A Christmas Trip Back Home to the Land of Big Blue

This is a Skins blog, but I grew up in New Jersey and thought that I would report back from the front line of the NFC East. I watched the Philadelphia/Giants game with my family, who are all G-Men fans, and got to talk about it and hear about it at parties afterwards, and here are my observations:

* Giants fans expect to win and make the playoffs. Their team still will likely make the playoffs but their fans are truly ashamed at the way in which they are doing it. Many of them are in fact rooting against the G-Men next week, saying that they don't deserve to be in the playoffs. In Washington, we have no shame, or we are used to it, and backing into the playoffs would not be cause for depression or rooting against the team.

* The NY media is tough tough tough on the team. See the NY Post for full team beatings.

* Public opinion is that some of the Giants players are locker room problems, most notably Shockey, so get rid of them. I even heard a theory that they want to shed Shockey and get Cooley. At least Barber is going. He had production but was such a primadonna no one in NJ can't stand him.

* The Charlie Weis theory, namely, that the Giants passed up one Weis three years ago to draft Coughlin and that Weis is game now and would have been nirvana then. The NY Post loves this theory, and has two articles today on it, here and here. I don't know if any coach could overcome the egos of Shockey, Barber and Strahan and the laziness of Plaxico Burress.

* Eli is "slow." That is New Jersey polite talk for retarded. Everyone talks about how he has physical ability but looks dumbfounded and clueless, and just plain "slow." He is not Peyton.

* This talk leads to a discussion of the famous draft three years ago in which Eli, flanked by his father and brother, looking like a spoiled Daddy's boy (which would never sell in in NY or NJ), proclaimed that he wouldn't play for San Diego, which had the first pick. San Diego feels like they got draft picks and a better quarterback, and G'ints fans don't disagree. It is hard to argue against Phil Rivers and Shawne Merriman at this point.