Why Your Team Sucks 2012: New York Giants

Some people are fans of the New York Giants. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the New York Giants. This final 2012 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read the other Why Your Team Sucks 2012 previews here. 1. Because you don't suck. OK, so it's a bit of stretch to say that the Giants suck when they're coming off their second Super Bowl victory in five years. This is a team that has a clutch quarterback, good coaches, a respected owner, a competent front office, and the best pass rush in football. God, how I loathe them. Why can't my team EVER get its shit together like that? Fucking annoying. You might think that this whole Why Your Team Sucks series is just a grand exercise in trolling. And to some extent, it is. (When Skip Bayless trolls, he's a dick, but when we do it, it's adorable.) But I assure you that there have been moments when I have legitimately hated every team in the NFL, when the kind of hateful shit we've said here about every team in the league has come from a place of true anger and frustration. I hate the other 31 NFL teams when they beat my team, and I hate my own team when it fails, time and again, to win anything. And sometimes, I like that frustration, the way you like torturing yourself with love songs after a bad breakup. It's just nice to CARE, even if caring means you have to watch stupid Eli Manning with his big dumb face luck his way into two Super Bowls while your team eats shit for the 50th consecutive year. You know I heard that he's dumb as a brick? And hung like a Giant Slinky. But dumb as a fucking brick. Stupid Eli. 2. Teacher's pet. I hate that the Giants are essentially the favored sons of NFL headquarters. You can see Roger Goodell creaming his pants with ginger red semen any time he gets to hand the Lombardi trophy to a Rooney or a Mara. Even though this league loves to tout parity, I know it makes Goodell and his flying-monkey henchmen crazy happy when their big major-market team wins it all. The Giants are living proof of the NFL's hidden desire to become more like baseball, with a clearly defined caste system of have and have-nots. It still rankles me that this team got a free extra home game after Katrina struck New Orleans, and then all the asshole Giants fans turned around and shouted " I HOPE YOU HAVE YOUR SWIMMIES!" at visiting New Orleans fans. What a bunch of pricks. The Giants and their fans think they're so fucking classy. Please. These people would throw iceballs at a baby. Speaking of which … Drew Magary writes for Deadspin and Gawker. He's also a correspondent for GQ. Follow him on Twitter @drewmagary and email him at [email protected]. 3. Giants fans are repulsive. There's nothing classy about Giants fans. They're just as shitty as Jets fans: a bunch of wannabe goodfellas from Jersey who insist on talking as if they were personally raised by Andrew Dice Clay. I don't know how this team ended up becoming the supposedly more cosmopolitan of the two New York teams when they play in the same shitty swamp and attract the same kind of dickhead fans. Honestly, you could make all Jets and Giants fans swap jerseys and you'd never be able to tell the difference. "But no one from Rahway roots for the …" SHUT UP I DON'T GIVE A SHIT. In fact, you know what? Giants fans are worse. Giants fans are just off-duty Yankees fans. They're spoiled, horrible little people who spend 80 percent of their day grabbing their balls in front of strange women. Tom Coughlin could win six more titles and these dicks would still pine for Bill Parcells. Never have so many championships been gifted to such miserable human beings. Look at these people. These are the people who make Axe fragrances such a lucrative business: 4. This team does not like defending titles. Going to a Super Bowl is usually a cue for the Giants to spend the next season wading in knee-deep shit. This is not a franchise that tolerates success for very long. It's now time for them to sink down to 8-8, get Eli killed thanks to horrible line play (featuring Gregggg Easterbrook's league MVP David Diehl, who gave up only 13 sacks last season!), try in vain to work Martellus Bennett into the offense (he's not very good), and bring Tom Coughlin right to the very edge of not getting a contract extension. You people can't fool me. I've got the pattern down now. 5. Hear it from Giants fans! Bobby Big Wheel: Only by the grace of beating the Patriots twice in the Super Bowl does the rest of America not hate us. And that will probably end the second they meet an actual live Giants fan. No, I don't mean the erudite dipshits like myself and Bakes who can feign being level-headed for 3 quarters before tweeting FUCK BILL SHERIDAN over and over. No, I mean the Chris Christie-loving, chinstrap beard-having, glass-earring wearing motherfuckers