NEW YORK -- Musings, observations, and the occasional insight as we wrap up the NFL's entire three-day draft extravaganza at Radio City Music Hall ...
The week-after-the-Big-One column is heavy on the Giants, as it should be. And I'd be remiss if I didn't touch on the greatest Anthem I've ever heard at a game -- the late Whitney Houston's, 21 years ago. I'll get to other things around the NFL, too, but I still find so many things fascinating about the rise of Eli Manning, and the rise of this cornerstone franchise with him.
updated: Tue Feb 07 2012 16:24:00
The New York Giants parade through the heart of Manhattan, celebrating a dramatic win in Super Bowl XLVI.
INDIANAPOLIS -- The New York Giants just became the first NFC team to earn at least two Super Bowl rings in a five-season span since the Dallas Cowboys held three parades in four years in the first half of the '90s, and they are by no means a team that looks to be nearing the end of their window when it comes to punching in the NFL's heavyweight division.
INDIANAPOLIS -- Call it the Reluctant Touchdown. Ahmad Bradshaw's awkward and unwilling flop into the end zone is part of Super Bowl lore now -- there with Rice-to-Montana, there with David Tyree's helmet catch, there with Lynn Swann's ballet, there with Mike Jones' tackle one yard shy. Those moments defined their times. In many ways, The Reluctant Touchdown defines ours.
updated: Mon Feb 06 2012 10:28:00
Giants fans celebrate the victory over the New England Patriots in the streets of New York City.
INDIANAPOLIS -- It's a pretty select club Eli Manning joined here Sunday night. You could almost call it an "elite'' membership to belong to.
INDIANAPOLIS -- Musings, observations and the occasional insight as we digest the Giants' impossibly dramatic and gritty 21-17 defeat of the Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI Sunday night in Lucas Oil Stadium. As it turns out, it was a rematch, and a redux, indeed...
A ticker tape parade awaits the New York Giants this week when the team returns home as Super Bowl champions after defeating the New England Patriots on a last-minute touchdown.
There is no sweeter scenario for a Super Bowl broadcaster than a game hanging in the balance, and NBC's ratings for the Giants' 21-17 victory over the Patriots on Sunday will almost assuredly top last year's Super Bowl on FOX, which averaged 111 million viewers and became the most-watched television program in U.S. history. But how was the NBC broadcast for viewers? It's time to hand out grades.
Grading out performances from the New York Giants' nailbiting 21-17 win over the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI:
INDIANAPOLIS -- Eli Manning stirred controversy when he declared himself an elite quarterback at the start of the 2011 season.
Triumphing in a thriller, quarterback Eli Manning led the New York Giants on Sunday to their second Super Bowl victory over the New England Patriots in four years.
An estimated 111 million U.S. viewers are expected to tune in Sunday for Super Bowl XLVI. It features the scrappy New York Giants against the New England Patriots, who are looking for their fourth NFL title. Kickoff in Indianapolis is 6:30 p.m. ET.
For the past few days, the NFL punditry here has been remarkably divided on predictions for Super Bowl XLVI. For every expert espousing New England Patriots' depth and balance there is another waxing rhapsodic about the New York Giants' "momentum" and "destiny." Las Vegas echoed this ambivalence, as the gambling line continues to shift.
updated: Sat Feb 04 2012 11:00:00
Cris Collinsworth and Phil Simms discuss which players to watch this Sunday at Super Bowl XLVI.
INDIANAPOLIS -- There are at least two questions that come to mind when beholding the out-of-nowhere monster season turned in by salsa-dancing second-year Giants receiver Victor Cruz:
One of the great myths about the NFL is that the salary cap affords the league much better competitive balance than is possible in the cap-less Major League Baseball. This would not be a good week to be promoting that myth, seeing that the New York Giants and New England Patriots have become what Meryl Streep and George Clooney are to the Oscars. Ho-hum. The Giants and Patriots have filled one-third of the available spots over the past 12 Super Bowls.
Chase Blackburn always had a bag packed. Just because the New York Giants no longer wanted him didn't mean no other team would. For three months, he kept the suitcase by the door.
If you love the passing game, you'll love Super Bowl XLVI. In fact, it's a watershed moment in the evolution of pro football.
INDIANAPOLIS -- Musings, observations and the occasional insight from the exercise in pack journalism that was Tuesday's Super Bowl media day at the beehive known as Lucas Oil Stadium, which served to remind me once again that when it comes to this over-hyped event, alas, we're farther away all the time from chatting up Namath at poolside...
INDIANAPOLIS -- Lots going on as we draw nearer to The Rematch Bowl of Super Bowl 46. (That's right, I'm not a big Roman numeral guy.)
Tom Coughlin, the crusty, often vilified, old coach of the New York Giants, is the team's secret weapon -- a coach with a remarkable ability to win unwinnable games against superior foes, and often on the road.
