Today is the official last day of classes, though my final class meetings were yesterday. I’m also halfway through grading a big pile of lab reports, which I do electronically, so I’m trying to keep my extra-curricular typing to a minimum, lest I suffer another flare-up of muscle spasms in my neck and shoulder.
I shouldn’t let this weekend’s NFL games pass entirely without comment, though. The karmic blowback for slagging college football in general was the collapse of my Giants against the Bears on Sunday night. The loss was not unexpected– the Bears are a very good team, and the Giants are seriously depleted by injury– but the manner of the loss was dispiriting. They played really well in the first half, and then just fell apart, including allowing a 108-yard return of a missed field goal.
Of course, in the curiously perspectiveless world of sports commentary, lots of people are making this out to be more than it is. Did this game expose the inner weakness of the Giants? Possibly. Or, possibly, it just shows that it’s sort of hard to beat good teams when half of your defensive starters are sidelined with injury, and your starting left tackle goes out in the first half. Similarly, they inflate the effect on the rest of the division– yes, the Giants’s loss allowed Dallas and Philadelphia to pick up a game each on the Giants. That’s because the Giants were required to play an actual football team as opposed to whatever the Redskins and Cardinals are these days.
That said, I don’t hold out any great hopes for the Giants from here on out. They may be able to hang on to win the division, but they’re not a Super Bowl team without Strahan and Umenyiora and Pettigout.
(If you had told me two years ago that Luke Pettigout would go out in the ninth game of the season, I would’ve expected it to improve the team’s chances, not doom them. Two years ago, he was a holding penalty looking for a place to happen. In fact, he was so enthusiatic about it, that he usually false-started in an effort to get to the holding penalty faster. He’s been really solid this year, though, and when he went out, the Giant offense pretty much collapsed. Unless his backup gets really good, really fast, I expect Eli Manning to have a hard time of it for the next six games.)
That’s interesting, because from the Chicago perspective, the storyline is all about the two Bears teams—the horrible ones that showed up against Arizona, Miami (and to a lesser extent) Minnesota, and the one that cruised to easy wins in the other games. Sunday was the first time that both teams showed up on the same day.
The other thing that struck me about this game (and others that I’ve seen this season) is that the refs seem to be calling roughing/personal fouls much more closely this year. There were four of these in Sunday’s game, and I thought all of them were pretty bogus. It’s football, let ’em play!
Ah, but last week it was us Bears fans who were dispiritedly seeking special causes for an embarrassing loss. This week I’m happy and it’s too bad that you’re sad, but I’m not about to change places to make you feel better. Go Bears!
Reminds me of Patton’s saying: Don’t die for your country; make the other poor bastard die for his.