Malfunction

I went to the Giants v. Pats game Saturday night.  And I'll tell you the same thing I told my father as we sat in gridlock traffic following the Patriots' coronation.  While there were many components of the Giants' performance that were cause for optimism, ultimately, to borrow from Denny Green, they are who I thought they were.  In a game that ended up coming down to the fourth quarter, you had to expect the Giants to falter and the Pats to be the Pats.  

While my brother was eager to lay all blame on an early pass interference penalty that went against the good guys, I found confluence of errors contributed to this failure.  

A Few Things Which Bothered Me:

Kevin Gilbride is somehow under the impression it's illegal to deviate from pre-conceived game plans in order to address the way the game is actually playing out.  With Baby Manning at the helm, the last thing we needed were 3rd and longs.  We had plenty of them though, thanks to Gilbride's insistence at running on first and second downs no matter what sort of results were garnered on first down.  

Why is Reuben Droughns ever on the field?  He isn't an effective runner.  Keep him off the field.    

The Giants' all-time leading receiver, Mr. Amani Toomer, doesn't have good hands.  This is amazing to me.  

There were some very costly penalties, a couple of which were questionable if you ask me, that gave too good a team too many chances.  

Ultimately, Eli was given one too many chances to make one of his signature mistakes.  From our seats, I could clearly see Burress was open with a substantial throwing window....roughly 3 seconds before Eli dispatched of the ball.  3 seconds is an eternity in the NFL.  3 seconds far exceeds the difference between a completion and a pick.

In keeping with the theme, my brother, my two buddies, and I were actually on the escalator next to the one that "started going really fast."  Click on the title of this entry for the vagaries.  It was really crazy.  We all just kinda followed the guy in front of us, ending up, luckily, going down the escalator on the right.  My brother turned around to me, screaming over the fans between us, "It's okay, we'll get 'em in the Superbowl."  I laughed, some other people chuckled, then a screeching noise drew our attention to the escalator beside us.  It sped up.  For a brief moment it was almost funny.  Then, I looked down the escalator to the bottom.  There were people standing on it shoulder to shoulder.  This was a potential disaster.  When we got to the bottom, I could tell people were stacked on top of each other, having reached the bottom too quickly to get out of the way.  Thankfully, there were fans at the bottom with the presence of mind to heard everyone, including us, away from the bottom of the escalator so that they could help pull people off of each other.  This happened so quickly, in fact, that I could not tell the extent of any injuries people had sustained, but it left us all a little queasy.