Un-focused and un-disciplined, Big Blue did not display the talent or desire to win on the road, instead allowing the words “Rex Grossman era” to be spoken seriously; that should be enough to make any Giant fan shudder with disgust.

The Giants showed some ability to move the ball in the first half, as Eli Manning got used to Manningham, Nicks and Hixon now being his top targets.  Going with the passing game first did seem to create more running opportunities for Bradshaw and Jacobs as the defense could not stack the box when Eli was on a roll throwing the ball – I hope this one revelation was appreciated by the coaching staff and is utilized as opposed to going smashmouth style running first and repeatedly.

Sad to say it was a “classic” performance by Manning in which he showed a glaring inability to take care of the football, then almost bailed the team out with the odd brilliant pass play.  Case in point in the third quarter when the Giants were backed up deep in their own end and Manning’s easily batted pass into the teeth of the Redskins pass rush donated a touchdown to Washington’s Ryan Kerrigan.  Moments later that was Manning again firing a 41-yard strike down the middle of the field to his new tight end Ballard, and you were almost ready to forgive Eli because he stil can change momentum with one guided missile strike.

But the Giants drive fell flat and they were shut out in the second half completely.

If you want a villain, look at the horrible drive-extending penalty in the fourth quarter by Antrell Rolle. On a third and nine play, Skins TE Fred Davis caught the ball but was sprawled on the ground with nowhere to go, needing only to be touched to be down and for the Jints to get the ball back.  Instead of “tag your it” Rolle lowered his head to deliver an inexplicable helmet-to-helmet blow on the grounded Davis.  What a huge lack of discipline that play displayed; I don’t understand how he can do that when the guy is already down and there’s absolutely nothing to gain (and possibly he entire game to be lost) by delivering the easily whistled head blow.

Can you blame this lack of discipline on bad coaching?  Perhaps.  You can debate whether that brain freeze was a temporary lapse by Rolle or a product of Coughlin not having the team mentally ready, but ultimately both share a collective responsibility for this embarrassing moment.

Only one Giant stood out for having a huge positive impact on the game and that is Jason Pierre-Paul, effectively pass rushing all day and picking up two sacks and a key forced fumble on Grossman that had great potential to turn the game around (if others had been able to contribute accordingly, which they didn’t).

The Mets showed a nice ability to ride an emotional roller coaster and come out ahead last night.  The key sequence was an outrageously terrible call at third base, where Jose Reyes, sliding in with a triple, was erroneously ruled out for oversliding the bag, even though his fingers remained glued to the base in full view of quick-thumbed umpire Marvin Hudson.

Reyes went ballistic, bouncing around like a ping pong ball in a lottery selection machine.  The Mets had good reason to pout.  But what makes a team strong and resilient is when teammates pick each other up.  And that’s exactly what Daniel Murphy did, smacking a bad-call-neutralizing home run that lifted the Mets right out of their deflated state. When the dust settled the Mets had come back from behind twice in the late innings, and just for good measure piled up some runs on the Nats closer committee member Sean Burnett witha big 2-run double from Murphy.

So while “Murphy’s Law” suggests things that can go bad will, Murphy was instead a powerful force to reverse momentum.

The Amazin’s unexpected 6-game winning streak coincides with the return of Jason Bay, who has come off the DL with his bat working in mid-season form.  Plus the insertion of an effective Bay into the lineup promises more hittable pitches for those sandwiching him in the order, Beltran and Davis last night.  Ike has been the Mets hottest hitter, but as the summer wears on it can only help to have other run producers taking on some of the pressure.

Who’s gonna let a little 7-run deficit to the Phillies slow them down?  Not the 2011 Mets, who showed plenty of fight in battling back last night, even if they didn’t win…

Meanwhile Ike Davis has quietly gotten off to a nice start in his sophomore campaign.  He’s got that average at ,368 and perhaps more importantly, has shown the ability to get hits with men on base, shortening his swing a little when an RBI single is all the team needs.

Whether Terry Collins actually threw a few chairs around the clubhouse or if its just a change for the sake of change at the helm doesn’t matter.  What matter is the results, and until the season-opening bubble pops the Mets look nothing like the entitled whiners that took the field last year.

