{"id":574,"date":"2008-09-04T23:05:34","date_gmt":"2008-09-05T04:05:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=574"},"modified":"2008-09-05T00:07:01","modified_gmt":"2008-09-05T05:07:01","slug":"ten-thoughts-from-the-nfl-debut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/ten-thoughts-from-the-nfl-debut-574\/","title":{"rendered":"Ten Thoughts From The NFL Debut"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> The long wait is over and the NFL season is here. Sort of. I&#8217;m not entirely sure that that mess of a game tonight is worthy of being called an NFL game. It was hard to stay awake through that one, and it didn&#8217;t even start late.On the plus side, it can only get better from here. As I was watching, here are ten thoughts that came to mind:<\/p>\n<p> 1. I may have to start giving Plaxico Burress more credit. He sat out and pouted for the preseason, so he shouldn&#8217;t have been ready for the game tonight. Instead, he was by far the best player on the field and he had a career high 10 receptions. He still annoys me, but he&#8217;s certainly a game changer.<\/p>\n<p> 2. Jason Taylor fell flat. He was brought in to be a big boost for the Washington defense, but he was virtually invisible. I can only assume that he isn&#8217;t entirely right after his injury in preseason. He&#8217;ll need to be much better if this team wants to do anything.<\/p>\n<p> 3. The Giants were awful in the second half. They still were beter than Washington, but drives were stalling and they look disinterested and often confused. This does not look like a team poised at the beginning of a dynasty.<\/p>\n<p> 4. New York didn&#8217;t look like they were missing Strahan and Omenyiora nearly as much as I thought they might. Between Justin Tuck and the tackles they were able to keep the Washington line pressured.<\/p>\n<p> 5. I&#8217;m not sure I have the capability to like or respect Eli Manning, but he sure didn&#8217;t do a lot tonight to change my mind. If it weren&#8217;t for Burress he would have really been in trouble. He was fine, but he certainly didn&#8217;t do anything to make me think that he is elite, and he didn&#8217;t do enough to take advantage of a Washington defense that was primed to be taken advantage of.<\/p>\n<p> 6. Jim Zorn has an awful lot of work to do before that team is even remotely competent in his offense. That was terrible. Or maybe the team is just terrible.<\/p>\n<p> 7. Wasn&#8217;t this supposed to be year that Jason Campbell showed how good he can be? I want to believe he can be good, but that takes a leap of faith right now.<\/p>\n<p> 8. Nice clock management down the stretch, Washington. Ugly.<\/p>\n<p> 9. The Giants only won three at home last year, so taking care of this one has to be a good boost for them &#8211; especially since it is against a division rival. <\/p>\n<p> 10. The favorites and the under have never lost this year. I smell a trend!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The long wait is over and the NFL season is here. Sort of. I&#8217;m not entirely sure that that mess of a game tonight is worthy of being called an NFL game. It was hard to stay awake through that one, and it didn&#8217;t even start late.On the plus side, it can only get better [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[132],"tags":[401,31,345],"class_list":["post-574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nfl-handicapping","tag-new-york-giants","tag-nfl","tag-washington-redskins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=574"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":575,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574\/revisions\/575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}