Wacky Football Mishap Poll

So, my Giants edged out Kate's Patriots again in the Chateau Steelypips Bowl, in a game that was certainly not without its drama. I'm not going to gloat about it, because a couple of different bounces here or there easily could've changed the outcome. Also, I didn't see the third quarter at all, really, because it was SteelyKid's bedtime, and I was upstairs reading her stories.

But as good as the game was, we now have to turn toward the future, and specifically what wacky thing will go wrong to prevent the Giants from doing anything significant next year. "What do you mean?" you ask. Well, look at their history. They won the Super Bowl in 1987, and the next year, the NFL players went on strike, shortening the season and leading to some really disgraceful replacement games. The Giants had the worst replacement players in the world, and ended up missing the playoffs.

They won the Super Bowl in 1991, after which coach Bill Parcells retired for the first time. He waited long enough to make his decision that his defensive coordinator, Bill Belichick, had already taken the head coach job in Cleveland, so his successor was Ray Handley, who was awful. They missed the playoffs the next two years.

They won the Super Bowl in 2008, and got off to a great start, looking like one of the best teams in football. Then Brandon Jacobs got injured, and world-class knucklehead Plaxico Burress shot himself in the leg with an unregistered gun in his sweatpants, and they limped to an early exit.

So, history clearly tells us that something weird will happen next year to keep the Giants from repeating, or even winning a playoff game. The question is, what will that be?

As a famous man once said, it's hard to make predictions, especially about the future. But I'm sure that this totally scientific poll will give us a good chance of guessing which way to bet.