who overrun the Meatpacking District every weekend. They're out there, and they're going to expand like the compound interest on Mitt Romney's Swiss bank account because they love a winner (most of them were Jets fans a few years ago). Soon we're going to be Steelers fans except without the blue collar kitsch. And you'll be sitting at an airport bar next to a Vikings fan joking about the time that we actually had to trot out Kent Graham at quarterback and he's not going to give a fuck. Because you're a Giants fan, and that means you suck. Welcome to the new normal. Joe: Even after the New York Giants win the Super Bowl, AGAIN, despite all statistical evidence and clutch performances, everyone still thinks Eli Manning is the Butters of NFL Quarterbacks. And his Elway-fellating Robocop-neck big brother is still going to get more reverential sound bites than him. Phil: Tiki Barber should die in a cock fire. John: The Giants offense only works fluently during the two-minute warning. Why? Because that's the only time of the game Eli calls his own plays. Fuck you Gilbride. You look like a failed, alcoholic Canadian shoe salesman. Cory: I go to high school in New Jersey after the Giants won the NFC Championship this fatass came into one of my classes with a Giants NFC Championship shirt on. My friend Dave goes up to this piece of lard and goes "Didn't you wear a Mark Sanchez jersey two weeks ago?" to which he responded BUT I LIKE THE GIANTS NOW. There are thousands of these fair weather asswipes throughout the tri-state area. Fuck all of them. Matt: The dregs of society that came out for the ticker tape parade made me vomit. Let me rephrase that: the dregs of society that really couldn't care less about football, let alone the Giants, that came out for the ticker tape parade made me vomit. On one side of me was a pregnant high schooler that was using her pregnancy as an excuse to get her friends closer to the front, on the other was a punk smoking weed and trying to fight the elderly. Lucas: Terrell Thomas' right knee. Chuck: One of the side-effects of winning multiple Super Bowls in a short span is that your team gets the vomitous "Does Things the Right Way" label. The franchise becomes a glowing beacon of all that is good and righteous with the sport. The actual reasons for the team's success (good drafting, B to B+ coaching, Pro Bowl QB) becomes heart, toughness and organizational integrity. Having gritty (slow, white) Chase Blackburn start in the Super Bowl because of lack of depth at LB is no longer an error, it becomes inspired! (Did you see him leap 6 inches for that INT! What a play!) Miscreants like Burress and Shockey who were dumped for being washed up, are retroactively released because of their character issues. Of course, this is all fantastical bullshit. Because if Eli were to wake up with a dead hooker in his bed tomorrow, Jerry Reese and company would be dumping her in the swamps long before they'd think of cutting him. Dan: Eli just looks like he lived through all of the Saw movies. Mike: This will happen at least once this year: Fourth Quarter under 5 mins up 4. Giants get the ball on their 15 after an amazing defensive stand. First down:
50 yard pass attempt falls nowhere near the receiver (Manning looks confused, Coughlin looks as though he just took a shit in his pants). Second down:
Run to the outside, lose 3 yards (Giants fans call for the heads of everyone in the organization) Third and long:
Screen pass. Lose 3 more yards. Fourth Down:
Punt out of the endzone. Thank God for Steve Weatherford. Ian: Yeah they just won the Super Bowl. And they've got that big shiny stadium. Which I will never see because it's either that or pay rent and I want to be able to afford to make it back into the city from Jersey because those people have rectal sores. LeighAnne: "Let's go Giants (CLAP, CLAP. CLAPCLAPCLAP)." Repeat at least 100 times during games. Worse than Steelers fans. Andrew: Our fanbase spends 364 days of the year cursing the offense and one day celebrating it. Our owner's granddaughter is dating Justin Long. We are the only team in league history to win two SBs in 4 years and have NO ONE (even our fans) argue that we are a dynasty because we could (and have) just as easily lose to the Browns. Mike: I give it about six weeks into this season before Giants fans are calling up WFAN demanding the heads of Tom Coughlin, Jerry Reese and Eli Manning. Giants fans LOVE Bill Cowher, despite the fact that he only won one Super Bowl in the 76 years he was head coach of the Steelers. Bill Cowher is the 60 Minutes of NFL head coaches, which explains why so many white, middle-aged, entitled-feeling Giants fans adore him so much. Giants fans also DESPISE any black player who speaks his mind to the media. Antrel Rolle is not well liked here, despite him playing an integral role on this team's