THIS is the way bullies do it when the guy on the other side is a 98-pound weakling. This is the way bullies do it when a cowboy shows up to a gunfight with a water pistol. This is the way bullies do it when the other guy shows up with a gaping wound and they smell blood.
Bully for the Big Blue Bullies, 35-14 winners yesterday over the Cowboys, or, on the brink of Election Day, a landslide.
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It should be obvious by now that the 7-1 Giants enjoy being world champions.
“Let me ask you a question – say I was boxing, and I had a belt around my waist, and I was going into a fight defending it; wouldn’t I try to knock that guy out?” Justin Tuck said. “I think if anything, being in that Super Bowl, and tasting how it feels to hold that trophy up, makes you want to go back more than it did before you got there. You didn’t know what it felt like. Now you know what it feels like. You want to feel it again.”
But a lot of defending Super Bowl champions. . .
“It ain’t got nothing to do with us,” Tuck interrupted, mentioning the Patriots, who won Super Bowls XXVIII and XXXIX. “So why can’t this football team do the same?”
Maybe this would have been a fair fight during Eli Manning’s rookie season, or if David Carr were quarterbacking the Giants. But this was a worst mismatch than Peyton Manning against Rex Grossman in the Super Bowl.
Brad Johnson (5 for 11, 71 yards, two interceptions) yanked after one half, gave the Cowboys no chance. Neither did Brooks Bollinger (9 for 16, 63 yards, one touchdown, one interception). When Tuck (2½ sacks) wasn’t burying them, Corey Webster (two interceptions) and James Butler were intercepting them. Johnson and Bollinger, cut down to size as they were, tiptoed out into the night and were smaller than Eddie LeBaron, the 5-foot-6 Cowboys quarterback from another era.
You bet Terrell Owens wasn’t sobbing, “They’re my quarterbacks,” after this one.
It will be different, of course, once Tony Romo and his broken right pinkie return. In the meantime, all is fair in love and war to the Giants. There is no mercy in football.
“This team didn’t feel bad for us last year when we had injuries, and I don’t think we felt bad for them,” Antonio Pierce said.
“I think they still outnumbered us as far as Pro Bowlers by 10 today, at least,” Tuck said, “so I don’t understand why everybody wants to give them sympathy.”
The last thing coach Tom Coughlin wants is to stop his bullies from kicking sand in the NFC East’s faces.
“I think we can play better,” Coughlin said.
“Honestly, he wasn’t happy,” Pierce said. “When you’re a coach, you’re always looking for that perfect game – you don’t want no turnovers, you don’t want no miscues.”
And you don’t want complacency.
“You go in, you touch that ocean water to see if it’s warm or cold – well that’s what we did last year, we just tested it,” Pierce said. “Now we’re ready to jump in and hopefully each game we get in, we put our foot in deeper and deeper.”
Manning (two fumbles) had three touchdown passes by halftime, and it was 21-7 only because Plaxico Burress zigged downfield when Manning expected him to zag to the right sidelines and Mike Jenkins returned the interception 23 yards.
With no Romo to worry about, the Big Blue barbarians plastered a bull’s-eye on Barber (19-54). With no Romo to worry about, Manning could play keepaway and Jacobs (17 carries for 117 yards and one touchdown) could spearhead a 200-yard rushing day.
“To me, it didn’t matter if it was Romo, Brad Johnson, Bollinger, Troy Aikman, who I like a lot – we’re gonna go after anybody out there,” Pierce said. “It was about the Giants.” Who are halfway to another Super season.
Tuck was asked what he likes best about this team.
“How much we understand how far we gotta go. We’re nowhere close to where we need to be,” he said. “We’re not really tasting that Kool-Aid anymore. Obviously, before that Cleveland game, I think we were.”
Men against Boys. Supermen against Boys, actually.