Fantasy Football Preview: New York Giants

For our readers who are New York Giants fans, here is a guest column, courtesy of DraftStreet.com, on what you need to know when it comes to playing in a fantasy football money league and drafting Giants players.

Eli Manning, QB

Manning may be worthy of consideration in a fantasy football money league. He is on the fringe of starting in a 12-team league, finishing 12^th in passing yards in 2012 with 3948 and in a four-way tie for ninth in passing touchdowns with 26. His 15 interceptions were tenth worst.  Manning has been very durable, starting every game since taking over as starter midway through the 2004 season.  He has had at least 26 passing TDs each of the last four seasons and threw for over 4000 yards the last three seasons before just missing in 2012.

Victor Cruz, WR

Cruz led the Giants in receiving yardage and receiving TDs for the second straight season. His 10 TDs (tied for seventh-best) and 86 catches were similar to 2011’s nine TDs and 82 catches, but his 1092 yards were down from 2011’s 1536, the highest receiving total in Giants history. As training camp approached, Cruz was reportedly close to signing a long-term contract.

Hakeem Nicks, WR

After two seasons of at least 75 catches, 1000 yards and seven TDs, injuries limited Nicks to 53 catches, 692 yards and three TDs. Nicks had arthroscopic knee surgery during the offseason and missed OTAs, reportedly because he had broken his foot during OTAs in 2012. Nicks led the Giants in receiving in Super Bowl XLVI with 10 catches for 109 yards.

David Wilson, RB

With the departure of Ahmad Bradshaw, Wilson, a first-round draft pick in 2012, has the inside track on the starting job. Wilson had 358 rushing yards, four rushing TDs and one receiving TD as a rookie. 247 yards and three of the TDs came in his final four games.  Wilson lost playing time after fumbling in season opener, but he did not fumble again all season. Wilson’s surge also came when Andre Brown missed the final five games after breaking his leg.

Andre Brown, RB

Brown led the Giants in rushing TDs with eight and ran for 385 yards before his injury.  All eight of Brown’s TDs came from one or two yards out, so look for him to be the goal-line back.  Brown was originally drafted by the Giants in the fourth round in 2009, but after missing the 2009 season with an Achilles tendon injury, he was waived and was briefly a part of four other teams before rejoining the Giants in 2011.

Brandon Myers, TE

Myers comes over from Oakland, where he had a breakout year with 79 catches (fourth-best among tight ends) for 806 yards (sixth-best) and four TDs. He replaces Martellus Bennett, now with Chicago, who had 55 catches for 626 yards and five TDs.

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Please, Giants! Smash Tom Brady, Bill Belicheat, and the Patriots for Good!

I can't claim to be a real Giants fanatic -- I am basically a free agent football fan -- but I am rooting for them to destroy the Patriots today, like I rooted for Big Blue in Super Bowl XLII. As longtime Squawkers readers know, I can't stand Tom Brady, Bill Belichick and the rest of the Patriots. Chad Ochocinco, somebody I used to root for, became dead to me because he joined their team. The Giants have to win, with their ELIte quarterback. Because I cannot deal with hearing about Brady's four rings and all that. I want to hear that the curse of Gisele remains in effect.

It's very exciting in New York today -- my deli even had blue bagels in honor of Big Blue! People are buzzing about the game. It's hard to believe that just a few months ago, Eli Manning was getting ripped to shreds for calling himself an elite quarterback, and Tom Coughlin looked like he could be forced out. Now they're 60 minutes away from a possible fourth Super Bowl for the franchise.

Squawker Jon is all about the curtains in his piece on the game. The thing with the Jets doing the curtains tweak reminded me a little of when the Yanks thought it was a great idea to bring in Bucky Dent to throw out the first pitch in Game 7 of the 2004 ALCS. And how did that work out? Not so well.

Speaking of which, my Red Sox fan friend/longtime Squawker reader Joe had this to say about the media hype:

it was bothering me what the lead up for this game was reminding me of and i couldnt recall - the total piling on of one team, the anointing of one team as totally superior, the massive sense of unfounded entitlement of one team's players and fan base, the utter lack of respect for the opponent when colin cowherd nailed it and it crystallized for me today...this game reminds me of usc vs texas when vince young had his coming out party....admit it.

Yikes!  Funny thing is, I had a similar comparison before Super Bowl XLII, predicting that the Giants would win!

