Peter King, in his fantastic weekly column Monday Morning Quarterback has made his initial rankings for the 2008 season. Here is what he had to say about the defending Super Bowl Champion Giants and the Jets.
6. New York Giants. This is a team that caught fire at the right time and rode the wave to a title. Was it the best team in football in 2007? For the last two games of the year, yes. For the rest of the season, not even close. But the last two games of the season are the biggest.
Funny how a season progresses: In Weeks 9-14, the Giants went 3-3, losing three times by double digits and winning by six, five and three points. Then, ka-boom.
Moving forward, the Giants will be fortunate if Michael Strahan plays. I think he’ll retire because he always said he was playing for a ring, and now he’s got it, and a cushy Fox job awaits. But the Giants will still be able to kill the passer if he does because Mathias Kiwanuka will be back healthy.
Eli Manning had a charmed postseason, but he’s got to be more accurate than 56.1 percent for the Giants to be better than 14th in scoring offense, which they were a year ago. The encouraging thing about Manning is that the day after the Super Bowl, he was already talking about the things he needed to do to get better. Smart, because he knows he has to be more consistent to be a top quarterback. This should be a maturing offensive team and a threatening team on D.
14. New York Jets. If Eric Mangini learned one thing from all those years with Bill Belichick, it’s pressure or perish. Pressure the quarterback well or go 4-12. And the Jet pressure was pathetic last year. The guys who were supposed to rush the passer (Bryan Thomas, Shaun Ellis, Keyon Coleman and Victor Hobson) combined for 11 sacks.
This year the Jets should have three sacks a game, easy, with first-rounder Vernon Gholston and expensive free agent Calvin Pace coming from the edge and Kris Jenkins pushing the pile and drawing attention in the middle. (”I want to thank the Jets for getting that guy out of our division and out of my hair,” Tampa Bay coach Jon Gruden said last month.) One other thing, Jets brass: Give Kellen Clemens a chance to be the quarterback; don’t put him through an eight-game trial. Don’t you know what you have in Chad Pennington by now?
I have to agree with everything that King says about the Giants. They got hot at the right time, and let it ride all the way to the Super Bowl. I think this team is still growing, and if everything comes together, the sky is the limit. They are young on every front, and have a ton of depth throughout the team. Now as we have seen year to year, that dynasties are near impossible to come by, so it will be interesting to see how the Giants play out this year.
As for the Jets, I have to disagree a little with how high he has them ranked. Yes, the Jets had the best off season and really did bolster a lot of need positions. But c’mon, they still don’t have a quarterback, and I really don’t like their offense at all. Jones is a solid running back, but players like Laverneaus Coles are getting up there in age. Maybe I am just missing something, but I really feel that they are still nothing more then a .500 team until they bolster the offense.
Filed under: NFL - Giants, NFL - Jets, Writer - Christian Chiavetta
