Week 1: Washington at New York Giants

When last we met in this space, your author was sourly preparing you for the inevitable, joyless march to victory we were sure the undefeated, unfathomably loathsome Patriots would make in Super Bowl XLII. We spent most of that column comparing New England, in a final fit of over-generalized spite, to everything rotten and insincere and empty in our culture. The Pats’ opponents in that game – these same New York Giants, give or take a few guys – barely came up. We were too busy comparing Bill Belichick to Donald Rumsfeld or something.

And then…well, then the Giants went out and toppled the bitter, Belichick-faced colossus. The New York Giants, who play in New Jersey; who feature Eli Manning’s perpetually open mouth at quarterback; who are coached by a man who could legally change his name from Tom Coughlin to Stern Taskmaster without anyone noticing. Those guys. Won. Enter the 2008 season as Super Bowl champions. To catch you up, that’s where we are right now.

But while the Giants have all the trappings of Super Bowl champs right now – most everyone on their roster currently has a book in print, from Plaxico Burress (favorite author: Jorge Luis Borges) to Coughlin (original book title: “Get A Damn Haircut, America”) – and are hosting the 2008 season opener, they don’t look like world-beaters to us. The overwhelming defense that helped them crush teams late in the season isn’t anywhere near what it was: do-everything LB Kawika Mitchell is in Buffalo, DE Osi Umenyiora is out for the season with a knee injury and just-retired Michael Strahan is prepping for his inevitable Dancing with the Stars stint in 2009. Even assuming some improvement in the semi-retooled secondary and continued development from DE-turned-LB-turned-DE Mathias Kiwanuka and DE Justin Tuck, this isn’t the same squad that knocked the cleft out of Tom Brady’s chin in the Super Bowl.

This week, though, it probably won’t matter. The Redskins still boast a ton of talent on offense outside their misfit receiver corps, have O-line anchor LT Jon Jansen back from injury, and installed a new, modified West Coast offense under new coach Jim Zorn. (This is in contrast to the “Snooze Attack ’86” scheme the team ran under Joe Gibbs last year) For all this unit’s talent, though, and with the usual caveat that the preseason doesn’t mean that much, Washington’s first-string offense was so hideous in the preseason that it must indicate something. Presumably, what it indicates is less “Colt Brennan deserves to start, right now,” and more “no one seems to quite grasp Zorn’s system just yet.” The O-line’s inability to protect already nervous-making QB Jason Campbell wasn’t a good sign, either. It’s likely to happen again here.

And provided the Giants’ fine O-line can keep the Redskins from harassing Manning into too many mistakes, the Giants should be able to control the clock and wear Washington down. That seems likely, since the ‘Skins will be without DE Jason Taylor and don’t have much else by way of a pass rush.

This may be a different story come the Week 13 rematch, by which point Washington will likely have finished its playbook. For now, though, this one seems like a good opportunity for the Giants to continue their semi-baffling string of success. This still doesn’t look like the best team in football to us – or even the best team in the NFC East, really – but what do we know? We thought Burress was a Faulkner guy and that Coughlin’s book wouldn’t have very many sex scenes, and we were wrong about both of those.

GIANTS BY 6