Top 10 Consolations for Giant Haters

Patriot Elimination Day should always be joyous, but many people are having a hard time enjoying the holiday due to the presence of Blue Fan celebrating yet another Gotham championship. As always, FTT is here to alleviate suffering without undue side effect. So let's get straight into why this is all going to be OK, OK?

10) Tom Coughlin will now be employed well into his drooling years. The NFL's answer to Yosemite Sam will get at least 5 to 10 more years after this one, and with rings on both claws now, they'll have to pry this job from his cold, dead hands. So we can all hope for a long slow shuffle into age-related inadequacies and inattention to detail. It's as good a hope as any other, right?

9) No matter how sad you are today, Massholes have it worse. The only real problem, of course, is that they are going to be compelled to tell you about how special this single win over a team with a winning record club was, how it was the very pinnacle of the Belicheat's art of turning ego-free pieces into killing machines, and yada yada yada yada. I'm sure we'll all see this in book form very soon, but drink deep of their tears.

8) The Giants will get every team's "A" game next year. Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown, especially when they won just 9 games in the regular season and have no unit, with the possible exception of the WRs or the DL, that strike an undue amount of fear into the opponent. No team really has a great chance to repeat in this era, and the Giants are no exception.

7) There is no guarantee that they will get this lucky on injuries again. Sure, they were decimated -- early in the season, in the games that it turned out didn't matter, especially in the secondary. But health is a skill in football, and hurt guys today tend to be hurt guys tomorrow. If the injuries come at the tail end of the year rather than at the beginning, we'll go back to talking about Giant Swoons.

6) Antrel Rolle is *really* going to talk now. The mouthiest safety in the land has already been talking about repeating, as if he wasn't a quasi-weak link already. You're going to enjoy seeing the NFL's ever-growing list of top-tier TEs ruin his reputation next year.

5) The continuing evisceration of Tiki Barber is getting really, really good. Tomorrow, the biggest leper in the history of the franchise gets to shine his disgraced head, plaster on his best fake smile, put on the monkey suit and go pretend to be happy to be covering another parade that happened without his locker room cancer. It couldn't happen to a nicer adulterer.

4) DanceGate is going to make Patriots Fan's head explode. Take a look at the picture on top of this entry; it's of Rob Gronkowski and Matt Light *AFTER* losing the Super Bowl. No, seriously. And while I get that young guys are going to go to places like this, and aren't going to take the outcome of the game as seriously as the marks in the audience... um, go look at it again. Now, consider the fact that Patriot Fan has got a solid 6-to-8 weeks in front of him before the Sawx play, or the Celtics are in the playoffs, or the Bruins are chasing the Stanley Cup. They're gonna go nuts. (And oh, by the way? Feel free to fan the flames of that. It's the least they deserve, if for no other reason then their team let you down.)

3) Pity poon. You are looking live at Maria Menounos doing the best thing she can do in front of a camera -- wearing few clothes and keeping quiet. That's not the worst side effect of this game, now is it?

2) GiseleGate is going to be all kinds of fun. Patriot Fan has long suspected Tom Brady's arm candy as being the karmic equivalent of Yoko Ono hanging out with John Lennon, and her thoroughly understandable defense and frustration at the way that the Super Bowl ended is going to open them up to *all kinds* of misogynistic rantings. For a fan base that prides itself on including snooty Blue State types with money, it's going to be an especially upsetting time. DRINK IT IN, PEOPLE. DRINK IT IN.

1) The Giants won't be allowed to defend their title. No team does, of course. But Mario Manningham is going to get way too much money to drop passes and misjudge the sideline somewhere else. Jonathan Goff started 16 games at LB and is a free agent; Chase Blackburn made the pick that turned the game around and could also be moving along. Terrel Thomas was the starting CB at the start of the year and might have played his last game for the team. Brandon Jacobs might be addition by subtraction, and it might not. They'll come back to a division that's ripe for the plucking, but with a far more difficult (AFC North) schedule that's going to make a top seed hard to come by. And they've routinely struggled to rack up a ton of wins in the division; this is a team that went 1-3 against Washington and Philadelphia this year, with the three losses coming to teams headed by Rex Grossman and Vince Young. (No, seriously. The Super Bowl champions were beaten at home by Vince Young.)

So my fellow haters, give them their six months of gloat. Try not to engage in the clear sour grapes that the NFL is effectively a game of random chance now, and that any team's title doesn't mean nearly as much as it used to. And watch, and enjoy, as they draft Eli far too early in fantasy drafts next year, and fall apart as the pressure of repeating turns them into a drama-fest of mess. Hell, maybe it will even make them the second-best team in town again. You gotta have hope, after all.