Well I am sorry, but again, much like the media you have it backwards.
Its the giants who talk and talk. Not the other way around. I dont remember anyone asking them about backing it up in 03, 06, or in the regular season in 07.
here is a good article about it.
http://fifthdown.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/17/sometimes-the-bully-wins-in-the-end/
Sometimes the Bully Wins in the End
By
The New York TimesOur guest bloggers this week are the men behind
Blogging the Boys:
By Greg Fields
The 2007 New York Giants. I used to call them wannabe bullies. They talked a good game but couldn’t back it up.
It started
in 2006 at Dallas. They battered and bruised Drew Bledsoe, sacking him time after time. This was the game that introduced their famous hip-hop-inspired, free-throw extension celebration to the nation. They made so many plays in that game it seemed like an NBA exhibition.
Then Tony Romo relieved Bledsoe in the second half and it was more of the same. The Giants just couldn’t stop laughing while picking off passes from Cowboy quarterbacks. It’s “A Christmas Story” all over again and we’re Ralphie Parker and the Giants are Scut Farkus.
Why call the Giants bullies? Well, it was mostly their bruising style. From Brandon Jacobs’s all downhill style of running to Plaxico Burress’s giving forearm shivers to much smaller DBs to Antonio Pierce’s shooting through the gap like a heat-seeking missile, layin’ the wood on running backs to their relentless pass rush, it just seemed like at the end of most games teams were beaten, bruised and demoralized. The 2006 game in Irving reminded me of the Rex Kwon Do demonstration in “Napoleon Dynamite.” The Cowboys were Kip. The Giants were Rex.
The trash talking between both teams probably helped this image. Burress called Terrell Owens a coward. Brandon Jacobs started off the season looking to kick some Cowboy booty. The Giants weren’t just beating the ‘Boys. They were reveling in it.
Then the tide changed. Dallas got the biggest win of the Bill Parcells era in the Meadowlands in 2006. Romo engineered a 23-20 comeback. Jeremy Shockey made plays. Plaxico Burress made plays. The Giants talked big. But on that windy day, the bully got punched in the mouth. And then it continued. This year the Cowboys hung 45 points on the Giants in the opener. The Giants seemed to shrug at the suggestion that they’d been beaten by a better team. We’ll get ‘em next time, they said. Our defense will get better, they said. And it does. Except the Cowboys still hang 31 points on the Giants in East Rutherford. It’s the Romo-T.O. show starring the Giants’ secondary, and it isn’t pretty. Four touchdowns for Romo and two big touchdown grabs for Owens. Ralphie is fighting back. Patrick Crayton — a former third-string receiver! — is taunting, goading and embarrassing the Giant DBs. Owens nonchalantly refers to the Cowboys “swagger” after the game.
The bully — real or imagined — seemed to be dead. Which made the Cowboy regular season victories against the Giants that much sweeter. The Cowboys seemed to embody the young upstart who gets tired of getting pushed around by the neighborhood bully. The bully talks and the young upstart punches him in the mouth. The bully goes home crying.
Funny thing started happening though. The bully started swinging back. The Giants dodged a bullet in Philadelphia with a hard-fought win. Manning engineered an improbable comeback in Chicago. The Giants racked up almost 300 yards rushing in Buffalo. Then they have a knockdown, drag-out with the baddest bully on the block — the New England Patriots.
After three straight victories against the Giants, a Dallas-New York rematch seemed like the best of both worlds to Cowboy fans. Another chance to torture the brash team that won’t shut up. That is, until the Giants found the most opportune time to steal the Cowboys’ lunch money — during the divisional playoff in Irving.
The game starts and you’re waiting for the wannabe bully to crumble and make a mistake. It doesn’t happen. Next thing you know, after a few Marion Barber-inspired punches to the nose, the bully isn’t budging. He’s still talking. But he isn’t going anywhere. Barber had 101 yards by halftime in the playoff game. The bully erased all the momentum in less than a minute. The bully makes T.O. disappear in the second half. The bully is introducing your pretty boy quarterback to the turf. The bully is hitting and hurrying him regularly, putting him on his $67.5-million dollar butt. He walks out of the stadium with a smirk and a victory. You walk out in tears.
Guess the point is, never underestimate a team that talks but can back it up. Beating up a bully once or twice or three times isn’t enough. You have to be ready at all times. Because you never know when he’s going to come back and ask for that lunch money again.