SAN FRANCISCO -- I laugh when people call me an idiot for my predictions.
I have a proposal. It involves an act of Congress, and it violates the Constitution of the United States, but other than that I think it's perfectly reasonable.
SAN FRANCISCO -- The game is hard enough without the constant barrage of doubt and criticism. But has anyone, anywhere faced down the skeptics and so consistently won over the non-believers as Eli Manning and Tom Coughlin during their years together in New York?
Grading out the performances from the New York Giants' 20-17 overtime win over the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC Championship Game.
SAN FRANCISCO -- Musings, observations and the occasional insight from a down-to-the-wire Championship Sunday. We had three-point thrillers, from coast to coast...
Looking back, all the fuss was a bit silly. Giants quarterback Eli Manning was asked during a radio interview before the season if he thought he was in the same class as Tom Brady, his more heralded counterpart with the Patriots. What was he supposed to say? "No, actually, Tom is much better than I am. He is also more handsome. Everyone knows that!" Of course not. He answered the question the way any proud athlete, with a Super Bowl MVP on his fireplace mantle, would: "I consider myself in that class," he told 1050 ESPN in New York during training camp, back in August. "Tom Brady is a great quarterback, he's a great player and what you've seen with him is he's gotten better every year. He started off winning championships and I think he's a better quarterback now than what he was, in all honesty, when he was winning those championships. "I think now he's grown up and gotten better every year and that's what I'm trying to do," he said. "I kind of hope these next seven years of my
1. The quarterbacks will feel the heat.
The irony of this most unexpected pairing can't be missed. The NFC Championship Game matchup that we never saw coming -- Giants versus 49ers -- is actually one we've become very familiar with over the course of the past three decades of postseason history.
Musings, observations and the occasional insight as we wrap our brains around the new realities that the divisional playoffs have wrought: The Giants and 49ers move on, and the Packers and Saints don't. There's nothing like the plot twists you get in the NFL's postseason....
Grading out the performances from the New York Giants' impressive 37-20 upset win at Green Bay in the NFC divisional playoffs.
1. It's beginning to look a lot like 2007, down to the smallest details.
Sign me up for the notion that the NFL's divisional playoff round typically makes for the best weekend of the season, with the league's elite eight pairing off in four bursts of high-stakes elimination football. Here are eight of the best storylines that provide a backdrop of the action on tap:
DENVER -- Musings, observations and the occasional insight as we digest a wild-card weekend in the NFL that obviously saved the best for last, Denver's stunning Tebow-led overtime upset of Pittsburgh at a delirious Sports Authority Field...
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J.-- Described by teammates as an assassin in the run-up to Sunday's playoff game, Eli Manning delivered the kill shot early in the fourth quarter of the Giants' 24-2 drubbing of the Falcons at MetLife Stadium.
Grading out the performances from the New York Giants' dominant 24-2 win over Atlanta Sunday in NFC wild-card action.
1. Which team will find its playoff mojo?
I'm trying to get excited about the division title race in the NFC East, where three teams still have a chance to win it with three weeks to go, but it isn't easy. The NFL's All-Underachievement Division is a train wreck this season. I'm talking "avert your eyes" stuff.
New York Giants (6-6) at Dallas Cowboys (7-5)
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- If perfection comes to pass this season in Green Bay, remember this one. It was as close to defeat as the Packers have come this season, and like an accident narrowly avoided, it sent the adrenaline surging and brought out the best possible reaction from the defending Super Bowl champions.
Don't weep for Jack Del Rio. The just-fired Jaguars head coach was playing with house money. Or at least Wayne Weaver's.
NEW ORLEANS -- Things we learned watching the Saints' 49-24 destruction of the downward-bound Giants at the Superdome on Monday night.....
New York Giants (6-4) at New Orleans Saints (7-3)
SAN FRANCISCO -- Candlestick Park is a relic from the past, the most decrepit stadium in the league.
With Week 9 finished and 130 of the NFL's 256-game regular season now in the books, we're almost exactly halfway through the story in 2011. The second half of the season shapes up as an intriguing and wide-open affair, with 20 of the league's 32 teams still playing .500-or-better ball, and 18 clubs either in first place or within two games of the lead in their division.
PITTSBURGH -- Musings, observations and the occasional insight in a Week 8 that started out looking like Upset Sunday, but then settled down considerably as the games wore on....
LANDOVER, Md. -- The realities of their roster alone combat the notion that these are the same old Redskins, with all the inherent baggage that phrase implies. After all, head coach Mike Shanahan this summer kept only 27 players who were on Washington's Week 1 roster from a year ago, and a whopping 38 of his 53 players weren't even in the organization when he arrived in January 2010.
