NFL-Giants: NY Giants football news

Giants 6-3, Bears 8-1 - game summary

The Giants got the ball first, and our MVP took over. Tiki Barber is just amazing and had some nice long runs. The Giants drive stalled when they started passing thanks to a couple of poor throws from Eli Manning. To make matters worse, Feeley missed a field goal. Blame the wind if you don’t want to blame our kicker.

The Giants defense stepped up, and not only did we stop Chicago on their first possession, Kiwanuka forced a turnover (he actually intercepted the ball) that led to a Brandon Jacobs touchdown run. There was a strange call on Jacobs for unsportsmanlike conduct after the TD run. Maybe it’s just me, but if the dude’s wife is pregnant and he wants to say hi to his wife by sticking the football under his shirt, then what’s the problem?

Of course Chicago had good field position after that. A weak Feeley kickoff didn’t help. The Giants defense held on Chicago had to punt. Manning was soon intercepted and while the defense held firm, Chichago still kicjed a 49 yard field goal to make it 7-3 Giants.

The Giants didn’t go anywhere with the football thanks to more poor passing from Manning. The Giants D stopped the Bears again. The Giants again got nowhere on offense (this is when Petigout went down and Whitfield came in). At this point in the game I was wondering why the banged up defense was playing lights out while the offense missing Toomer was playing pretty poorly. Mostly because they were calling passes and manning wasn’t delivering the ball.

Soon after Chicago got the ball back our D came up huge with a fumble that Gibril Wilson both forced and recovered. Sweet play that led to a Giants field goal. Feeley gets credit for making a 46 yarder in the wind – he had missed a 33 yard attempt earlier. Feeley made another field goal a bit later to make it 13-3 Giants.

However, right before halftime the Giants defense gave up a few 20+ yard plays and allowed a Chicago TD. That sucked. There was a 26 yard run up the gut, a couple of big pass plays that victimized Madison who looked hurt. I’m not sure what happened to the defense there. 13-10 at halftime made me a lot less confident than I had been a few minutes before at 13-3.

Unfortunately, it was a sign of things to come. The Giants played poorly on both side of the ball in the 3rd quarter and two Chicago TDs later it was 24-13. Giants fans everywhere were wondering what happened. The refs were making a lot of calls against the Giants (most but not all the Giants deserved) and the lines were both getting beaten. But the Giants offense came through with a quick TD to make it 24-20 with 3:30 left in the 3rd. This was thanks to a big run by Tiki who hadn’t looked good so far in the 3rd.

When Chicago got the ball back it looked like we had them stopped deep in their own territory, but they converted on 3rd and 13 (Corey Webster went for the big play instead of making the tackle). Their passing game continued to kill us. The third quarter ended with Chicago facing a 3rd and 4 at the Giants 35. The Giants D had another chance to stop them, the commercial break was pretty suspenseful. A penalty made it 3rd and 9. Fred Robbins came up with a huge sack to make it 4th and 18 with the Bears well out of field goal range.

Awesome start to the 4th quarter. The Giants looked good driving the ball. Tiki was running hard. Eli made a nice play to get the ball to Tyree who made an even nicer catch. Tyree was so close to going out of bounds that the Bears challenged. They lost their challenge. Everything was great until Whitfield let his man sack Eli who fumbled (luckily out of bounds). A Tiki run on 2nd and 24 made it 3rd and 15.

An insane 51 yard field goal attempt (into swirling wind) was of course missed. Devin hester of the Bears then returned it 108 yards for a touchdown. 31-20 Bears. That play was just infuriating. How can your head coach put his guys in that situation? I mean the Giants just stood there and watched it happen – the coaches had obviously not prepared them at all for the possibility of a missed field goal being returned. Just incredibly stupid considering that the field goal was 99% certain to be missed anyway.

Manning’s second interception killed any hope that was left of a Giants comeback. How can you win when your QB is credited wit 2 interceptions and 3 fumbles on 13/28 accuracy? With 11 minutes left in the 4th Eli had thrown for 111 yards. Rex Grossman had played much better and it showed in the stats: 3 TDs, 1 int., 18/30 for 246 yards.

Well soon it was 38-20 and with 8 minutes left the game was over. Eli, Coughlin, and Webster (in that order) cost the Giants dearly in this game, wasting some solid efforts from all the backups who were forced to start. Well not Whitfield who badly needed help he didn’t get, but on defense anyway, the backups played as well as we could expect.