What's Harvey Really Saying?

Interesting column - Is he poking fun at his breathern for becoming the story?

We Gave 110 Percent, but the Team Didn’t
By HARVEY ARATON
East Rutherford, N.J.

Before we get to next week’s game, I have to say I am pleased with the effort that we, the news media, gave last week. We worked hard. We committed to the packages. We attacked in numbers. We didn’t get the result we were looking for Sunday, but that will come if we continue to focus on our goal of making life so unpleasant for the Giants that they become a red-zone-efficient and dumb-penalty-free machine that makes the playoffs and goes all the way to the Super Bowl.

Just bear with us through the next few days of wild speculation and willful agitation because, as the tattoo on Plaxico Burress’s back says: “Everything happens for a reason.”

Unfortunately, the Giants failed to make us eat our words in their 23-20 loss to the Cowboys, when they committed seven penalties on offense, failed to take a fourth-quarter lead after a first-and-goal and called a ridiculous timeout when they should have run the clock down so Tony Romo couldn’t beat them with a 42-yard strike to Jason Witten that set up the winning field goal by Martin Gramatica with 1 second to play.

We, the news media, take the positives out of the game, and we move on. At least our Eli Manning bashing prodded the too-tranquil quarterback into his most inspired work in weeks, allowing him to stand tall in the Giants’ locker room yesterday and say, of their next opportunity to spite us, Sunday at Carolina: “This game is huge.”

No time for us to back off then, just when the Giants really need to tap into their inner hate. We know how obnoxious we have to be over the next four weeks to get these slugs over the hump and save Coach Tom Coughlin’s job so we can have him around to bash again next year.

The good news is that we came out of the Dallas game healthy, with no significant setbacks or psychological breakdowns from the abuse we took last week from the Giants and those twisted e-mailers who actually believe we are trying to subvert the season.

Kelly Naqi, the ESPN correspondent who was called out last week by Michael Strahan, is doubtful for this week’s interrogations, but Rachel Nichols, a former newshound for The Washington Post, stepped up yesterday for the self-styled Worldwide Leader in Sports to demand that Manning explain his team’s “lack of discipline.”

Manning did most of the talking yesterday for the Giants stars who are more normally outspoken. Nowhere in sight were Jeremy Shockey, Tiki Barber or Strahan, who was probably in hiding, not knowing Naqi was no longer around. Very girly-man of him, if you ask me.

•

Bondy of The Daily News offered a different spin to the locker room absences. “They don’t have Eli’s back,” he muttered, obviously angling for the back page. Who (Serby of The Post?) will be first to get papa Archie’s reaction? After four straight weeks of failing to motivate the Giants to a victory, I think we have an excellent scheme for Sunday’s game, the timely opportunity to incite them with reminders of how the Panthers tore their hearts out, 23-0, in the playoffs last season at Giants Stadium.

The center, Shaun O’Hara, said the Giants had too many problems to worry about payback themselves but read the situation well enough to encourage us to taunt them into a rage.

 

Cont:

“Sure, that’s something for you guys to write about,” he said. And no recollection of that game would be complete without the reminder of the anvil Barber dropped on Coughlin’s head afterward, saying: “I think in some ways we were outcoached.”

Since Tiki wasn’t talking yesterday, can we assume that he wishes the Giants had never let John Fox — the Giants’ former defensive coordinator — leave New York to coach the Panthers? That he might consider putting off retiring into a Fox television booth if he could play next season for Fox?

I’m just saying that anything’s possible, but the schism-between-coach-and-player angle does open up numerous muckraking possibilities this week, beginning with Coughlin’s explanation yesterday for all the penalties in the Dallas game.

“You want to know the honest truth, they’re stupid,” he said. Did Coughlin mean the penalties or his players?

Burress, the enigmatic wide receiver, also tempted us with wordplay, claiming he called the fateful timeout with 1 minute 42 seconds left and the Giants about to score a tying touchdown because he saw Coughlin frantically waving his arms.

“He makes all kinds of hand gestures,” Burress said.

Suggested headline: Blame lunatic, not me.

•

Our mission, of course, is not to report inaccurately, merely to sacrifice ourselves for the cause, to unite the Giants and to help them salvage this fast-disintegrating season before we are only left with those overachieving Jets.

We, the news media, don’t like overachievers as much as we do underachievers, who need us more, who make us feel like we are part of the show.

Lights. Camera. Retractions, furnished upon request.

We, the news media, are only here to help, so let’s rock, let’s roll.

Let’s rip.

 

No.
I think he's poking fun at the Giants for being the underachieving dicks that they are.
Boom, you're really reading the NYT with a finetooth today.

 

Is he taking slap at ESPN ?

 

Maybe a casual one, but I doubt it.

 

Seems more that "casual" :

"Kelly Naqi, the ESPN correspondent who was called out last week by Michael Strahan, is doubtful for this week’s interrogations, but Rachel Nichols, a former newshound for The Washington Post, stepped up yesterday for the self-styled Worldwide Leader in Sports to demand that Manning explain his team’s “lack of discipline.”

 

This is not about the Giants:

Love that.

Wish he had some quotes from the guy who got the peanut butter & jelly in the face.

 

Sure it is, 21. It's using the you-guys-are-always-against-us trope ironically against the aforementioned underachieving dickheads.