NFL Notes

SteelyKid was kind of fussy for the early part of the afternoon, and my Giants lost. It's hard to say whether she was fussy for reasons of her own, or just picking up on my irritation at the Giants' lousy play. In any case, the correlation between Happy Baby and football victories remains intact-- she cheered up later on, and Kate's Patriots won.

Blame for the loss falls largely on the receivers, who dropped a bunch of good passes. Philadelphia was stacking their defense up to stop the run, and trying to force Manning to throw, but they couldn't get the completions to loosen things up at the line. Domenik Hixon just flat-out dropped a sure touchdown pass in the first half, that would've completely changed the game.

The Giants still wound up clinching the division, thanks to the Cowboys losing at Pittsburgh. I didn't see much of this one, and I missed the very best part-- I took the dog out for a walk with Pittsburgh trailing 13-6 (but driving), and came back to find the Steelers leading 20-13, after a touchdown and an interception to set up a second TD.

I was very happy to see that result, not only because I hate the Cowboys in general, but because of the over-hyping of Tony Romo the last two weeks. ESPN has been full of people proclaiming Romo as the Cowboys' savior, after two really good games... against the 2-11 Seahawks, and the 5-8 Niners. It's easy to look like you're having an offensive resurgence when you're playing the NFC West-- matched against a real NFL-caliber defense, the Cowboys looked pretty shaky.

We'll find out next week, of course, as the Giants travel to Dallas, for a game that won't determine anything other than bragging rights.