For Eli Manning, the year 2012 has gone pretty much like so many Giants games — and even seasons — have through the years. You've got your wild inconsistency, with its mind-changing highs (remember all the Hall of Fame talk in February?) and derptastic lows (last weekend in Atlanta). You've got your blowout games followed directly by hapless stinkers. You've got pranks, performances, and awkward photos; you've got pick-sixes and hung heads and submissive shoulder shrugs. But through it all, one thing will always be a constant: He'll always be good old Eli, and all he'll ever want to do is Play Good Football.
By David Jacoby at
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There is much to celebrate this week in atrocious quarterbacking: Yo Gabba Gabbert was benched, Nick Foles did many Nick Folesian things, Mark Sanchez continued his campaign to ensure that Tim Tebow is front-page news, and Eli may have officially regressed into the fourth-best football player at next week’s Manning Thanksgiving table. But none of these triumphantly terrible turns behind center could top the work of Ryan Tannehill, who was nice enough to remind everyone, with this week’s performance, how he earned the name TAINTehill. I thought that was nice of him. So did the Titans.
Three and Out
Dolphins (Ryan Tannehill), 67 points: When TAINTehill took the field this week, the announcers set the scene: “He has really limited his mistakes — no interceptions for Tannehill over his last four games, a completion percentage of just under 59 percent. Tannehill, last week, was good ...” At that moment on Sunday afternoon, with Miami at home, facing a Titans defense that allowed an average of 34.2 points a game through its first nine games, there was absolutely no reason to believe that at the end of the game, Lauren Tannehill’s husband would have as many interceptions as the Dolphins had points. You know that old saying about how “it isn’t how a man reacts when he is on top that defines him, but rather how he reacts when he is at his lowest”? No? Well, it probably doesn’t go exactly like that. But with vigorous and passionate tackle attempts after each of his three interceptions, Lauren Tannehill’s husband reflected a very strong character and pleased all at BQBL headquarters, where, oddly, we care very much about those things. In honor of TAINTehill’s tackles, we will now review his Sunday by contrasting his turnovers with his takedowns, each worthy of celebration:
Each week, the Fantasy Island contestants will submit a preview for each of that weekend's games. The best preview from each game will be selected and combined with the others into one comprehensive guide, and points are awarded based on how many individual previews from each writer are selected. Get it? OK. We sorta do, too.
Bills at Patriots
Buffalo hemorrhages 169.5 rushing yards a game and there’s a toddler-with-permanent-marker glee in Tom Brady’s eyes when he gashes open wounds, even if it means doing so via hand-offs (40 carries, 247 ground-game yards when these teams met in Week 4). There won’t be six New England turnovers this time; coupled with the running game, I’m expecting sub-par receiving lines for the Pats’ aces. Stevie Johnson has been leaving behind a data trail of ghastly box scores, including a three-catch-for-29-yards showing last week. This is largely because Ryan Fitzpatrick loves wheel routes to running backs and third-read safety-valve tosses to Scott Chandler. Donald Jones has scored every three weeks this season, and these migration patterns point to a touchdown this week.
On any given Sunday (or Monday, or Thursday), your NFL Run & Shootaround crew will be gathered around multiple televisions, making inappropriate jokes and generally regressing to the mean. Catch up on all the NFL action right here.
The King's Speech
This season, with the widespread distribution of RedZone and the behind-the-curtain nature of the year's great controversies (Bountygate and replacement refs), the NFL has made me feel like a bit of a voyeur. Experiencing this league in some kind of hyperactive way, zooming through story lines, injuries, wins, losses, tweets, radio bits, GIFs, and, yes, games, I feel like I'm watching lots of things I shouldn't, or at least lots of things I don't need to see. It's a testament to the NFL's unmatched production values that I (a) can follow it all, and (b) haven't gone insane.
Maybe that's why the footage of Colts head coach Chuck Pagano giving his team a postgame speech after their victory over the Dolphins felt like it brought another manic Sunday to a halt.
