When Payton Manning played brilliantly but couldn’t get his team over the top in big games, the rap was that individual stuff means nothing, wins are the only thing that matters.
When Eli Manning’s team wins three straight road playoff games to get to the Super Bowl, now the wins don’t validate, and everybody wants to talk about the individual stuff: they’re winning “despite” him… they’re “not asking him to do too much”…
I’m not defending the Mannings. I’m debunking the dumbness.
Although… Watching Eli play these last three weeks, what I see is time after time the Giants are third-and-five, third-and-six, third-and-seven, and Eli fits the ball into a tight spot and moves the chains.
If that’s not doing too much, sign me up for not much.
In other news: The generally sensible Rich Hoffman trafficks in some of this stuff here, but also makes a very legitimate point:
“The Giants are the latest in a long line of typical NFC champions. They are not a mirage, no, but they are unlikely to last for much longer than those clouds of steam that accompanied every breath and every heave of every player’s chest on Sunday night at Lambeau Field.
It is what the league has become, these great clouds that evaporate before you can get your arms around them. It is, in many ways, a validation of the Eagles’ organizational strategy - that is, to try to be good every year and then hope you can catch a wave at the end. Because all of your planning and all of your conniving tends to mean nothing when it matters, unless you are the New England Patriots.
For the rest of the teams in the NFL, the task is to take your team - which stumbles once or twice a month, sometimes shamefully - and somehow turn its crap into carpe diem. That is the lesson of the New York Giants.”
There you have it- Once in a generation a truly great team comes along, and usually even that happens because something miraculous drops out of the sky (see: Brady, Tom). For everybody else, it’s about trying to be good every year and maybe catching a wave.
In 2006, none of the champions in the NBA (Miami Heat), NFL (Steelers) and MLB (Cardinals) were anything like great, or even the best in their sports that year. It’s about hanging around. In terms of general philosophy, the Eagles have been right, and the mortgage-the-future-to-take-a-shot-at-a-ring crowd have not.
King Kauffman, at Salon.com, asks a question that needs asking - Why isn’t Congress holding hearings about the beauty-contest scandal epidemic?
Tomorrow: The Super Bowl pick.
