Peter King: "Struggling" to understand good football

Peter King, the senior football scribe of SI.com, is at it again. Mr. Starbucks stuck yet another dagger into the side of Giants quarterback Eli Manning.

If you read King's legendary and prolific Monday Morning Quarterback, you know it's among the best reads in football journalism. King routinely culls quotes from key players while sitting in his 30 Rock "Sunday Night Football in America" pad and has first-hand word from them in MMQB. He also watches a ton of football, and has a very strong take on all things NFL.

Make that all things but one.

King has routinely peppered insults at the younger Manning, treating him different than big bro Peyton. Today came another. King said "you don't give a struggling quarterback like Eli Manning a 391-yard night" in Tuesday edition of MMQB.

Puke time.

I'll admit, overall King's Eli opinions are often justified. Brother Peyton may be the greatest QB ever. Eli probably ranks somewhere in the second half of the top 10 in today's NFL at the very best. There's no comparison, and Eli looks second-rate by comparison.

But just like the rest of the talking heads (Aikman, Moose, I'm looking at you "guys"), King still slays Eli like that centaur A-Rod does enemy horses, er...I mean, middling relievers. In 2009, this is lazy reporting from one of the hardest working men in sports journalism.

As a Giants fan, Manning bashing is the norm. No matter how well Eli plays over the course of a game, announcers and writers talk about one inaccurate pass or one wounded duck. A friend who will remain nameless (Buckner) believes Manning played poorly on the final drive of Super Bowl XVII. Buckner, like Bill Simmons, pointed to the dropped interception by Asante Samuel. Hello, guys? Do you not remember the "Tuck Game?" Without that call, Tom Brady is not Tom Brady. He's bagging B-level actresses, not Giselle. But these lucky plays happen. They change history. We choose to look at the body of work (i.e. the entire game-winning drive) and judge him on that. Bottom line: He rocked, the Giants won. Move on.

I will admit: Eli is NOT accurate. But even the most honed-in are not forever perfect. Brady has been downright awful at times this year. I'm still waiting for people to pick apart his game on a weekly basis. Tick, tick, tick...

While I wait, here's the difference with King: Most major media personalities are complete blowhards unable to admit a mistake; he's largely an open-minded man. Sure, King has his man-crushes on Brett Favre, Mike Tomlin, Tony Romo, etc., but he typically changes his opinion if so provoked, altering it if a player's performance proves worthy.

So these days I find it truly remarkable that SI's top football evaluator has missed the steady ascension of the QB on the biggest team in the league's No. 1 market. It is completely inexcusable.

Peyton Manning played through pain after a risky knee surgery last preseason. King praised his season, and chronicled Manning's recovery in detail in his book. Likewise, Eli has played much of this season with plantar fascia. The injury to his foot caused him to overcompensate, and led to a stress reaction that reportedly causes even more pain. Here's a story from the Star-Ledger's excellent reporter Mike Garafolo.

I imagine King has read these reports. I imagine he can put two and two together and realize Manning's injury coincided with a terrible three-game stretch. And I imagine he's a cagey football evaluator who realizes an offensive line that has declined faster than Tiger Woods' rep and a putrid D have hurt Manning over the Saints-Eagles-Cardinals fiasco-of-a-stretch.

I guess not. King wrote this week the Eagles' D had to generate more of a pass rush. They picked up three sacks and had a fourth before Manning shoveled a pass out of trouble. That's not a middling pass rush. Sorry, guy.

But I digress. ... If you throw those three stinkers out, Manning has posted a quarterback rating of 88.9 and above in all but one game. That's nine out of 10, and, to be fair, nine out of 13 for the year. Include them all and Eli has posted a career-high rating of 93. He's a cinch to finish with the best numbers of his career.

Some won't trust QB rating, which is fine. So let's compare these two seasons:

Season 1: 4,002 yards, 68.1 completion percentage, 7.2 yards/att., 27 TD, 12 INT

Season 2: 4,081 yards, 60.4 completion percentage, 7.95 yards/att., 28 TD, 14 INT

So which season is better? Can you even tell? Does King watch football?

OK, enough rips. Let's get to the facts: The first season is Peyton Manning, circa 2008, a year he won MVP. The second are the projected totals of a "struggling" Eli Manning in 2009, as he tries to lead the Giants, who can't run, block or play defense, to the playoffs.

In any final analysis, the younger Manning clearly is not struggling. Yes, "struggle" was just one little word on SI.com today, but enough is enough.

If you want to bash Eli, wait until the future. Another day, another year, will provide you and your boys enough fodder. But please watch the Giants this season before writing another word about them.

Bush is no longer president. The Sopranos is over. You live in Boston, not Jersey.

No, Pete, it's not 2006 anymore.

Can't leave well enough alone

Jerry Jones has a bad habit. He seems to like to meddle at the worst possible times, and now, he's done it again.

