SNF Thoughts: Giants-Cowboys

For anyone that thinks the NFC East is still the best division in football... um, no. Not hardly.

Cowboy Fan has clearly turned on Terrible, even with the win tonight. It's so sad, really. And not at all surprising. Why he didn't go all the way into Powderkeg Mode and ascribe the Romo-Witten Conspiracy to racism, I'll never know.

Is there anything more tiresome than post-whistle pushing and shoving? Perhaps, and just perhaps, the sagelike observation from the mouth jobbers that These Teams Just Don't Like Each Other. They don't even exchange Christmas cards!

If you are an optimist for either team, you are liking the way your defense is playing. Dallas put Eli Manning on the ground 8 times tonight, and also held the NY ground game in check. The Giants made Marion Barber look bad all night, and Tashard Choice wasn't much better until the icing touchdown late. Any time you hold a home team to 7 points for three quarters, you've more than done the job.

But realistically, these teams are much easier to scheme for than they used to be. I was wrong to dismiss Plaxico Burress' importance to the Giants; it's becoming abundantly clear that his value as a decoy was much greater than his value in the box score. Without Brandon Jacobs to take the first quarter hits, Derrick Ward looks a lot more ordinary, and teams are overloading the line to stop the run, since they don't really have to worry too much about the big play threat from Domenik Hixon. The need to have more protection in the passing game has cut into the Kevin Boss output, and it's also led to a much harder time for them to make easy yards out of the screen game. They are a much less imposing #1 seed than they used to be, and if you want to argue for Carolina as the best team in the NFC right now, I won't hold it against you. (I also wouldn't agree, but clearly, my hatred for the Panthers as the team that I can never handicap correctly has made me unhinged.) Scoring 10 points in two weeks will do that to a team.

As for the Cowboys... big win and all, but all they did tonight was stay alive. They still have to play an angry and very physical Ravens team next week at home, and unless Barber gets much healthier very quickly, they aren't going to be able to run the ball in that game, either. Week 17 in Philadelphia looms as well, and the way the Eagles have played in the last two weeks, that's another game that's far from easy.

Oh, and Cowboys Fan? If you were fooled by the happy talk conference on the sidelines with Romo, Witten and Owens, I got sad news for you. Terrible did the same nonsense when the Eagles won after controversy, with him and McNabb pantomiming all over the sidelines in a song and dance tat was only a soft-shoe away from being a minstrel show. And just after NBC showed that, the Cowboys gave up a brutal sack and safety that made the game a lot more interesting than it had to be. With Terrible, controversy is always just a bad play away, and that's why he's the worst teammate ever, at least among guys that haven't actually assaulted their teammates.

So to wrap it up... everyone's doomed, and all hail our NFC South overlords. Of course, counting the Giants out early hasn't been such a winning strategy in the past...