5 New York Giants Players to Watch vs. the Philadelphia Eagles: What a week! On Sunday night, the New York Giants will visit the Philadelphia Eagles for a game in which the winner will take a half-game lead in the NFC East standings. The way the week leading up to the game unfolded, one would have thought this was a playoff game. It started with New York Giants safety Antrel Rolle’s candid assessment about how weak the division was last year, an assessment that, according to NFL’s Judy Battista’s research, is on target, regardless if the Philadelphia Eagles, the 2013 division winners, agree. It escalated when a Giants fan who attended a memorabilia signing somehow managed to convince cornerbacks Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie and Prince Amukamara to pose for a photo (h/t CBSSports) commemorating the number of Super Bowls won by the Eagles. The Eagles began to fire back, making some of the legendary trash-talking exchanges between Philadelphia running back LeSean McCoy and former Giants defensive end Osi Umenyiora seem like every-day pleasantries First, there was this infographic on the Eagles’ official web site, a direct poke at Giants quarterback Eli Manning, known to grimace whenever something goes wrong. Then there was this team-sanctioned video, narrated by actor and Eagles fan Bradley Cooper that takes a swipe at both the Giants and New York sports fans. After Giants defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul made his disdain of Philadelphia abundantly clear, he opened a loophole for the Eagles to exploit when he said, “At the end of the day, yeah, they’re 4-1, but they could have easily been 0-4.” That prompted Eagles center Jason Kelce, who isn’t even playing on Sunday, to share with Sports 94WIP, the Eagles’ flagship station, a rather scathing opinion about the intelligence of both Giants head coach Tom Coughlin and Pierre-Paul (h/t Ebenezer Samuel, New York Daily News): Well my response to that is, I don’t think Jason Pierre-Paul is smart enough to come up with that statement on his own. I think he’s the type of guy that just reiterates what his coaches have been telling him. So, I’m a little worried about Tom Coughlin’s math because I feel like maybe that’s where it was screwed up. Maybe it was just relayed to him. “I don’t know how he went into the records and found out I wasn’t a very good math student,” Coughlin quipped when told of Kelce’s comments. To cap off a crazy week of trash-talking, the Eagles web site released this juvenile cartoon mocking Eli Manning. Yep, it’s Giants-Eagles week! Thankfully, all this chirping will end late Sunday night, when one of these two teams will be able to puff its chests for the coming week, while the other will be sent home to lick its wounds. It’s going to be a close, intense contest—the Giants-Eagles games usually are. Will New York emerge on the right side of the ledger? Let’s look at five key players/units who, if they come through with strong performances, will add a lot of blue to the Eagles’ planned “Black Sunday” event. Begin Slideshow #NFL #NFCEast #NewYorkGiants #Opinion
Posted on: Sat, 11 Oct 2014 02:52:41 +0000
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