All right before we get to looking back at NFC Championship Game let me say a quick word about all New York Giants fans.
Everyone is jumping on their (our) backs for not believing in this team. Many fans say we shouldn’t even be happy right now we never expected the Giants to go to the Super Bowl. In the past two days I have been accosted of not even being a “real” fan, of coming out of the wood work, plus getting the whole “wait a minute I thought you hated Eli Manning” accusation throw in my face.
Well let me defend my people for a moment.
There are many reasons why they (we) didn’t give the Giants a shot in the playoffs:

(1) First off New York wasn’t even that good in the regular season. They only outscored their opponent by 23 points all season, meaning their margin of victory was less than 1.5 points per game.

(2) They beat one playoff team all year while losing four other times getting out scored 133-78 in those losses for a margin of defeat of nearly two touchdowns.

(3) If you throw out the final regular season game vs. the Pats, Eli Manning had 8 interceptions, four touchdowns in his last five games. Also in three of those contests his completion percentage was below 50% and I don’t think any astute football mind could see what was coming from Eli.

So yes we were surprised they are headed to the Super Bowl. Yes we hated this team for most of the season but we were within our sporting right to have such negative feelings. Remember this is the same team that makes a habit of crumbling down the stretch and had not won a playoff game since crushing the Vikings in the 2001 NFC Championship team.
Watching the Giants playoff run is a perfect reminder why we watch sports. Anything can happen and sometimes, when were lucky, we get to see a player grow up in front of our eyes. The last three weeks has been an absolute treat for all of us suffering Giants fans and I am going to enjoy the two weeks of hype before the inevitable crushing defeat to the Patriots.

Anyway … moving on to the game.

Everyone has had their say by now, you have had heard a 100 different takes on what happened, who’s to blame, what happened to Favre and why did those women decide to wear bikini’s at Lambeau. So I’ll keep this brief.

(1) Corey Webster is starting to have the look of an elite corner. He shut down Joey Galloway, Terrell Owens and had the game winning interception. Yes he is responsible for the 90 yard play touchdown but one-on-one corners are going to get burnt. It’s part of the game.

(2) The biggest play of the game that may have gone unnoticed was the 3rd down tackle of Brandon Jackson by Antonio Pierce on a screen pass near the end of the 2nd quarter. Jackson was wide open with three blockers and 19 yards of open real estate to the end zone. If not for Pierce blowing that play up Green Bay would have gone up 14-6 at the half, completely changing the atmosphere of the second half.

(3) Tom Coughlin’s red face was just hilarious. I never got tired of FOX going back to that shot. I was hoping that Lawrence Tynes would slap him as hard as he could on the cheek to see if Coughlin could feel a thing.

(4) Finally the CTV promo department should be ashamed of themselves. I understand they wanted to plug ‘Medium’, ‘Corner Gas’ and about 17 different versions of CSI but at one point was everyone else sick and tired of those promos? I’m guessing the collective answer would be the two minute warning of the first half. No doubt these shows lost a number of fans who just got sick and tired defending them.

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