SI.com is previewing all eight divisions throughout the week in anticipation of the 2011 season kicking off. (Send comments to siwriters@simail.com)
SI.com has dispatched writers to report on NFL training camps across the country. Here's what Matt Gagne had to say about Giants camp in East Rutherford, N.J., which he visited on August 6. For an archive of all camp postcards, click here.
He was a guy who, with a football under his arm, had more moves than U-Haul, a Pro Bowl running back who could change directions enough to make you suspect his helmet hid a navigation device.
SI.com asked several current and retired SI writers to offer reflections on the best team they ever covered as sports journalists. Here's Peter King on the 1986 New York Giants:
Hall of Fame linebacker Harry Carson always was the classic football captain, solving problems before they became crises for the Giants of a generation ago. So it's fitting he took on one of the most difficult tasks he's had since retiring from football: organizing the 1986 Super Bowl championship team's 25th reunion.
BEDMINSTER, N.J. -- Giants quarterback Eli Manning throws passes at a high school in Hoboken. Giants cornerback Terrell Thomas trains at a high-performance facility in Los Angeles. Giants center Shaun O'Hara lifts weights at gyms across New Jersey. It is Giants minicamp, the lockout edition, with teammates spread hither and yon.
AUSTIN, Texas -- Football paid for this house. It is a fine house, nothing ostentatious, set back from the highway in the suburbs northeast of Austin. The front door opens onto 2,890 square feet of living space, centrally air conditioned and spread over two stories with an attached two-car garage, two-and-a-half bathrooms, an open porch and a fireplace. On the living room wall, prominent as you walk through the front door, Elizabeth Brown has framed a photograph of her younger son, Michael Johnson, an action shot capturing the height of his promise.
Excerpted from SCORECASTING: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports Are Played and Games Are Won, by Tobias J. Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim. Copyright 2011 by Tobias J. Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim. Published by arrangement with Crown Archetype, an imprint of the Crowne Publishing Group, a division of Random House Inc., New York.
Throughout the 2010 NFL season, SI.com's Nick Zaccardi will work with Jerome Bettis to get the six-time Pro Bowl running back's observations about the latest happenings in the league. Bettis retired from the NFL in 2006 after a 13-year career.
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- Five things we learned from the Eagles' improbable 38-31 win over the Giants:
A special Monday night doubleheader edition of musings, observations and the occasional insight as we watch the Favre-less Vikings fall 21-3 to the road-weary Giants in Detroit, while the Ravens hang on by their fingernails to outlast the Texans 34-28 in an overtime thriller ...
Musings, observations and the occasional insight from a field-goal filled Week 5 of NFL action ...
As a member of roughly 384 fantasy football leagues in the last seven years, I do not recall ANY 0-3 club ever winning the Fantasy Bowl -- regardless if four, six or eight teams qualified for the playoffs. So, if you're sitting at 0-2 but realistically harboring thoughts of a championship ... welcome to your first must-win week of 2010!
INDIANAPOLIS -- Five things we learned while watching the Colts dismantle the Giants 38-14 Sunday night in a rather anticlimactic Manning Bowl II at Lucas Oil Stadium ...
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- Blood spurted from Eli Manning's forehead early in the second quarter of a preseason game between the New York Jets and the New York Giants -- great crimson geysers of it, dripping onto his shoulder pads, splashing onto the artificial turf as he hurried toward the sideline.
I spent a good chunk of Thursday mock- and real-drafting for fantasy football, utilizing three distinctive methods: 1) Standard-scoring leagues, 2) Points Per Reception leagues and 3) Auction leagues. And as luck would have it, I'll devote a sizable piece of Friday's Clicks to the draft results. But first ...
When I was a little boy, my dad and I would sit on the floor next to his old reel-to-reel tape deck, taking turns talking into it and playing our voices back -- the same reel-to-reel he unwittingly used to gain his 15 minutes of fame.
LAYING OVER AT JFK -- OK. Before I inflame a few more passions, the answer to the golf over-under I posed in Monday Morning Quarterback: one. I put one tee shot in the drink from the 17th tee at the TPC Stadium Course in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., at the annual Tom Coughlin/Jay Fund benefit golf outing. I stink at golf anyway, but this was the big time, and I really wanted to hit one good shot on a waterlogged day. I used one of those hybrid clubs, swung soft, hit it pin-high -- but 10 feet to the right of the island. Plunk. Good thing our fivesome didn't have to use my tee shot in the team format on that one.
The NFL player is expected to be arraigned in New York, according to police
Maybe it'll be the Raiders who at long last pull the trigger on the deal we've all been awaiting for years, or maybe there's an 11th hour surprise entry when it comes to the Donovan McNabb sweepstakes. But one way or another, the Eagles quarterback appears closer than ever to ending his love-hate relationship with Philadelphia after 11 always-eventful seasons.