Each week, the Fantasy Island contestants will submit a preview for each of that weekend's games. The best preview from each game will be selected and combined with the others into one comprehensive guide, and points are awarded based on how many individual previews from each writer are selected. Get it? OK. We sorta do, too.
Panthers at Bears
A thought experiment, on the occasion of Panthers GM Marty Hurney’s Monday-morning firing: If millions of devotees followed your fantasy football team with the passion of NFL fans, and this team started the season 1-5 primarily because you used (wasted?) a first-round selection on Cam Newton, would you be out of a job? Newton’s fantasy points are that of a backup QB (13th overall), and the former no. 1 pick is regressing while contemporaries — Andy Dalton, Christian Ponder, Andrew Luck, RG3, to name a few — improve. Perhaps he’s just suffering from an especially lethal sophomore slump, but this is very concerning. As such, I expect a pick-six or two from the ferocious Bears defense, the 11th highest-scoring entity in all of fantasy football.
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports on Wednesday.
Pablo Sandoval, the Kung Fu Panda, became the fourth player in MLB history to hit three home runs in a World Series game, and the Giants roughed up Justin Verlander to take Game 1 8-3. Tigers manager Jim Leyland was upset at his ace. "We told Justin that even though he may look soft and cuddly — especially when he's curled up around a bamboo shoot — he's a very dangerous creature when approached," Leyland said. "He didn't listen. There have been over 15 incidents of Kung Fu Panda home run violence this year alone, and most of them could have been avoided with a little pitcher caution."
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports over the weekend.
Ryan Vogelsong struck out a career-high nine batters through seven dominant innings as the Giants beat the Cardinals 6-1 to force a deciding Game 7 in the NLCS. Vogelsong's name literally means "birdsong" in German, which is kinda funny when you consider they were playing the Cardinals. But it's less funny when you learn that "Vogelsong" is a German euphemism for killing birds with poisoned food pellets. Ugh, Germany. Ugh. That's just classic you.
Each week, the Fantasy Island contestants will submit a preview for each of that weekend's games. The best preview from each game will be selected and combined with the others into one comprehensive guide, and points are awarded based on how many individual previews from each writer are selected. Get it? OK. We sorta do, too.
Titans at Bills
Player to Start: C.J. Spiller
This is a friendly reminder that C.J. Spiller’s upside makes him an every-week start, regardless of your format. Yeah, he might only get 15 touches, but he’s one of a handful of players who can produce something special out of thin air. He’s like David Blaine, expect he doesn’t stare at you awkwardly for three minutes after he’s finished.
Each week, the Fantasy Island contestants will submit waiver wires detailing their recommended pickups. The best waiver column will be published and awarded points as part of Grantland's ongoing contest to select our fantasy football writer. Get it? OK. We sorta do too.
DISCLAIMER: This column makes big assumptions and expresses strong opinions. Please understand: I do not speak for all the women in the world. Just every woman I know.
As many of you have correctly guessed, I spend just as much time reading gossip rags as I do watching football (OK, fine, it was exponentially more until recently). Having said that, I’m a genuine football fan, and these days, having washed up here on Fantasy Island, I am necessarily required to be equally immersed in football and pop culture. And so every Monday morning, it is both delightful and a total insult when THIS shows up on E! Online’s “Top Stories” (and THIS the week before, and THIS the week before that). Some quick research shows that Comcast — providers of the NFL RedZone package that competes with DirecTV — owns the E! Entertainment network. And there, my friends, is the product I’m supposed to approve in the household budget after I read E! Online’s weekly recaps.
The NFL execs are no dummies (except Goodell). They clearly understand how close they are to doubling their fan base if they can lure women into the tent. They know how much more cash is in play if they turn the ball-busting wives into the same drooling, glassy-eyed robots the husbands are. They offered us nothing but baby clothes for a long time, but they’ve since evolved. Their NFLshop.com product line includes pink hats, jerseys, and baby tees. They celebrate boobies by wearing hot-pink socks a month out of the season. They rent the charming little Manning boys out to me 30 seconds at a time.
