You can’t wait for this. You can’t wait for this because you know your team can’t wait for this. And the team you have waiting for this had its fists balled for Michael Vick and the Eagles even before leaving Ford Field with the scalps of Adrian Peterson and Tarvaris Jackson.
There isn’t a better time than now, Sunday at 1 o’clock, to dog Vick, to impose your will on your hated rival, when the ferocity of your bloodthirsty defense and the wrecking ball of demolition that is your running assault must have Wellington Mara smiling up in heaven and Bill Parcells nodding knowingly.
There isn’t a better place for payback than your new place, New Meadowlands Stadium, for this Phight For Phirst, this backyard brawl that calls for Michael Buffer to stand on the 50-yard line to get everybody ready to ruuuuuummmmmmblllllllllle …
It will be cold, with a 30 percent chance of snow. The hitting will send chills down your spine. You will see the hot breath of Justin Tuck and Osi Umenyiora and Jason Pierre-Paul, too, as they chase Vick from one end of East Rutherford to the other and take dead aim on the bull’s-eye on his chest.
This is the old-school team with the old-fashioned mantra of “talk is cheap play the game,” a team that prefers to do its loudest talking between the white lines, with its shoulder pads on. That would play this game tomorrow, to hell with all the aches and pains, in a parking lot at midnight with no one watching. Inside a phone booth. Under the Thunderdome: two teams enter, one team leaves.
For those of you who refuse to let go of the romantic notion of a blue-collar team that leaves its victims black-and-blue, the rebirth of the Defiant Giant, this is Deja Blue Heaven.
But this time your team will have you watching, spewing venom at Vick, high-fiving every time Brandon Jacobs steamrolls a wary defender, erupting in a deafening New York-New Jersey roar at the sight of Ahmad Bradshaw jitterbugging his way past the first defender, blasting into the next one, his legs churning, his feet appearing as if they have landed on hot coals. Antrel Rolle, who boos boobirds, pleaded yesterday for “the best possible fans the world could imagine.”
Better the fans plead for the best possible team the world could imagine. Because the 12th man didn’t help the 2009 Giants, 45-38 losers to the Donovan McNabb Eagles at Giants Stadium, all that much last December.
“This game coming up against Philadelphia is tremendously big,” Tuck said. “So we’ll be ready, and we’ll figure out what we have to do here in these next couple of days to make sure guys are physically and mentally prepared for this game.
“But because the atmosphere that’s gonna be in that stadium on Sunday, I don’t think we’ll have a problem.”
The Giants won’t run for 200 yards for the third straight time, not against those guys. But they will try. Your team’s identity has changed. It isn’t just Eli Manning winding up and praying that somehow, some way, someone like David Tyree can come down with it. Every possession no longer has to be a two-minute drive at the end of a Super Bowl with the hopes and dreams of a city in his right hand. Not when Bullyball is back, where you can let your imagination run wild again and see Ottis Anderson delivering a forearm shiver in Super Bowl XXV.
“We love seeing opposing defenses getting punished,” Tuck said.
Your team will need to play its best game of the season. The Eagles have soared on the wings of Vick. If the Giants are thunder, Vick and all his big-play weapons are lightning. Tuck was asked if the Giants are peaking at the right time.
“I hope so, I think so,” he said. “I hope we don’t get in a lull here. We got three big games, back to back to back, starting with Philadelphia, and hopefully we can continue to ride this, right into the playoffs.”
The Eagles have owned the Giants, beaten them four straight times, knocked them out of the 2008 playoffs. They will own them again if Manning throws three interceptions like he did the last time — not to mention fumbling because he neglected to slide. If he has lost Steve Smith and Mario Manningham, he will turn to Kevin Boss and Bradshaw out of the backfield. At least he will have Hakeem Nicks.
“He’ll be at his best this weekend,” Coughlin said yesterday.
Ali-Frazier. Hagler-Hearns. Phight For Phirst. Bring on the Eagles.
steve.serby@nypost.com