But I do not think the hype is as one-sided as my Patriots fan friend has been saying. I've been hearing a lot of the usual "Brady is a god! Belichick is a genius" nonsense this week, too.

I'm a little nervous, waiting for the game to begin. Please, Giants, New York is counting on you to destroy those beaneaters!

Super Bowl Sunday: Black Curtains for Jet Fans

Nothing will be as bad for me as the Yankees-Phillies World Series in 2009, but I've been avoiding dealing with this Super Bowl as much as possible. And it's not because I can't stomach the thought of either team's fans celebrating and laughing at the Jets. It's because those other teams and their fans have good reason to lord it over Gang Green.

After three years of Rex Ryan guaranteeing that a Super Bowl team would come out of the Meadowlands, he turns out to be right, except that it's not his team. But Ryan's big mouth isn't the worst thing about a potential Giants title. It's the Jets staff's classless covering up the Giants' Super Bowl logos outside their locker room with black curtains before their December game.

Hard to believe that just a few months ago, the Jets seemed to be the local team on the rise. Everyone wanted to play for Ryan, while Tom Coughlin's job looked to be in jeopardy. Jets' GM Mike Tannenbaum was the aggressive wheeler-dealer who quickly built a contender, while Giants GM Jerry Reese was too passive in the wake of the lockout.

Now nobody seems to enjoy being in the Jets' poisonous clubhouse. And players Tannenbaum got rid of for nothing (Steve Weatherford, Danny Woodhead, James Inhedigo, Shaun Ellis) are now contributing to Super Bowl teams. It's particularly frustrating when legendary Jets special teams coach Mike Westhoff goes out of his way to criticize Weatherford, who ends up being a key part of the Giants' playoff run.

At least it figures to be a good game, and now that Super Bowl Sunday is here, I'm actually looking forward to it.

Because once the football season is over, it's almost time for the unveiling of the 2012 Mets.

Now there's somethning that should be covered in black curtains.

John Mara sez the Giants aren't the Yankees

Between the holidays, the snow, and the lack of much of happening in Yankeeland this days, I haven't had much to squawk about as of late. Until now, that is. (Actually, I did have plenty to squawk about in general, like how Mayor Bloomberg treats the outer boroughs like something stuck at the bottom of his shoe, and how most Staten Island streets were completely impassable at the same time he's telling people to go see Broadway shows. But I digress. It's not really sports-related!)

Anyhow, Squawker Jon's Jets are in the playoffs (although Rex Ryan's wife foot fetish video creeped me out), but the Giants aren't. Despite that, Big Blue co-owner John Mara inexplicably decided to keep coach Tom Coughlin after yet another late-season collapse. And in doing so, Mara kind of dissed the New York Yankees. He told the media this, after the Giants didn't make the playoffs:

"In this society everybody wants to fire the coach all the time," Mara said. "The Yankees get knocked off in the playoffs, everybody wants to fire the manager. We don't do that here. He's going to be our coach."

Puh-lease. The managerial revolving door in Yankeeland ended a long time ago. The Yankees have had all of three managers in 20 years, one of whom wasn't quite the right fit for getting the team the ring, one who got them that ring (and three more) but stayed on three years too long, and another got them a ring, but who should lose his job next year if the Yankees have another disappointing playoff round.

At any rate, in the case of Joe Torre, the Yanks made the mistake of keeping him on too long for precisely the same reason Coughlin gets to keep his job -- because he got the team a championship (four, in Torre's case, as opposed to Coughlin's one.) That's not a good thing.

Wally Matthews had an interesting take on this for ESPN New York, saying that the Giants should be like the Yankees in demanding excellence: 

The Giants are not the Yankees? Well, why not? And since when was being like the Yankees such a bad thing, anyway?


The Giants should be more like the Yankees. So should the Mets, Jets, Knicks and Rangers. Winning should be the focus for all of them, and the pressure to perform should be on everyone on all their payrolls, all the time.

But Tom Coughlin is coming back. As a lifelong Giants fan, I am outraged. And I think you should be, too.

I agree with that in general, although I don't think the Yanks kept to that in Torre's case, until three years of first-round playoff exits forced their hand.