Excerpted from The First Star by Lars Anderson Copyright © 2009 by Lars Anderson. Excerpted by permission of Random House Group, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Things we learned from the Giants' 45-12 demolition of Washington Monday night at a fed-up FedEx Field in Landover, Md. ...
NEW YORK -- Fourteen things you need to know on the heels of Week 14:
My weekly look at key matchups and storylines to watch in one game at each time slot. (All times Eastern).
The realization that the world can turn upside down with remarkable speed in today's NFL is hardly a novel observation. But as I surveyed the landscape this week at the league's halfway point, I was struck by just how quickly a season -- even a really good season -- can completely fall apart.
My weekly look at key matchups and storylines to watch in one game at each time slot. (All times Eastern).
GREEN Bay, Wis. -- Musings, observations and the occasional insight as a rather unconventional but fascinating homecoming weekend here in Titletown wrapped up with the Vikings' 38-26 win over the Packers ...
My weekly look at key matchups and storylines to watch in one game at each time slot. (All times Eastern).
My weekly look at key matchups and storylines to watch in one game at each time slot. (All times Eastern).
My weekly look at key matchups and storylines to watch in one game at each time slot. (All times Eastern).
Things we know (or at least think we do) one month into the NFL's regular season....
ARLINGTON, Texas -- There's so much ground to cover on this strange, almost surreal night here, deep in the heart of Jerry's World. So let's get right to it ...
Breaking down Sunday's New York Giants at Dallas Cowboys game (8:20 p.m., NBC).
ALLEN PARK, Mich. -- We are ready for some football. Great to see it back Sunday night, with Vince Young beginning what he hopes is his resurrection (now, if he'd only quit talking about it) in the Hall of Fame game against Buffalo.
ALBANY, N.Y. -- Sorry for the late column today, and a couple of notes before I get into one of my favorite people in the NFL, David Tyree.
Have you noticed the leading trend in the NFL this offseason? Teams just aren't putting up with the trouble-makers the way they once did. Dallas said enough is enough, and sent Terrell Owens on his way. Denver took all it could take of the Jay Cutler saga, and then swiftly cut ties. Jacksonville didn't look the other way this time with Matt Jones, and now he's an ex-Jaguar.
Transaction season has arrived, and SI.com's NFL writers are here to analyze the free-agent signing and trades that will shape the season to come.
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- Memory of Eli Manning just less than a year ago: He is standing in a lobby-level restaurant at the New York Giants' team hotel in the tourist desert outside Phoenix. Music is playing loudly and fans are clamoring for a glimpse inside. Friends and family are toasting a second consecutive Manning Super Bowl victory, this one far more improbable than the last. Two months earlier Manning was struggling to prove himself worthy of playing quarterback for the Giants and now he is at the top of his profession, singing 'New York, New York' with his brother Cooper and just riding a wave.
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- Grading out the performances during the Eagles' 23-11 divisional-round win (Recap | Box) over the Giants on Sunday.
For my money there's no better weekend on the NFL calendar than the Saturday and Sunday quadruple-header of divisional-round play, when the four top seeds play host to the four first-round winners for the right to move on to next week's conference championships. It usually makes for the best football of the entire season, as the higher seeds and the notion of home-field advantage get tested by the teams that already have a playoff win under their belts.
Last year's march through the playoffs to the Super Bowl title by the New York Giants showed how critical line play can be in the postseason. The Giants bruised and battered every team in their way on both sides of the ball, culminating in the devastating performance by their defensive line against Tom Brady and the Patriots in Super Bowl XLII. In a league seemingly forever trending towards high-flying aerial attacks, the Giants proved the bully in the schoolyard can still win the fight.
If you're Asante Samuel, it must feel like you're either playing or getting ready to play the New York Giants every 10 minutes or so. For the fifth time in a span of a little more than a year, Samuel looked up early Sunday evening and saw the Giants looming in the distance. This time, as the Philadelphia Eagles opponent in next Sunday's NFC divisional round playoff game at Giants Stadium.
The most amazing thing I saw in this most amazing sports year was not especially important or historic or even decisive. No one won a medal at the end of it, no trophy, no championship, no world record. There were no playbooks involved, no chalkboards, no swimsuits, no balls, no bats, no clubs, no rackets. The man who performed the miracle was only doing what every child does, and at the end of it he seemed utterly unimpressed with himself. He would become world famous, but that was later.
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- Five things we learned from the New York Giants' mind-blowing 34-28 overtime win [Recap | Box Score] over the Carolina Panthers at frigid Giants Stadium ...
Breaking down Sunday's New York Giants at Dallas Cowboys game (8:15 p.m., Eastern, NBC) ...
NEW YORK -- Did someone say Miracle of the Ketchup Bottle?
Musings, observations and the occasional insight as we enjoy a Week 14 of frosty, see-your-breath NFL venues and games chock full of playoff-race implications ...
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