THE BIG PICTURE

     The Giants played a perfect game for three and a half quarters yesterday, but were ultimately done in by the freak of nature that is Mike Vick.  It's not the punters fault alone....The Maningham fumble, the Phillips missed tackle on Brent Celik, and the missed sack attempt by Deon Grant all contributed and led to the poor snap and punt to end the game.

     The Big Picture is that yesterday was one of those days in the NFL.   New Orleans lost, Tampa Bay lost, Green Bay lost, and that leaves the Giants in the same position they were in before the game started.

     I still would not want to face the GIANTS defense in the playoffs.  I am also very impressed with an offense that rushed for a hundred and threw for 290 with a 47% third down conversion rate playing behind an O-Line that hadn't seen each other in a while.  This game will turn out to be be more of an indictment of the Eagles that it will the G-Men.  That Eagle defense will never stand up for 5 more games.

Off to Green Bay next week followed by a trip to Washington........if it ended now a rematch with the Eagles is in the making, this time in Philly.

For all of you hearing or even spouting rumors about Bill Cowher, let's recap a bit.  Anyone remember when Coach Cowher was actually coaching?  He was known as the guy who couldn't win the big one.  Lots of regular season success followed by failure in the playoffs...sort of like say the Chargers of today. He won one Championship in a game the NFL has called the worst officiated game in NFL history.  Ask anyone in Seattle who won that game, then get back to me.  The great coach then quit, at a young age, and no one in Pittsburgh tried to get him to stay, and no one has missed him since.  He has been out of football for 4 years...making (wrong) predictions on TV every week doesn't make you a head coach.  Mr. Coughlin on the other hand has won one championship and been on the staff for another.  He is number one in successful challenges, does a great job with clock management (see '07 super Bowl final 2:32) and gets his team prepared every week without false bravado, or tearing the other team down.  He also takes the blame when necessary, and is truthful about his own teams chances, not like others who always say the better team lost today ( ala Wade Phillips).
Coach Coughlin is here to stay a while.......one game, no matter how bad, is not going to cost this coach his job.  Many coaches and fans wish their team had a chance to finish 11-5 and play in the post season.

Preview on Friday....and keep your heads up, it's still just one strange game.