What about Bob?

One of the challenges in the newspaper industry is to come up with what's called an "early" for a night game. Baseball writers face it just about every day (or night, actually), which is probably why they consider the football beat a "country club" and the writers soft, but I digress.

Anyway, the idea is to write about a topic that will "hold" no matter what the outcome of the game. (There are no such issues for Internet stories, since you can write about a player picking his nose and eating it - oh, I'm sorry, I just can't help myself - and publish it almost instantaneously.)

For last Monday night's Giants-Browns game, I wrote about injuries. Here was my lede:

"For all the optimism surrounding the defending Super Bowl champion Giants - and there is plenty of reason to think this will be a very, very good team this year - the one thing they can't control is the one thing that could make a mess out of this season.

The Giants have already gotten a taste of it, not even a month into training camp. If you're even remotely familiar with what's been happening with the team, you know what it is: injuries."

I was writing about the receivers at the time, but you can pick any position, any time. Last night against the Jets, the injury bug hit big-time: Osi Umenyiora is done for the year, and the GIants' best pass rusher and one of the most indispensible players of all will go under the knife on Tuesday to repair torn meniscus in his left knee.

I'll be writing a column for tomorrow's paper on Osi Umenyiora.