Remember when Jones left tickets to NFC championship game in his players' lockers before the Cowboys and Giants met in the divisional round two years ago?

Now Jones is publicly questioning his staff's use of Marion Barber. Maybe I'm missing something, but what could possibly be gained here? He owns the team, so if he really couldn't live with the way Barber is being used, all he'd have to do is tell Wade Phillips privately the exact role he wanted the back to play.

Publicly questioning Phillips only brings more heat on a guy who most people think will be gone at season's end, and it's certainly not going to help the team pull together amid the talk of its pathetic December record in recent years. Jones' comments serve absolutely no productive purpose.

Don't get me wrong - I love this. I hope Jones keeps this up all month and the Cowboys take a nose dive right out of the playoffs. But Jones should take a page out of George Steinbrenner's book. The Boss mellowed out in his later years running the Yankees, and lo and behold they started stacking up titles. Steinbrenner was still passionate and occasionally popped off, but he chose his spots better.

Jones should do the same, but man, I hope he doesn't.

Mr. cheap shot

Flozell Adams has proven to be a bigger loser than even I thought. Again yesterday he showed his what a tough guy he is when he shoved Justin Tuck in the back at the end of the first half as Tuck was ready to head to the locker room.

In the first Cowboys-Giants tilt, Adams, who has long had a reputation as a dirty player, leg-whipped Tuck and kicked Osi Umenyiora. After yesterday's game, Adams had this to say about his latest punk-out.

"I ain't talking about him. He's a nobody."

I'll tell you what he is - he's a better player than you are, moron. He's also won a championship and played an incredible Super Bowl against the greatest offense in history. Where do you keep your rings, Flozell?

Once again, completing the sweep of the Cowboys yesterday was as good as it gets. For the past few years bad guys like Adams have gone unnoticed because the Cowboys employed the chivalrous Pacman Jones. Now, however, Adams' true colors (are fat and lazy colors?) are coming out.


Quick addition: Justin Tuck, the "nobody" was 1st team All-Pro last season. Not just a pro-bowler, 1st team ALL-NFL!

A ray of sunshine

Between the Yankees winning it all, the Mets finishing a miserable season and the Giants free-falling after a 5-0 start, the last couple of months have been unkind.


Until today.

As I've stated before, the Cowboys rank second behind the Yankees on my list of despised franchises, but because I root for the Giants, beating the Cowboys ranks right up there with any loss the Yankees could ever suffer.

(Winning the World Series in 2000 would have been the greatest, but alas the Mets pissed that away).

In recent years, the Cowboys talk big and play small. They yapped this week about Eli "disrespecting" them by signing his name in the visiting locker room in Week 2. I guess the motivation from that complete non-story wasn't enough to push them over the top.

The Giants are flawed, and they may still miss the playoffs. Obviously I hope the Giants can get hot and make an impact in the NFC. But today's win, at least for me, will make this season a lot easier to swallow even if it has a less than spectacular ending.

Feelings hurt?

Eli Manning acknowledged that he indeed signed his name in the visiting locker room at the Cowboys' new stadium in the Giants' visit there earlier this season.

Now the Cowboys are upset. Awww. Poor wittle babies.

Get out.

A team that has consistently harbored the biggest jerks, phonies and idiots (this side of Oakland and Cincinnati, anyway) shouldn't throw stones in its new glass palace.

Wade Phillips didn't approve of Eli's John Hancock.

"Things tend to come around in this league," the consistently over-matched coach said.

What things would those be, Wade? Maybe he was referring to the dirty leg-whip that snake Flozell Adams put on Justin Tuck in Week 2. Or maybe he was referring to the fact that his mediocre coaching usually "comes around" to dagger the Cowboys in December and January.

I'm a Yankee-hater, but when baseball season ends the Cowboys do a nice job of filling in as the object of my antipathy.

He's never wrong

Perhaps there is a clause in every NFL coach's contract that he simply can't admit to a mistake. The bumbling, inane responses take place every week trying to defend the indefensible. The latest one is courtesy of Tom Coughlin.

Why would the Giants play for a field goal when leading by three points with 3:01 left from the 14-yard line? Why call two running plays when a touchdown can win the game and a field goal only puts you up six?

"We didn't want to turn the ball over, obviously. We didn't want to be in a position like that," Coughlin said. "You can second guess it all you want. Field goal at that point in time forced them to have a touchdown and score a touchdown. There was plenty of time, over two minutes. But, we just had a couple of really good series defensively. We forced them into bad situations and we had a lot of momentum with our touchdown. We felt good about the situation we were in. We let them off the hook."

The Giants ended up with a field goal and a 20-14 lead before a two-minute TD drive by the Chargers won the game 21-20.

