Dr. Giganto

Well, like an idiot, I bought into the whole "Tiki's gone, so they're gonna suck" stuff before the season. Which means that I totally ignored several facts about the team (which has been together for a few years now) that I learned from watching them every week for the last few years. Namely:

They have probably the most underrated O-line in football. Maybe they're not as great as the Colts line, or the Patriots (yes, they had a poor game in the SB...but it happens...), but they were pretty darn good.

The loss of Luke Petitgout was not as big as some people made it out to be. Petitgout sucked, and Diehl had experience playing tackle, both in college and the NFL. I should have known it wouldn't have made a difference.

The Giants run defense is surprisingly good. They may not be big name guys, but Fred Robbins and Barry Cofield are surprisngly competent DTs. Antonio Pierce was good enough to pick up any runners who got past the line, and Gibril Wilson was a hard hitter who could take down any runners who get to the third level (past the D-line and the LBs).

Justin Tuck is really good. I knew he was good. Most Giants fans saw him play really well in his limited playing time prior to this season. While people were fretting about Strahan's "retirement", I should have known that even if he did retire, Tuck would step up and fill his shoes pretty well. Instead, Strahan stayed, and Tuck had a breakout year.

Soft schedule. When the Giants went 8-8 the year before, they played the AFC South, which included two REALLY good teams (Colts and Jags) and a team on the rise (Titans). This year, they played the AFC East, which was one historically good team and three AWFUL teams. In 2006, they played the NFC South, which was one very good team (Saints), two decent teams (Panthers and Falcons w/ Vick), and one team with a really good Defense (Tampa Bay). This year, they played the NFC North, which was the Packers and three shitty teams. The Giants "first place finish" games (the games on the schedule that were determined by how they finished the year before) in 2006 were the Seahwaks and Bears, both of whom won their divisions, both won at least one playoff game, and the Bears went to the Super Bowl. The Giants "third-place finish" games this year were the Vick-less Falcons (4-12) and the 49ers (5-11)

Brandon Jacobs is good. OK, he had some problems with injuries, but when he was healthy, he played great. He ran for 1,000 yards in basically 10 games. Only Adrian Peterson had more yards per game played. Most people looked at him, saw how big he was, and assumed "Oh, he must be really slow". In fact, all my friends who are Jets fans said that. But then he ripped off that 50-yard run against Buffalo, and everyvody was like "Wait...was that Jacobs???"

And honestly, I think if you replayed the 2007 NFL playoffs 10 more times, the Giants would not have won the Super Bowl any of those 10 times. It was just a perfect storm. They beat three teams that I think were clearly better than them, by a combined 10 points. This was just one of those years when the best team did not win.