Giants vs Patriots Friday, September 4, 2009

The Giants actually played their first team offense and defense for a good portion of the game last night, though Eli only played one series. David Carr came in relief of him and played with the first team for a while. In retrospect, I shouldn't have been surprised. Coughlin played all his starters in a "meaningless" game week 17 in 2007 against the Patriots.

The Giants first team is a lot better than the Patriots 2nd string. When Carr and the first stringers came out at the end of the first, it was 21-0 Giants. The Patriots second stringers are better then the Giants, and the Patriots rallied to win 38-27. As always, the Giants were pretty well represented in New England. I don't know if the New Jersians...I mean Yorkers drive up or if its carry over from before the Patriots existed. I'm told New England was Giant country back then, and just thinking about it makes me want to throw up a little bit. At any rate, the Giants are probably the team that travels best to Foxboro... with the obligatory nod to the Steelers who also travel pretty well.

So, given that there were a lot of Giants fans, I was shocked and surprised at two things. The first was I saw more Patriot fans wearing Jerseys with the Super Bowl XLII patch on it. In fact, surprisingly I saw not a single Super Bowl XLII champion hat or tee shirt or blanket or anything.

Even more surprising, especially considering the 21-0 pounding the Giants were given the Patriots at one point, was I heard no "18-1" chants until one guy said it as he was leaving the stadium with less than a minute left. In his defense, his friend (wearing a Randy Moss Jersey) screamed "Hey, hey, hey, Goodbye" as they were leaving the section, so he was provoked. I figured that would be the new "1918." Dare I say it... are New Yorkers becoming classy? Probably not. I'm thinking the fact that there was no 18-1 chants and the Giant fans in attendance were all classy proves that they are probably from New England and never switched allegiances when the Patriots were founded.

Moving along, in CAA news, Villanova upset FBS Temple. Watch out Kansas State. You're next.