NY Giants can chirp with the best of them, but it's time for them to stuff Eagles
The Giants think they're the best team in the NFC East, which isn't exactly breaking news. Honestly, if the media pushed hard enough, some of them would say they think they can win the rest of their games. They think the Eagles get way too much credit for winning a weak division last year. And as always, they believe they're criminally underestimated and overlooked.
Also, none of that actually matters. Not even a little bit.
Just like it doesn't matter that Jason Pierre-Paul said of the Eagles that 'At the end of the day, they're 4-1 but they could've easily been 0-4' (give or take a mysteriously missing game of course), or that Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie and Prince Amukamara posed with a fan wearing a jersey that mocked Philly's Super Bowl-less history. Or that JPP back in September vowed the Giants would win the NFC East. Or that the people who run the Eagles website are suddenly acting like they're running it out of a frat house.
The only thing that matters is what happens on Sunday night down on the field in Philadelphia. Because if the Giants are so sure they should be taken seriously as division contenders - and oh boy, are they ever - then they better be ready to back that up.
That's the bottom line, and that's the age-old lesson that Tom Coughlin once gave his team way back in 2007 when he handed out T-shirts to his then-chatty team that read 'Talk is cheap, play the game.' The truth is, the Giants have never really gotten that memo. They've found it hard to stay silent in the spotlight provided by the New York media, especially when very few of them are camera (or digital recorder) shy.
But when you talk - and don't kid yourself, they do - there are only two ways that can turn out. You can say, as JPP did earlier this season, that 'We're going to win' the NFC East on a national radio show and you can look like a genius and a tough guy when you actually do. Or you can do something like put up a Super Bowl countdown clock and talk about how your team is as good as any Super Bowl team you've ever had, as Giants management did last season, then look like fools when the whole thing falls apart.
Not that the appearances really matter, either. Last year's disaster would've been a disaster whether GM Jerry Reese had hung up his Super Bowl clock or not. And no matter how many times in the last five years the Giants have insisted they're good enough to beat anybody in the NFL, they still missed the playoffs four times.
Would it matter to their disgruntled fans if they had done all that quietly? Probably not.
Maybe this year will be different. The Giants certainly think it is. But for that to be true, there are only two words that matter: Prove it.
Everything else is just background noise amplified by what is undoubtedly and unavoidably a very, very big game.
And that includes, by the way, the oddly unprofessional decision by the Eagles organization to poke fun at Eli Manning on its website, which suddenly looks like it's run out of a frat house. It listed Manning's interceptions like a string of greatest hits, and poked fun at his 'Manning face' to boot. The organization followed that up with video with surely incendiary intentions that called the Giants 'Big Apple big-talkers' and 'loudmouths.'
The video was narrated by actor Bradley Cooper, who added this ominous line that surely will play to the liquored-up part of the Eagles fan base on Sunday night: 'You want to know the best way to shut a loudmouth up? It's to shut it for them.'
That's swell. Seriously, who doesn't love it when the IT guys, website writers and PR staffs get involved?
Meanwhile, back to the people who matter in all this - the ones who'll actually coach and play on Sunday night - at least some of them seem to get that there are more important things than words. As Manning noted on Wednesday 'We're still in third place in the NFC East. And we've got a chance to play a team that's in first place. It's a big game.'
Leave it to Captain Blah to simmer down the noise and be the voice of reason. The Giants are 3-2. They haven't been tested. They trail both the Eagles and the Dallas Cowboys (each 4-1) by one game. A loss on Sunday night and their two-game hole will seem a lot deeper. Lose both of their next two games, including next week at Dallas, and their deficit may be insurmountable with the schedule they have coming up.
The Giants, of course, like that underdog role. 'We don't want nobody on our side,' JPP said. 'We just want our fans.'
Even their own fans, though, will grow tired of the talk if it's not backed up by winning. Beat the Eagles Sunday night, then win in Dallas seven days later.
Then the Giants will be able to talk all they want.
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