Giants TKO Eagles and Vick from pedestal

GIANTS 29
EAGLES 16

The New York Giants have saved their season.

Granted, it is only Week Three, and there is still a lot of football to be played, but for a Giants team decimated by injuries, written off by their fan base, and led by a head coach battling for his job, won the most important game for Big Blue since their Super Bowl victory more than three years ago.

Nobody expected the Giants to walk into Philadelphia and pull out a victory, especially with Michael Vick playing this game, concussion or no concussion.

Instead the Giants came out like gangbusters, opening up a 14-0 lead on Philly, shocking the Dream Team and rest of America.

Eli Manning's 40 yard touchdown pass to Brandon Jacobs in the first quarter set the tone for Big Blue. Later in the quarter, Manning hit a streaking Victor Cruz 74 yards down the sideline for the score, giving the Giants a 14-0 lead.

Even though the Eagles scored 16 consecutive points, the Giants never let Michael Vick and LaShaun McCoy dictate the football game. In fact in the third quarter, with New York up 14-13, the Eagles drove the ball all the way to the Giants two yard line. At that point the Giants defense stood its ground. They pushed back Olin Schmidt for no gain. Stopped Vick on a rush up the middle for no gain and kept Schmidt out of the end zone on third down, forcing the Eagles to settle for the field goal.

As for Vick, the Giants beat him up. They hit him hard and often, including a couple blows to the head that were not ruled penalties. At one point Vick was seen holding his head after being dropped hard to the ground. Vick eventually left the game, with what the Eagles diagnosed as a broken hand, but I am sure it had more to do with the concussion than anything else.

Once Vick left, everything fell apart for Philadelphia. Mike Kafka was awful, completing four of seven passes for 35 yards and two interceptions and never displayed the kind of accuracy that he had shown in Atlanta the week before.

Offensively, the Giants woke up in the fourth quarter. Manning hit Hakeem Nicks for nine yards to the Eagles 46. Ahmad Bradshaw then churned out 13 yards on two carries before Manning hit Victor Cruz on an acrobatic 28 yard touchdown. Cruz caught the ball between two defenders and fell to the ground while bobbling the football. The play was reviewed, and it was determined that Cruz got the ball over the plane before he dropped the football. The Giants then succeeded on a two point conversion by Brandon Jacobs to take a 22-16 lead.

After Aaron Ross picked off Kafka on the Eagles first play of scrimmage, the Giants stuck it right down the Eagles throats as the G-Men drove it 56 yards, culminating in a 18 yard pass to Bradshaw to make it 29-16.

For a Giants team so beaten up by injuries to wide receiver, they relied heavily on Bradshaw and Jacobs, and it worked out. Getting those two backs more involved in the game is something the Giants didn't do successfully in the first two weeks. They did it on Sunday, and they will have to keep it up the rest of the season. Bradshaw and Jacobs all day, every day.

How about that doom and gloom now, Giants fans?