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So the New York Giants win the Super Bowl and the mighty ESPN ranks them sixth in the preseason power rankings. Sure the era of free agency has done wonders to create parity and prevent dynasty, sans the New England Patriots, and sure the AFC is gets much more respect than the NFC, but the Giants were relegated to second in their own division.
Ok, so the experts think that the New England Patriots are bound for big things again after a 16-0 season, an upset loss, and the Spygate scandal. Well, one of the knocks on the Giants has been that they lost four defensive players who were significant contributors. Meanwhile, the Patriots lost their corners and the linebackers only got older.
Even novice football fans could see how teams chewed them up over the middle in the playoffs and now the corner of the field is in question. The Giants won with a dominating front four. Defensive ends Justin Tuck and Osi Umenyiora and defensive tackles Barry Cofield and Fred Robbins are still there putting pressure on the quarterback.
Let us not forget that this is a team that made a Super Bowl run with Corey Webster and R.W. McQuarters as starters. The guys are now backups and Sam Madison is back with rookie Aaron Ross to only improve the corner position. Gabril Wilson will be hard to replace, but Sam Knight is a serviceable replacement who struggled a little bit in Jacksonville but has a solid history and a couple more years left.
Of course everybody knows sports are a fickle place with fans with selective memories that often forget what happened two years ago. That is why the Indianapolis Colts are at least justifiable ahead of the Giants. They won it all two years ago and were touted as the only team that could stop the Patriots in 2007. The division round loss stopped that from every happening, but the team plays great football in perhaps the toughest division of the last few years, the AFC South.
Peyton Manning may need a few weeks to adjust after coming back form surgery at the beginning of the season, but this is a team that won 13 games and challenged New England without Marvin Harrison and Dwight Freeney last season. Manning’s recovery may not be in question, but Freeney’s is. The Colts will be great with the reuniting of one of the best quarterbacks in the league and one of the best receivers. If Freeney is able to be just as dynamic despite the surgery to the left foot this could be a 16 win football team as well.
The interesting thing here is that the Colts are getting all the benefit of the doubts again. The Giants are not. Instead, the Dallas Cowboys are ranked ahead of them. New York only beat them in the first round last season and then took the Super Bowl, but, oh my, Tony Romo is the next Brett Favre.
This not to say that Tony Romo is not a very good quarterback, but I think people want to have a player with Favre’s magic a little bit too much. Romo may be the first of many who get to be called the next Favre, kind of like all the next Michael Jordan’s in basketball.
If anything the power rankings expose who has team favorites and how much team histories come into play. Some picks are justified, and some are not. The Giants, returning Super Bowl champions do not deserve to be in the ranks with teams like the Jacksonville Jaguars and the Pittsburgh Steelers, very good teams with something to prove. The only positive spin on this is that the Giants can use this slight as motivation for the season ahead. The other positive spin is that they are power rankings and they do not mean anything and simply got me revved up again for football season.
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