berth.
Back away from that camera . . . slowly
Is Eric Mangini cursed by SpyGate? Things haven’t gone too well since the then-Jets coach ratted out the Patriots in the 2007 opener in New York. The Jets lost that game, 38-14, and finished the season at 4-12. Signing Brett Favre in 2008 didn’t help much when Favre imploded late in the season and the Jets again missed the playoffs.
The dour Mangini was shown the door in New York, but landed on his feet in Cleveland, and since his arrival the franchise has somehow figured out a way to go from really bad to really, really bad.
Mangini now has the fun task of trying to win in the NFL without any talented players, and the squad that remains is hardly rallying around him (for one thing, doing that would form a very wide circle).
Now the front office, perhaps feeling neglected, has followed suit and is in turmoil itself. Mangini’s special assistant has been canned, and the figurehead general manager was shown the door. In true Browns fashion, no one knows why. And it’s never good when season-ticket holders are organizing boycotts of your games. Maybe dropping that dime on Bill Belichick wasn’t the smartest thing to do after all.
Cleveland has this week off before continuing its Dead Man Walking act Nov. 16 at home against Baltimore. It won’t be long before Mangini is dodging snowballs.
Just when they had some momentum . . .
No good deed goes unpunished, and the Houston Texans have to be wondering what they did to offend the football gods. After that vomit-inducing loss at home to the Jets on opening day, Houston has rebounded nicely with three straight wins (Cincinnati, Buffalo & San Francisco) and moved back into the playoff conversation.
But the win over the Bills last Sunday came at a high price when Pro Bowl tight end Owen Daniels was lost for the season after suffering an ACL tear. The Texans get 9 at Indianapolis on Sunday and it will be interesting to see if they can push the Colts.
The AFC South is out of reach, but going 5-3 in the second half would get the Texans to 10-6 and a probable playoff spot for the first time in their history.
Double-digit dogs bite back a bit
Backers of heavy favorites took a beating last weekend. Six teams gave 10 or more points and only two (Dallas and Chicago) were able to cover the number. The Colts survived a near-death experience against the 49ers, San Diego had to go belly to the wall to defeat Oakland, Arizona turned in another clunker at home in losing to the Panthers and New Orleans held off Atlanta in a somewhat tight game on Monday night.