Keyboard Quarterbacks

By Mark La Monica

And away we go with some live blogging fun from the Giants Stadium as the Jets travel all of 15 feet for a road game against the Giants.

Since the Giants have the home field, we'll even things out and blog mainly from the Jets' point of view, with some Big Blue stuff mixed in.

lPre-game: Saw TV announcer/former NFL lineman Randy Cross in the elevator. Note to self: Super Bowl rings are huge! Saw Greg Buttle in the press lounge. Wanted to ask who he was buying and selling this week, but professional decorum prevails.

1:15 p.m. - Mangini shows some guts and goes for it on fourth and a foot from the Giants' 48 yard-line line early in the first quarter.

1:15.30 - So much for guts. Pennington takes a delay of game penalty to give Ben Graham five more yards to punt. Take a chance!

1:16 - Graham pins the ball at the Giants' 8.

1:20 - If you're playing any season of Madden and you're not using the Jets as your team, immediately trade for Jets safety Kerry Rhodes and put him on your hands team. He just stripped Brandon Jacobs, ran after the bouncing ball and picked it up with one hand (all in one motion) and ran it 11 yards for a touchdown and a 7-0 lead for the Jets. It wasn't quite the Karate Kid catching a fly with chopsticks, but it was close.

1:32 - Jump up and rejoice Jets fans, Chad Pennington just the ball more than 20 yards in the air. And it was completed for 17 yards to Chris Baker.

1:34 - The quarterback sneak may be Chad's best asset, aside from his brain, on the field.

1:36 - Uh oh. This isn't good. Laveranues Coles is kneeling on the 10-yard-line in pain. It's never a good thing when your best offensive weapon is no longer an offensive weapon. Coles is walking off the field now on his own power, but appears to be favoring his left side.

1:39 - Not suprisingly, Mike Nugent missed a 42-yard field goal. This guy, yeah, not so good so far this year. But, would you rather have Doug Brien?

1:42 - I'm in the third row of the press box, which is level 9 of the stadium, above the last row of seats. It's geographically impossible to be further away from the field while still being in the stadium. Clearly, the Keyboard Quarterbacks' passer rating isn't on the NFL radar. However, we do get a great new perspective on the game by watching from waaaaaay up above instead of from the side like on television. And I'm surrounded by nine different TV screens with the live broadcast, so I got that going for me, which is nice.

By Mark La Monica

There's this guy I know. For the sake of blog continuity, we'll call him Giants fan friend Tommy Dips. By all accounts, he's an absolute madman when it comes his Giants.

A former colleague here at the wonderful world of Newsday, Tommy Dips read my "Turn your head and Coughlin" piece on Sunday night and promised to unleash his fury. Knowing all too well Dips' potential for madness, I gladly encouraged such words be put together and emailed to me.

Tommy Dips made a cathartic attempt to get over the monumental 21-point collapse by the Giants on Sunday against the Titans. He catalogued some of the all-time Giant collapses and his memories of them. I think you'll find that you all share similar moments of sports lunacy. It's quite an amusing read for non-Giants fan. It's a quite an amusing and painful read for Giants fans.

Click here for Madman Giants fan friend Tommy Dips' take on some other collapses in Big Blue Land:

By Mark La Monica

It was a throwaway line. One that the speaker didn't really believe would happen and one that the listener considered a little bit of bullshtein.

It was brought about by the listener's question of "What are you up to?"

"I'm gonna go watch the TItans score three touchdowns in the fourth quarter and then beat the Giants," I said to Lawyer friend Steve as the fourth quarter of the Giants-Titans game was about to start.

I didn't really think it would happen, but if any team was capable of allowing it to happen, it's the Giants. They are the Collapse Champions, the Cardiac Arresters, the We Can Lose Any Game We Want G-Men, the Big Blew It.

Up 21-0 early in the fourth quarter and then down 24-21 at the end of the fourth quarter is a script even the Jets wouldn't greenlight. But these are the Giants, with a defense that can blow any sized lead in any amount of time if they set their minds to it.

And if there's a quarterback in the NFL right now who you think could pull off the comeback, well, after the 2006 Rose Bowl, you have to at least consider putting Vince Young on that list.

"I take it all the way back to University of Texas," Young said in his postgame interview on the field with Fox.

We all do, Vince. Especially after that shot you took from Frank Walker that drew an unnecessary roughness call and gave your Titans a first down when you came up short on the fourth-down scramble.

"That was stupid," Coughlin said of Walker's hit.

Yes, but these are the Giants. And they don't seem to want to play very well for Coughlin anymore. This type of loss could cost Coughlin his job.

Young popped back up and suddenly, with 10:51 left, a 21-point comeback didn't seem so far off. Again, remember the Rose Bowl when Young put the entire state of Texas on his back and beat USC for the national championship.

Young threw a touchdown three plays later.

On the Titans' next possession, Young took the snap from the Giants' 1 and ran around the right end for a score to get within 21-14. Somewhere on Sunday night, Matt Leinart, Reggie Bush and Pete Carroll will see the highlights and say, "Yeah, I've seen that before."

Everywhere in the New York area on Sunday evening, Sunday night, Monday morning, Monday afternoon and the rest of the season, all Giants fans will say, "Yeah, I've $&%^@* seen that before."

Then on the next possession, we witnessed one of the most head-scratching plays in the history of the NFL. It was fourth-and-10 from the Titans' 24 with 2:48 left. GIants defensive end Mathias Kiwanuka wrapped up Young at the waist area and seemed to have the sack. Then he let go. He unsacked the quarterback, upping his NFL-leading unsacks to one.

Young still had the ball and ran 19 yards for the unbelievable first down. There was speculation that Kiwanuka thought Young had released the ball and wanted to avoid a roughing the passer penalty. Watching it on television, it looked like Kiwanuka confused Young for a tackling sled and fourth down for a drill in training camp. He retired on the play thinking he was Tiki Barber and the play was his career.

"I don't know what he was thinking," Coughlin said. No one does. But it made for great television. I haven't seen anything that funny since Alec Baldwin's "Always Be Cobbling" skit on "Saturday Night Live" last year.

Young threw another touchdown to tie it at 21 with 44 seconds left. The Giants were officially done. There was no way they'd come back and win this game.

Lawyer friend Steve received a phone call: "Didn't believe me, huh?"

All those years sharing their stadium with the Jets is starting to rub off on the G-Men.

There were 40 seconds left when the Giants got the ball back, their season basically over. Eli Manning decided to throw an interception at his 49. Three plays later, a field goal and a 24-21 win for the Titans.

"There's no way you can throw an interception at that stage of the game," Coughlin said in his postgame press conference. "There's no way."

Ah, but there is a way. It's called collapsing in the clutch and the Giants are very, very good at it. Just ask Trey Junkin.

"Tom Coughlin," Lawyer friend Steve said when he called me back at game's end. Well, the rest of his quote is unprintable.

They say things change so much from week to week in the NFL. How about from the third quarter to the fourth quarter? A throwaway line can lead to a thrown-away season.