By Bob Cunningham The Giants are a good team. There's no doubt about that. The doubt comes in at how good they really are.
It would appear as though the Giants showed their true colors last season on their 1-5 stretch without Plaxico Burress.
Without Burress, the Giants offense could go nowhere. No one feared the passing game, so the gameplan simply became to shut down Brandon Jacobs. Once a team shut down Jacobs, Derrick Ward was a non-issue because his only value came from feeding off of what Jacobs had already done.
Let me say this now: without Plaxico Burress, Eli Manning will show his true colors.
Either way, this year will show just what kind of quarterback Manning is. He will not have that security blanket to lean on and will in fact have to help out young receivers by throwing good balls and becoming a leader.
Let's just say I don't have much faith in that happening.
The biggest thing about the Giants is that defense. The defense, especially the line, looks mighty scary. They're big in the middle and quick on the edges, which will create a whole lot of problems for a whole lot of teams.
However, with the departure of Spags to the Rams, will that defense be able to operate in the same way that they have in years past?
Brandon Jacobs is predicting 13 wins, I'm saying closer to 10 or 11 because of this next team.
The Philadelphia Eagles.
As a cautious optimist, I believe that the Eagles are in fact the best team in this division and should have the upper-hand over the defending NFC East champion New York Giants.
All the problems that the Giants have are the same that they had last year when the Eagles beat them two out of three times, with both wins coming after they had lost Plax for the season, and ultimately for good.
The Giants could not move the ball at all and were outscored 43-25 in the final two games played against the Eagles, one of them a playoff game.
While the Giants have not done much to improve as a team in need areas, the Eagles have.
All of the starters and backups lost by the Eagles via free agency have been replaced and perhaps upgraded, with age being a factor. The Eagles brought in a lot of veterans who can play at an extremely high level and can provide leadership on an otherwise fairly young team.
The first three rookies drafted, Jeremy Maclin (first), LeSean McCoy (second), and Cornelius Ingram (fifth), are expected to contribute immediately and were all big-time talents in college. If they can contribute even half of what they contributed in college, the Eagles will be set for years to come.
The fact of the matter is simply that the Eagles have countered everything the Giants have done in the offseason.
The Giants bolstered their D-line with the return of Osi and adding Rocky Bernard, so the Eagles traded for arguably the best left tackle in football in Jason Peters. The Giants lost their best receiver, the Eagles have added more talent and depth to their secondary.
The Eagles have only been a couple bad breaks behind the Giants for the past couple years, but that should end in 2009.
If the Eagles can stay healthy overall as a team, they should be able to leapfrog the Giants and take back the first-place spot they're so accustomed to holding.
With all that said, don't discount the Giants. They won't go down easily by any means. They still have a good O-line and running game on offense to go along with a very good defense, especially that front seven.