The Amazins clearly ain’t gonna overwhelm you with talent this year, but opening the season in Miami they had the right spare pieces in place to take two of three.

Brad Emaus platooning with Daniel Murphy at second, Willie Harris as a fourth outfielder, and the fluttering knuckleball of R.A. Dickey all proved to be effective “odds and ends” carrying the Mets.  On a scorching hot (already) Sunday in Miami, after extra innings the night before, Murphy looked comfortable a second, Harris looked terrific with a homer and steal, and Dickey frustrated batters all day with the “change of pace” of the knuckleball.  All three had fresh legs on getaway day and gave the Amazins a nice lift.

Add up enough of these small complimentary parts and you have a team capable of pulling together for a big win even on a day where Reyes and Wright weren’t lighting it up. Its the way GM Sandy Alderson won games in Oakland with a small payroll and its certainly looking like an effective formula to win a few series in orange and blue this year.

Dickey was definitely the Mets biggest weapon on Sunday, and I love him in that day-game-after-a-night-game scenario.  Of course he can’t predict where his knuckleball is gonna go, but his ability to mix in his modest mid-80s fastball gave him a tactical advantage Sunday in frustrating hitters, and he managed to avoid the damaging walk, even if he was a little hit-or-miss with the strikezone.

I was at the game in Miami Sunday, my first time in Sun Life Stadium — it was a home game for the Mets with tons of blue in the stands and “Lets Go Mets” cheers that drowned out any attempted weak response from the handful of Marlins fans.

My other impressions were…I found the “text us about any unruly fans” sign kind of funny, I guess the Marlins encourage snitching.  I wanted to text the team about their fans being too quiet and not making enough noise but that’s not what they meant.

Man Emilio Bonifacio is fast! He whipped around first like lightning stretching a single into a double, it seemed like it had to be the fastest time to second base I’ve ever seen.  But he puts the team in a tough spot because he doesn’t get on base enough to hit leadoff, and languishes in the 7th spot.  He also had an awful error at third.

Also I found it interesting that whereas Tampa has a serious problem with Longoria-worship (Evan is on every shirt sold and is the face of all their promotional material) you’d never know that Hanley Ramirez was the Marlins best player.  Almost no shirts celebrating Hanley and none of their promotional material touts him as it should.  Could be his crappy attitude last year prevents him from being fully embraced as the face of the franchise,  or perhaps Floridians are too busy going to the beach to care.

The recent Mets have had a lot of baggage.  Unmet expectations, a huge payroll, and a series of disappointments in their too-few playoff opportunities were a heavy weight for this team to carry around.  But the baggage belonging to the more modest 2011 version of the Mets fits conveniently in the overhead racks or under their feet.

The biggest recent news is the Mets have jettisoned the two players most emblematic of their recent dark years, Luis Castillo and Oliver Perez, eating their massive contracts rather than break camp with their dead weight holding them down to start another year.  What could be more symbolic than 1986 hero and Bill Buckner nemesis Mookie Wilson, now a first base coach, getting his old Number 1 back from the departed Castillo.

Credit the Mets new management for having the guts to move forward without overly stressing about what safety net options would be in place.  Little known Brad Emaus has stepped into the first string second baseman spot and reportedly has a a solid and experienced glove with a little pop in the bat too.  Not exactly a slam dunk, but add in the potential upside of an inexperienced Daniel Murphy trying out a new position and between the two of them fans can expect more production than another year of Luis Castillo….and with none of the nasty bagage.

Oliver Perez was as enigmatic as he was talented, and its a huge emotional lift not to have that massive question mark in the middle of the rotation.  You never knew what you were going to get from Ollie, game to game or even pitch to pitch.  Keith Hernandez accused him of inventing new pitches right in the middle of a game with men on base.

The Mets could get a lot more consistency out of a Chris Capuano or a Chris Young, if one or both of those reclamation projects pan out.  But again, at least there is less baggage involved watching a veteran make the effort to reclaim his skills compared to the young head scratcher Pereze trying to finally find major league control.

