Dejected NY Giants fans leave the stadium after the Giants chances of a playoff run are eliminated. (Anthony J. Causi)
The end came in the worst place possible: inside the locker room, as they were ripping tape off their ankles, as they were stacking their pads and tossing their socks and jerseys into haphazard piles, as someone else was commandeering their destiny 610 miles away.
All around MetLife Stadium, small crowds were gathering around television screens tuned to the Bears-Lions game at Ford Field, and they were watching Jay Cutler take a snap on third down, saw him look at blanketed receivers … and then cut loose a collective sigh when they saw what Cutler saw: yards and yards of open space. First down in Michigan. Next year in New Jersey.
The Bears were going to win. The Giants — who had just completed a 42-7 annihilation of the Eagles — were going to lose, despite the insistence of those preening numbers. They were going home. No more football. Winter slams the door early.
“Last year,” Eli Manning said, “we got away with it.”
He meant fiddling around with the season, eking out nine wins. Nine-and-seven a year ago was the catapult to glory. This season it is a pink slip.
“Football is funny that way,” Justin Tuck said.
VOTE: WHO SHOULD THE GIANTS BRING BACK IN 2013?
The Giants’ twin pillars were both entering what surely will be extended periods of melancholy, probably because both understand what yesterday, what this season, is a part of, the bigger picture of this splendid Giants era. Look, the first reaction — the fair reaction, truth be told — is to give them a mulligan for this year, a pass earned by the heroics of last January and February.
But Manning and Tuck’s body language — and their words — told a different story, one that probably won’t be felt in full for a decade or two. After all, in sports, Gordon Gekko’s philosophy is absolutely essential: Greed is good. Greed drives the engines of championship teams, and the winning players who nourish those ambitions.
“Each year you get a little older,” Manning said. “And you never know how many opportunities you’ll get to be on a team that’s good enough to be a champion.”
He paused there, not necessarily to emphasize what came next.
Though it was hard to miss the point.
“This team,” he said, “was good enough.”
In time, in 20 years, in 30, that’s when these past six years might come with twinges of regret, no matter how magnificent the memory of the two Super Bowl victories were. Because there could have been more, maybe should have been more. There have been three seasons that ended outside the playoffs, another that ended with a galling home loss as the No. 1 seed.
“What you want is to get in the playoffs,” Eli said, “and then take your chances.”
Is this a less-than-gracious way to appreciate twin titles? Maybe it is. But ask the members of the great Giants teams of the ’80s about that era — which also yielded two championships — and they, too, have regrets, about too many precious chances left on the table. The strike ruined one shot, Flipper Anderson another, Al Toon a third.
A few years ago, I asked Phil Simms about those teams.
“I don’t think there’s a guy among any of us,” he said, “who doesn’t think we should have won another title or two.”
Maybe Eli doesn’t have to repeat a similar sentiment in years to come. Maybe before this highway of history ends the Giants will make another Super Bowl or two, win another one or two. As long as he is the franchise cornerstone — and he still only turns 32 on Thursday — the Giants will always have a puncher’s chance.
But will they be as good as they were in 2008, before Plaxico Burress took a ride into the city? In ’09, before the defense imploded, or ’10 when 10 wins wasn’t good enough to make the tournament? Or 2012, a team the quarterback himself believed was good enough to repeat?
“We weren’t good enough,” coach Tom Coughlin said, though if you looked at him as he said it, even he wasn’t buying. Even he wasn’t willing to take the mulligan. It’s a stone in his shoe — in all of their spikes — that will be there for a while.
Is that greedy? Sure it is. In sports, especially in football, greed is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures. Greed allowed the Giants to become champions twice. And may allow them to return there, still, some day, some year.
Just not this year.