It's clever -- and in some cases fair -- for coaches to always fall back on the "You can second-guess it all you want" and "You're being a Monday morning quarterback" line as a defense when a decision turns out to be wrong. It's an understandable tactic to defend themselves against too many results-oriented fans (and media members) who only look at the outcome rather than the decision.

But it can't fly when the decision truly is abominable. The conservative playcalling in that situation was entirely misguided for one reason above all others: the field goal was a chip shot even with two incompletions.

Coughlin spent time in his press conference explaining that a six-point lead forced San Diego to score a touchdown rather than tie with a field goal. Thanks for the insight. A lot of people needed that information.

Had the Giants been somewhere around the 35-yard line, where every yard would have made a field goal more likely, running plays on 2nd-and-14 and 3rd-and-10 would have had some merit. But the extra yardage was meaningless in making the field goal more likely.

And the quote "We didn't want to turn the ball over, obviously" is exactly that: obvious. That wasn't a time to go into a shell and be petrified of an interception. It was a prevent offense and cost the Giants a chance to end the game.

Rips from around the league

Sunday nights are a wonderful time for reflection. Starting tonight, I will be posting a summary of rip-worthy events from around the NFL every Sunday night. I'll leave out the Giants since I've ripped them enough. Here we go:

Falcons 31, Redskins 17: I'm not quite sure what else there is to say about Washington. The owner stinks, the coach stinks, the team stinks. We may be looking at the NFC's answer to the Raiders.

Cardinals 41, Bears 21: The Bears and Ravens don't actually have to play well on defense to be considered good defensive teams. They've had good defenses in the past, so they must be good now, right? Kurt Warner's five TDs say otherwise.

Bengals 17, Ravens 7: The Ravens might have been the only team more overrated than the Giants earlier in the season.

Colts 20, Texans 17: Is there anyone in sports with an easier job than Colts offensive coordinator Tom Moore?











Patriots 27, Dolphins 17: The Wildcat offense is great. Having Randy Moss on your team is better.

Saints 30, Panthers 20: The Panthers jumped out to a lead but couldn't deliver the Saints' first loss. I still count it as a victory for Carolina though, because Jake Delhomme didn't throw any picks.

Jaguars 24, Chiefs 21: I'm going to take this opportunity to rip the Redskins again. Washington lost to Kansas City. That's a pretty meaty rip in itself.

Seahawks 32, Lions 20: Does anyone care?

Bucs 38, Packers 28: Tampa Bay, congrats on breaking that pesky 11-game losing streak. Green Bay...dagger.

Titans 34, 49ers 27: This definitely deserves another strip show from Mike Singletary.

Get this guy out now!

If I have to watch Lawrence Tynes botch another field goal I really may have to be put in a padded room. This guy STINKS!

STINKS!

I don't know what happened at the end of the Giants' first drive today - it looked like Tynes just froze up - and I really don't care. I think Coughlin should have gone for it on 4th and a foot, but he didn't, so the Giants have to make that field goal.

Enough already. He misses chip shots but somehow the Giants always seem to give him a chance to make a game-winner and so everyone forgets about his blunders. Ex: NFC Championship game at Green Bay, second week of this season at Dallas.

Well Larry, I haven't forgotten. Find another job.

Referendum

Personally I believe defensive coordinator Bill Sheridan should be on the hot seat if his defense gets torched again. I understand they've has had some injuries, but there are still too many good players to be giving up 40 points like it's nothing. Sheridan has big shoes to fill replacing Steve Spagnuolo. Right now he looks to be wearing about a kids size 4.

Sometime after 7 o' clock tonight Giants fans will have a pretty good idea of where this season is headed.

Should the Chargers extend the Giants' losing streak to four, Big Blue will have a tough time making the playoffs let alone going deep into the postseason as many expected when the team was 5-0.

If the Giants prevail, they will be 6-3 heading into a bye week where some important players will get a chance to nurse some injuries.

San Diego brings the No. 4 passing attack into Giants Stadium today, and because the weather is quite mild today, the Giants won't have the elements to help stop Philip Rivers from carving up the secondary like one of John Madden's Turduckens (however you spell it).

The offense has to do a better job too, but really I can't judge them as I normally would because the last few weeks they've been playing with the pressure of knowing the other team is scoring on every possession.

Bad Joke?

I'm not sure I could be more furious. Watching the Giants is making me physically ill. Defensive coordinator Bill Sheridan can't seem to fix whatever is wrong with the Giants' defense, and Eli Manning looks like the old, "you can never win a championship with this guy" Eli.

The Giants new defensive scheme seems to be let receivers run unbelievably wide open in the secondary and hope for drops. So far it's not working. Maybe the Saints exposed some weaknesses in the Giants' defense, but in the NFL you have to be able to adjust from week to week and all of a sudden the Giants seem totally unable to do that.

Incredibly, after a 5-0 start the season looks to be in real jeopardy.