Anyhow, Matthews continued the argument, saying:

But if you took the entire Giants 2010 season from beginning to end, from its shaky 1-2 start to its high point, the 41-7 win over the Seahawks on Nov. 7 that had a lot of people believing the Giants were among the best teams in football, to their shameful collapse over the final month of the season, and changed the name "Giants" to "Yankees," and the name "Coughlin" to "Girardi," how do you think the story would have ended?

That part is true. But I would argue that if you change Girardi's name to Torre's there, the media would still say he deserved to keep his job. That Giants loss to the Eagles a few weeks ago, was as big a regular-season collapse (letting Philadelphia score 28 unanswered points in the final eight minutes of the game) as the 2004 ALCS defeat was in the playoffs. And it wasn't the first time the Giants choked, or looked sloppy, or lost a game they should have won. It begs the question, how long does the coach get a pass because of the ring?

Joe Torre was never able to win a single playoff series after the 2004 collapse. All keeping him on did was prolong the inevitable. As I think keeping Coughlin will. And now there's talk of a contract extension? Good grief. What, Jeff Fisher (another overrated coach) wasn't available?

I mostly agree with Matthews' general take on Coughlin, although I give the coach more credit for the Super Bowl victory than Matthews does. The columnist slammed him the hardest for the way Coughlin screamed at rookie punter Matt Dodge after the Eagles debacle:

Aside from being utterly unprofessional, it was the ultimate CYA move, a gesture designed solely to let everyone in the place know that it wasn't Tom Coughlin's fault, it was the kid punter's.


Can you imagine Joe Girardi doing that on the field to a player who missed a sign or made an error that cost the Yankees a game?

No, but I can imagine a certain untouchable Yankee manager scapegoating his superstar by batting him eighth!

At any rate, the lesson Mara ought to learn is that sometimes -- like in doing what's best for your team -- it's good to be like the Yankees. But make that the Yankees after the 1995 and 2007 seasons, not the Yankees after the 2004 season! Sometimes, stability for the sake of stability will continue to bring you futility.

What do you think? Tell us about it!

Yankees win exciting game, and so do Jets, while Tennessee gets best of Giants

Busy sports day in this Squawker household. First up, I watched my man Vince Young beat the Giants. Yes, I rooted for the Tennessee Titans over the home team. VY is the greatest Texas Longhorn of them all, and my favorite current NFL player, so I chose rooting for his team over Giants. Sorry, Big Blue fans.

There was one point during the game, when the Titans got their last touchdown to make the score 29-10, when Eli Manning had a really pathetic look on his face. It was the Manning Face, as Bill Simmons would say.

After that game, Squawker Jon and I yakked on the phone while we watched the Mets spoil the Phillies chance of clinching at home. We saw when Jimmy Rollins pinch-hit; the ovation for the crowd was so loud, you would have thought Mike Schmidt or something had come back in to play!

Anyhow, on to the Yankees. I'm glad Joe Girardi had Phil Hughes pitch; it was the right thing to do. Enough with this resting everybody for October, when they haven't clinched anything yet. But the first six innings were frustrating, with the Yankees making Dice-K look like unhittable. Fortunately, A-Rod came through in the seventh, hitting his 29th homer of the year, to put the Yankees ahead, 2-1. I like how happy Alex was; his homer felt like it came in a playoff game.

But I am soooooo sick of every time A-Rod comes up big against the Red Sox, some idiot fan acts as if it's the first time it's ever happened. I saw some fan's tweet listed on the YES Network postgame which said something about A-Rod finally getting a clutch hit off the Red Sox. Child, please, as Chad Ochocinco sez. How many times are we going to hear this nonsense? Six of A-Rod's 29 homers this season have come against Boston. He's hit 29 homers against the Sox since becoming a Yankee. They weren't all meaningless stat-padding dingers, you know.

Back to the game. I had a bad feeling that something might happen with Mariano Rivera's second inning. But I certainly wasn't thinking of 2004, like some in the media were. However, I wasn't that worried, even though Mo blew the save, (with a huge assist from Jorge Posada's throwing miscues), because I knew the Yankees had a secret weapon -- Jonathan Papelbon! Is there any Sox fan who had faith he would hold the lead? I haven't met anybody. We were debating on Facebook with Boston fans about who would get the big hit against Paps to win the game. Would it be A-Rod? Or Teixeira?

I also knew the Yanks would get to Papelbon because I called Squawker Jon to tell him to watch A-Rod's at-bat, and he hung up on me!