Boof Bonser?  That’s the Mets offseason?  C’mon Mets, you want me to re-emerge from blogging oblivion this winter and all you give me is a questionable pitcher whose first name is a sound effect for a punch to the face on the old Batman TV show?

Indeed there was a loud *Boof* this winter, but I’m talking about the punch to the face of Mets fans. A Mets team that ranked near the bottom of nearly every offensive category did almost nothing to help their lineup, and their paltry pitching rotation added just a few new borderline arms to fight for spots they might not even get.

So did the Mets’ owners (the Wilpon family) tighten up their wallets after getting slammed by the Madoff ponzi scheme?  Its hard to find a straight answer to this anywhere on the web (where by the way on Google “Wilpon Madoff” is the first two-word search that comes up if you start typing “w-i-l-p-o”).  The Wilpons tell you, “no its not a problem, we only lost money from this pile and not the Mets money, the Mets money is from the other pile.” And then there is that big lawsuit against the Wilpons where they actually made some fake money from their fake Madoff “investments” which they now have to very really return.

OK, great, well if that’s all true, how come the Mets are spending like the Kansas City Royals this offseason?  Oh wait I’m sorry the Royals just dropped 30 mill on resigning Billy Butler, so make that the Indians.  There’s gotta be some reason the Mets went from shopping at Saks Fifth Avenue to the sale rack at Target.

It’s a fact that the Wilpon’s still have a huge debt to pay off from their buyout of the team from former partner Nelson Doubleday in 1980.  With the hindsight we now have from the Mets front office inactivity, it seems like there must be something to the Madoff rumors, especially if a potential financial shortfall was aggravated by the dropoff in attendance for the second year at CitiField and the financial strife of major sponsor Citibank.

So while I would love to write a hopeful piece on how the Mets acquired a nemesis that has tormented them for years in Nats and Braves uniforms (Willie Harris, from the “if-you-can’t-beat-’em-join-’em” department), how they acquired a former dominant arm with a potential to rediscover his brilliance (Chris Young), or how they remade their bullpen with two guys named Taylor (Buchholz and Tankersley), I just can’t.  But with the humiliation that was 2010, and with the ink still wet on a questionable managerial signing (Terry Collins), I just don’t have that hopeful spirit and I’m in a protective, jaded state, defensively pointing out the many shortcomings of my team.

You know its bad when my only positive feeling from the Mets transaction wire was the hiring of Ken Oberkfell (my choice for manager) as bench coach, making me think “maybe when Collins gets fired midseason…”

Its taken me some time to process the untimely end of the Giants 2010 season.   What a crummy way, as a fan, to end the season last Sunday, eagerly waiting for Packers-Bears highlights as the Giants wrapped up a meaningless victory in Washington.  The Bears had no motivation to win and therefore didn’t, and the impressive Packers squaeaked by their divisional rivals and completed their playoff destiny, and the 15-second cut-ins on Fox crushed any last hopes of the Big Blue nation.

Clearly the Giants needed to win one of the two big showdowns with the Packers and Eagles at the end of the season in order to expect  the playoffs.  A playoff team wins one of those two games.  A team is not a playoff team when they lose both of those games; a team is not a playoff team when all they do to help themselves is beat the pitiful Redskins. 

I originally said I would favor dumping Tom Coughlin if they couldn’t bounce back from the Eagles debacle with a victory against Green Bay.  Now, with some time to reflect, I’m not so sure Coughlin was the problem.  Big Blue was a middle of the pack team in the NFC.  They went from a team which no one was talking about in the preseason and saw a personality develop over the course of the year.  They had an at times dominant defense, which saw the emergence of bigtime play and leadership emerge from new sources, such as Jonathan Goff and Antrel Rolle, to complement the powerful front line of Tuck, Umenyiora, Canty and company.  They discovered depth at the wide receiver position with Hakeem Nicks and Mario Manningham emerging as game changing threats, and then even Derek Hagan got into the mix as their biggest weapon in that last game against the Redskins.

If not for a few too many Eli Manning interceptions and the confounding scrambling ability of Michale Vick, these Giants would have been in the playoffs.