Welcome to the Thursday Skunk of the Week, in which I spray my stink on an unsuspecting team that probably felt great about their chances until I became involved. In Week 1, I sprayed the Giants by comparing Jerry Jones’s last 15 years to my dog crapping all over my house on Labor Day. You might remember Tony Romo subsequently picking the Giants apart en route to an opening-night upset. In Week 2, I sprayed the Bears by raving about Brandon Marshall’s impact on their franchise — not just this season, but historically, as their first great receiver maybe ever. Marshall disappeared that night in Green Bay, catching just two passes and dropping a wide-open touchdown in a Packers blowout.
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports over the weekend.
A referee was pulled from the Panthers-Saints game when his Facebook profile revealed that he was a Saints fan, and Cam Newton's 324 yards of total offense led the Panthers to a 35-27 win. The referee in question was assigned instead to Monday night's Broncos-Falcons game, though NFL lawyers are checking whether that would violate a restraining order issued three years ago when he bit Matt Ryan's leg at a charity event.
Recording a new album can quickly become an exercise in doing a lot of waiting around. But for Wes Miles and Mat Santos, the lead singer and bassist, respectively, for the band Ra Ra Riot, their downtime over the last couple of weeks has been largely consumed by one thing: playoff hockey. Both Miles, who grew up a Devils fan in New Jersey, and Santos, who roots for the Bruins, are big hockey fans — and they've got the tattoos, Starter jackets, and national anthem performances to prove it. Grantland's Katie Baker spoke to the pair over the weekend, as their favored hockey teams (and Baker's) faced first-round elimination.
So you're down in Mississippi recording a new album, and you're also big hockey fans whose teams are currently in the playoffs. What are your days like?
Mat: Well, usually we've been doing six-day weeks, and we're usually here at the studio for about 12 hours a day. It sounds like a lot but it's relaxed because usually only one of us is doing something at a given time. Right now, in this phase in our recording, because we've been here for about four weeks, Rebecca [Zeller] is doing violin overdubs. So the rest of us just get to sort of hang out. You might hear a basketball being bounced around. And we bring our hockey net. So we play street hockey in the parking lot, watch hockey … we mostly do hockey-related things when we're not recording.
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports on Tuesday.
The NBA suspended Lakers forward Metta World Peace for seven games after he elbowed James Harden on Sunday. Terrorists, who only saw the headline "World Peace Suspended for 7 Days," released a statement saying it was too short, but that what the hell, they'd take it.
I'm sure Tom Brady is going to take a ton of solace from the fact that the image of him sitting on the Lucas Oil turf, in a state of total dejection and disappointment, has become an Internet meme, which people in offices, outside of elevators, and pretty much everywhere else you can imagine (as well as a few spots you'd rather not) are replicating.
This was a very odd game — with a very dramatic finish.
Early in Sunday's Super Bowl, the New York Giants — aided by New England quarterback Tom Brady's safety — looked unstoppable. The Giants had a huge advantage in both momentum and yards, but despite all this, they only scored nine points. Then Tom Brady and the Patriots became, well, Tom Brady and the Patriots.
Brady went 16-for-16 with two touchdown passes sandwiched around the halftime show, and New England looked like it might simply run away with the game. And then … I'm not even sure.
The Giants kicked a couple field goals, Brady roughed his shoulder up on the turf, and then — with about four minutes left in the game — the Patriots had one of the most heartbreaking sequences in franchise history: Brady and Wes Welker, who know a thing about throwing and catching, failed to connect on a throw up the seam, where Welker was essentially uncovered. Then New York quarterback Eli Manning hit Mario Manningham on a nearly impossible throw down the sideline for a huge 38-yard gain. By now, you know the rest. The Giants scored the game-winning touchdown after Patriots coach Bill Belichick smartly let them, and Brady failed to make good on his desperation drive with a late Hail Mary. Giants win, 21-17.
Let's compare those two game-changing pass plays: the failed pass from Brady to Welker and the play of the game, Manning's fantastic throw to Manningham down the sideline.