As it turns out, Papelbon technically didn't get the loss -- Hideki Okajima did. But it was effectively over as soon as Cinco Dopo came into the game. Juan Miranda's walkoff walk made it "Juan in a Million"!

In the meantime, I was flipping back and forth between the Yankees and the Jets games. (Yes, I rooted for the Jets, even thought the Dolphins have Texas Heisman Trophy winner Ricky Williams on their team. Ricky is no VY, though, not after he quit on his team a few years ago to, um, smoke!)

So I missed seeing if Juan Miranda got a pie in the face. Did it happen?


What do you think? Tell us about it!

Great day for Jets and Giants, as Patriots and Cowboys go down in flames

It feels very strange to ever root on the same side as Met fan Squawker Jon, but I was doing just that yesterday with the Jets-Patriots game, and with the Giants-Cowboys. So please bear with me a little, while I do some football talk this morning. I'll be back to baseball (and Joba!) later on today, I promise, after this gridiron interruption.

Jon, of course, like most Mets fan, is a Jets fan. As for myself, I'm not really part of Gang Green (I'm a mild Giants fan, and I root for the Tennessee Titans when Vince Young is playing!) But since I hate virtually everything from New England except for Stephen King and the Gorton's Fisherman, I was of course rooting against the Patriots. And it's not just that most Pat fans are Red Sox fans. It's that New England is the most arrogant team in football. What people accuse the Yankees of, they actually are.

I think Bill Belichick is a sore loser and a clown - the dude seems to be constitutionally incapable of giving anything remotely resembling a sincere post-game handshake. He's above it all, you see.(And I don't want to hear that it's because he wants to win so much. What, the other teams' coaches don't really want to win? Spare me.)

Of course, the coach did the same thing yesterday to Rex Ryan, and he also seemed annoyed that Jets QB Mark Sanchez tried to dare say anything to him after the game. To use the old line from Fat Albert, Belichick is like school in summer - no class.

Then there's that so-called golden boy, Tom Brady. You know, football's Derek Jeter. Only thing is, I've never seen Jeter be so rude with a reporter just doing her job as Brady was last week. After the Patriots' season-opening victory against the Bills, Kolber tried to ask Brady a very innocuous question, about what it was like to be in that dramatic comeback win. The arrogant Tom Terrible, who was practically sprinting off the field while Kolber was on camera trying to talk  to him, made her run across the field to keep up with him before finally spitting out an answer. Whadda jerk.

And, of course, this is the franchise that attempted to register "19-0" and "19-0 - The Perfect Season" as registered trademarks before the Super Bowl.Good grief.

So yes, I was primed to see the Patriots lose yesterday. Squawker Jon and I had a real kumbaya there, as we watched the last few minutes of the game while squawking on the phone together. It is very rare that we agree on anything (Jon rooted for Texas Tech over my Texas Longhorns this weekend, even though he doesn't  even know what a Red Raider is!). So it was kind of fun - albeit strange - to cheer for the same team. I may have been as excited over Gang Green's thrilling victory as he was!

Later on, we watched tthe Giants/Cowboys matchup at the new Cowboys Stadium. I lived in Texas during their '90s championship years, and they were the team that I simply loved to hate. I don't hate them quite as much now - other than the always-odious Jerry Jones, there's nobody really obnoxious to despise on their team. But I will still root against them, especially when it comes to the Giants.

However, I actually think Tony Romo did the right thing in dumping Jessica Simpson. Newsflash to Jessica - aka Yoko Romo - maybe your Hollywood friends think that having a Ken-and-Barbie-themed birthday party is a great idea. For an NFL player, not so much.

Anyhow, it was cool to see the Giants win at the last second - literally - and ruin Jerry Jones' first game at the new monstrosity. That stadium makes the new Yankee Stadium look subdued. And incidentally, did you see Jones digging for gold during the game? What was up with that?

I also liked how somebody in Jones' box seemed to be blocking his view during the field goal. What the heck was that guy thinking?

At any rate, Jon and I were on the same rooting side on that game as well. It's like dogs and cats living together or something! Fortunately, we had him trash-talking about Joba Chamberlain's lousy pitching to be at odds over. Come to think of it, I kind of agree with him there as well. Kumbaya, indeed!


Coming later today - my thoughts on Joba Chamberlain. But in the meantime, tell us what you think!