Coughlin did not lose control of the team; the team respects his command and goes to battle for him.  Yes, he got flustered against the Eagles and couldn’t pull the squad back together, but now I’m not sure that a change is necessary.   Coughlin got the right ingredients together, and though the 2010 cake did not get baked, there is promise and hope that the 2011 cake will be baked much better.

But if the Giants take a step baclkwards next year and cannot build on the progress they made in this season then they really should fire him!

Don’t kill the punter, the Giants were simply outcoached last week in their epic meltdown against the Eagles.  Matt Dodge was #1 on Giants fans “Who I want to murder this holiday season” list after his inexplicable punt to DeSean Jackson which led to the winning score as time expired.  Note to the Tisch family: I can punt the ball out of bounds on a volunteer basis, saving you money and perhaps saving last week’s game.

If Dodge overlooked or was not aware of the team’s need for him to kick the ball out of bounds, then that is simply inexcusable.  If he meant to kick the ball out of bounds but was grossly unable to execute the simple directive, then franklly that is inexcusable too.  The image of the game was a beet-red Tom Coughlin blowing a gasket as he verbally scorched Dodge, while Dodge was unable to make eye contact with his coach.  Coach Coughlin, its your job to get the team mentally ready to play, your job to get them all on the same page, your job to make sure everyone knows what their job is.  When these basic team concepts disappear, its not a question of choking, getting burned by a superhuman Michael Vick or bad luck.  The Giants were just outcoached.

While Philly was mentally tough the Giants were soft.  While Philly brilliantly executed an onside kick down 21 with 7 to play, the Giants special teams unit was snoozing.

So now the Giants slip behind the Eagles in the NFC East, and instead of coasting into the playoffs they now have a showdown with a team that can knock them out of a Wild Card spot, the Green Bay Packers.  That means one more pregame speech from Coughlin and one more chance for Big Blue to prove their critics wrong.

Aaron Rodgers returns to the Packers lineup after being sidelined with a concussion. While that lifts Green Bay it also means Rodgers will have a target on his back as the Jints try to recapture their quarterback-terrorizing ways that earlier this season led to a string of 6 opposing QBs getting knocked unceremoniously out of the game. 

Sunday’s game is about one more chance for the Giants to be mentally tough.  The great thing about this team is they can be terrible one week and then somehow pull an amazing performance out of their ass the next week.  I’m not a “fire Coughlin guy” at all, but I will be if the Giants come out flat against the Packers or turn in another sloppy and incomplete effort.

While the running game has carried the Giants much of this season, it was Eli Manning and a stellar passing attack that excelled during the Giants three quarters of competence.  I think Jacobs and Bradshaw must lead the way this week, its gotta be a “back to basics” grind it out type of Giants game for Big Blue to triumph

It was an oddball week for sure leading into Sunday’s showdown in the biggest most anticipated grudge match of the season.  The Giants victory in Detroit vs the Vikings Monday night capped a bizarre long weekend in which the stadium in Minneapolis of course collapsed….collapsed like Brad Childress’s confidence, like the Vikings D, or like Brett Favre’s shoulder (or insert the ironic analogy of your choosing).

That collapse created a weird Sunday for Giant fans; thousands of guys in their blue hats and NY gear could be seen forlornly trudging through the city with their girlfriends or wives shopping, totally bummed that the cancellation “freed up” a Sunday for other activities.  Then this was followed by a strange Monday night 21-3 victory in which the Giants, who turned the ball over in Viking territory on both of the first two possessions, did not have a lot to feel that great about.

Except the running game, which looked dominant.  Bradshaw and Jacobs are peaking, and that seems to be even more important this week with the news that Steve Smith is out for the season with an injured knee.  The Giants must avoid the mistake-prone Eli antics that have recurred throughout this season, and must be on their A game to beat the equally hungry, equally nasty, equally physical Eagles on Sunday. And in order to be on their A game they have to have plenty of reps running the ball.  Which is why the Giants can’t get down 14-0 early and move away from running the ball….

The Giants whole season, an up and down, Jeckyll and Hyde affair to be sure, has led up to this.  They will answer the bell Sunday says my crystal ball.