1. Can everyone now admit that Bill Sheridan might have gotten a bum rap last season? What you saw from the Giants yesterday is what can happen when Tom Coughlin’s team has its defensive horses on the field and at full strength – carnage for the opposing offense. Not only did the Giants give Matt Moore a concussion, but they sacked him four times and notched three interceptions while recording four sacks. It was like the Giants’ 2007 playoff defense all over again. It’s easy sometimes amid the hysteria (especially in New York) of a long losing streak or an ugly patch to overlook personnel losses and blame the coordinator or the head coach. Happens all the time, both in the NFL and the college level. But even from just one game, it’s obvious the Giants are a completely different defensive team with Osi Umenyiora, Chris Canty and Kenny Phillips on the field. And in the salary-cap era, finding (and keeping) good backup help is virtually impossible for most teams. While that’s not exactly breaking new ground to say injuries are costly, I don’t remember that being mentioned too much late last season when the depleted Giants were getting trampled routinely. Instead, the bulk of it was directed at Sheridan, who wasn’t perfect by any means but now looks like he was just a scapegoat.
2. I was at the Packers-Eagles game yesterday for this story on Green Bay’s 27-20 win that appeared in today’s Post, and I can’t remember a more brutal “body bag” game in more than a decade of covering the league. The Eagles lost two key starters (Pro Bowl fullback Leonard Weaver and center Jamal Jackson) for the season to gruesome injuries while watching quarterback Kevin Kolb and linebacker Stewart Bradley depart with concussions. The Packers, meanwhile, lost defensive lineman Justin Harrell for the season to an ACL tear and could be without running back Ryan Grant for an extended period due to a sprained ankle. All of this in just the first 60 minutes of a 16-game season. I’m now starting to wonder if the NFL’s plan for an 18-game schedule is wise. Not because I don’t think it’s a good idea, but because I wonder if teams will have enough bodies left at the end of the year to play it. And while this might be off-topic a bit, Andy Reid has a mess on his hands: The Eagles’ coach has too much invested in Kolb to bench him after just two quarters of his first game, but how in the world do you keep an obviously rejuvenated Michael Vick off the field? The fan pressure on Reid is going to be enormous.
3. You have to wonder if Giants ownership outsmarted themselves by finagling the first regular-season game at New Meadowlands Stadium away from the Jets. I say that only because yesterday’s game allowed the country to see that the Giants haven’t been entirely upfront about the state of their PSL sales all these months. NFL Blitz had heard from sources over the summer that the Giants had 7,000 unsold premium and non-premium seats, even though the team kept insisting that fewer than 1,200 remained. Well, that was obviously false for all to see yesterday when the Giants confirmed that paid attendance was 5,200 less than the stadium’s 82,500-seat capacity. It makes me intensely curious to see the count tonight, considering the Jets have struggled even worse than the Giants to sell their seats and PSLs, even though the Jets didn’t require a PSL for the entire upper deck. Based on that math, more than 10,000 empty seats this evening wouldn’t surprise me in the least. The Giants and Jets can say whatever they want, but the b-word – “blackouts” – is still very much a threat for both teams in the not-too-distant future.
4. Jerry Jones only has himself to blame for the Cowboys’ pathetic offensive-line play last night against the Redskins. Jones did not sign a single free agent in the offseason, even though the offensive line’s horrible playoff effort against the Vikings singlehandedly ended Dallas’ season just eight months ago. Granted, the Cowboys had two key starters missing due to injury in the 13-7 loss. And, as I mentioned earlier, backup help is hard to find. But if the best Jones could do was trade for Alex Barron, then he can’t pin this loss on Wade Phillips’ silly decision to throw a short pass on the final play of the first half. No, Barron personifies Jones’ sudden penny-pinching ways, which might be explained the same way Woody Johnson’s tight wallet makes sense: stadium debt. Jones also has a $1 billion-plus stadium with a hefty mortgage, and an uncapped year offers him the chance to save some money to pay for that stadium that it does Johnson’s Jets. But Jones, like Johnson, can’t be surprised if the on-field product suffers as a result.
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