I like what the greatest athlete of my lifetime, Carl Lewis, once said..."don't underestimate your opponent and don't overestimate your opponent, just respect them."
That's how I feel in particular about the Giants. They have a terrific run and you have to give that to them, but I wouldn't label me as scared of the team.
For starters, I really believe that having the Manning name and because his previous playoff performances were so horrible, that as long as Eli put together an acceptable performance and the Giants won, it would get overblown to him being one of the best QB's in the game. He played an okay game against Tampa, was limited to 18 passing attempts against Dallas in which it was obvious that Coughlin didn't want him throwing the ball, and then had that fantastic game against Green Bay. Against New England I couldn't help but think how lucky he was as he continually made bad decisions and just got away with stuff. It could not have happened to a better team IMO, but it was still lucky nonetheless. And I'm not talking about a shotgun snap hiked over his head and then grabbing the ball and making the right play. I'm talking about throwing into double and triple coverage and somehow his receiver making the catch. It's no coincidence that Eli has a career 73.4 QB rating, which is atrocious for a franchise QB.
Anyway, I did a statistical study on what I call QB Rating differential. I found that it has the highest correlation to winning and losing in the NFL (well, next to point differential). QBRD is a team's offensive QB rating minus their defensive QB rating allowed. The higher the QBRD, the more games a team is likely to win.
The Giants had the lowest QBRD of any team that had *gone* to the Super Bowl in the last 30 years and I didn't even check the rest of the Super Bowls because I simply didn't feel like taking the time to check it out. The G-Men had a QBRD of -9.5. The next worse Super Bowl team in the past 30 years was the '79 Rams who had a -3.3 QBRD and that Rams team has been widely considered the worst Super Bowl team in history. Oddly enough, the next worst QBRD of a team that won the Super Bowl was the Giants back in '86 when they had a +6.2 QBRD.
If that doesn't tell you enough, then my projected wins total based on QBRD should. Using a linear regression formula to project:
Projected Wins = (0.178*QBRD)+8.04
With the Giants' QBRD of -9.5, they were projected to win 6.34 wins in 2007. Going back 10 years using that formula project, the overwhelming majority of the time the actual wins are usually within 1 win of the team's projected wins using QBRD (The Vikings during the Mike Tice years were notorious for having far less actual wins than projected wins using QBRD, a big reason why Mike Tice will probalby never get another head coaching gig in the league). But here the G-Men had 3.7 more wins than projected.
OTOH, Dallas had a QBRD of +22.0 in 2007, which projected to 12 wins. Dallas went 13-3 with one of the victories against Buffalo, a game which even the biggest Cowboys home would admit that Dallas should not have won.
The big concern for Dallas would be if they had an old roster, but last season Dallas had the 4th youngest roster in the league and Jerry Jones keeps drafting to keep the roster young.
Of course, Dallas did lose to the G-Men when it mattered most. But from a statistical standpoint, Dallas dominated the game and what's often neglected is the one big factor that the G-Men dominated Dallas in was field position.
So yeah, the G-Men are obviously a well coached ball club, regardless of what one may feel about Coughlin, and they are certainly a dangerous team. But if Dallas keeps doing what it's doing, they should come up victorious over the G-Men in the end and hopefully over the NFL. Unfortunately we have many fans and writers who are quick to jump the gun and trash everything if we don't reach football nirvana (The Super Bowl) after one season.
YAKUZA
