You know what would be refreshing, just once? If after a lousy season, an athlete would step in front of a microphone and announce, “Man did I just have a lousy season.”
Osi Umenyiora, that means you, by the way.
A lot of times during this Giants season just ended, the only way you could tell Umenyiora had been activated — after sitting out all of 2008 — was after games, or during the week, when he would clear his throat and complain about this perceived unjustice or that. Yesterday, he went on the radio and decided it would be a good time to offer an ultimatum:
“I am not going be a backup player, I’ll promise you that,” Umenyiora told WFAN. “I will stop playing football before I do that. This has been the worst offseason of my entire life. I can’t think of a time when things were this bad during the offseason. I am supposed to be relaxing, but I can’t because all I can think of is all the things that took place last season. For me, it’s not something that I am going to do. And if they ask me to do that, I will just stop playing football.”
This screed was two things:
1. Prepsoterously stupid.
2. The worst bluff of all time.
It also reveals that Umeyiora learned most of the bad things that Michael Strahan brought to his tenure with the Giants — the clubhouse lawyering, the bent for complaining — and few of the good — namely, performing on the field. Because let’s get one thing straight: you can blame anything you want for the cause — recovering from the injury, new system, new coordinator (and Giants fans want to blame Bill Sheridan for everything short of global warming). But the fact is this:
Umenyiora was awful this year. He earned that benching. He earned his coach’s scorn. And you can believe that if Umenyiora had been even a shadow of the player he’d been before his injury, the Giants’ defense wouldn’t have looked like the spaghetti strainer it ultimately became.
Now that Umenyiora helped chase away the old coordinator, he issues threats before the new one, Perry Fewell, can even start putting pictures on his new desk. Nice touch. Umenyiora should spend a little less time working his mouth this offseason, a little more re-learning how to be the kind of player a coach would be foolish to keep on the bench. He has a ways to go.
# # # #
McGuire the Gent: Wonderful retrospective here from Mark Jackson and here from Marc Berman about Dick McGuire, who passed away yesterday at 84 and represented a time when being a company man was about as noble a life as anyone could aspire to, no matter the field, no matter the profession. McGuire did, quite literally, everything for the Knicks, and next to Red Holzman might have been the most important single employee the team has ever had.
# # # #
Finney the Fine: I do hope you’ve been reading the daily dispatches from former Postie Peter Finney Jr., whose tales of Saints-dom have been fascinating all week long. Here’s today’s offering:
# # # #
The Final pride of the Pride: And here’s mine, on Marques Colston, who wanted to be a mentor for future Hofstra players and now only has memories.