Hump day? It’s more like Grump Day. News of alleged (and expected) locker room in-fighting dominate the nuggets of the week, as the Giants appear to be in the mindset of just wanting to get the season over. Kinda like me. It’s hard to be cheery when the bags are all but packed to their vacation homes and not to the tournament.
It Can Only Get Worse Before it Gets Better: We already knew that Jason Pierre-Paul was likely to be placed on injured-reserve, and it appears that the time is right to shut him down. Actually, he never should’ve rushed his recovery to begin with, but there’s that dastardly hindsight again. What makes the final two weeks of the season even more dour is, well, with Cruz more than likely out this week and his availability certainly in question for the season finale, an already horrific offense could potentially be staring at another shutout. It’s not inconceivable that Eli Manning will try to force the ball all game long to Hakeem Nicks (who has gone about this whole “contract year” thing in the exact wrong way of handling it) simply because he’s the only one who Eli trusts outside of Cruz. And for Nicks to take issue with Tom Coughlin’s “pathetic” assessment on Sunday? This is a guy who went from cornerstone to clueless in a relative blink of an eye.
The Whole “Eli’s Replacement” Chatter: With everything that goes wrong, it’s easy for folks to look for the quick fixes. And this year, it’s Manning’s turn to take the heat. Just stop. There is no quarterback who could survive the sorry excuse for an offensive line that Eli’s stuck with. Eli deserves a healthy dose of blame for a lot of this year’s mounting problems, no question. But if a quarterback is not able to set his feet consistently, they are going to struggle. I don’t care who it is; Brady, Big Brother, Montana, if you don’t give him time to even survey the field, there’s no chance. What’s worse, Manning feels ghosts now. On occasion where he does get time, he’s so skittish, that he’s too quick in the trigger. This is all a byproduct of a very inconsistent running game and an o-line that plays like it’s not even on the field. There will come a time when it is time to think about a successor. That time is nowhere near close.
Final Word: The Giants head into Motown where they will face an angry Lions team smarting from the Justin Tucker Show on Monday night. The Giants will presumably hold them in striking distance, but with no offense to speak of, the Lions will ultimately keep their playoffs hopes alive, 28-10.
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