defense and actually playing quite well. He also gives by far the best interviews of anyone on this team. Ask any Giant fan, though, and they'll take Tyler Sash over him any day of the week and twice on Sunday. Andrew: Watching Eli Manning take the play clock down to :00 every single play is absolutely maddening. Ricky: We had a perfectly good stadium, but replaced it with what looks like an oversized air conditioner and increased ticket prices by 500%. Justin: Our fans are predominantly arrogant fecal faced Yankee fans who get amped up for football just to distract themselves from the panic of the Yankees' division lead (God forbid) slipping under 6 games. We're horribly represented at games by trust fund babies from "Westchessstahh" and Bergen County, guido babies from Staten Island, and Madoff victims because they're the only ones who can afford to go. Our greatest players never retire quietly and it's annoying. Our greatest running back ever pulled an Ides of March on the locker room and a Barry Sanders on the fan base at the same time, only to go on and be Matt Lauer's morning coffee bitch. Our greatest defensive lineman ever is a failed sitcom actor who is about to parlay his mini-golf obstacle like tooth gap to be Kelly Ripa's morning coffee bitch. Our greatest linebacker and defensive player ever is not just a cokehead, but also came close to being a convicted raping pedophiliac. Our future greatest QB ever may not even be the best QB at his family potato sack race and will probably do horrible commercials for Cialis in 20 years. We share a sterile $800 million pile of garbage with the Jets, so we suck by association anyway. E-Z Pass was invented so people can drive thru that latrine faster. Einstein lived there because he knew it was the last place the Nazis would ever want to occupy. Ben: "Unstoppable. Eli Manning is." Christ, that commercial. Andrew: When you go to an NFL game, you expect to drive to the stadium, pay $20 to park and tailgate within a line of sight of the stadium that you can easily walk to, right? If you don't buy a parking pass and decide to go to a Giants game, you have to park 2 miles away in the parking lot of the Apple Corrugated Box Company, which is an even more dank and dark place than you could imagine because the parking lot has no lights, and take a yellow school bus to the stadium. Oh, and that privilege costs you $30 to boot. There's nowhere to park because somebody though it was a great idea to build the world's ugliest shopping mall in the middle of the Meadowlands lot. This place makes Kramer's Technicolor Dreamcoat look like something you show an epileptic person to calm them down. Once you make it to the stadium, you make your way to your seat passing about a half dozen "clubs" on the way, which is a little befuddling because why would anybody that has any interest in football go to a game to sit in a club the whole time? When the crowd starts filtering you, you begin to get the answer to that question. You become surrounded by nothing but asshole hedge fund and wall street kids that know nothing about the game and spend the whole time taking pictures of themselves and updating Facebook to show everybody how cool they are. Giants score a TD, nothing. Nicki Minaj song comes on during a timeout, these people lose their shit. This is because PSL and ticket prices are so God damn high that these assholes are the only ones that can afford to go to a game anymore. Matt: Try having fun at a tailgate with 80,000 AARP members who all formerly owned "contracting businesses". Will: The Giants are undoubtedly the team of the surburban frat crowd AND the smarmy Manhattan pseudo-fan crowd, so that our fan base is an unholy mix of bros from Westchester, Long Island and New Jersey who went to Lehigh, Hofstra, Monmouth or Quinnipiac for undergrad (if they are a legacy they wound up at Georgetown , Cornell or Dartmouth), love pounding natty light in their topsiders and lacoste polos even though they are 34 with children. All of them were friends with at least one member of the Duke Lacrosse team during the whole rape scandal. These bros probably played high school soccer or lax, are as waspy as it comes, and love yelling out "Eeeeliiii" and holding up their solo cup of Bud Light (they call it "BL") like hes their fucking frat brother every time he makes a good play. It might go without saying, but they wear backwards fitted caps and feature an unusually high number of Mets fans (I don't understand this phenomenon but its true). Piazza? They love LT even though they never saw him play and the over/under for college date rapes is 3.7 per year of school. The Manhattanites, despite liking football, secretly wish the masses werent so into it, so they don't come to many games but instead support the Giants because they are perceived as the more civilized football team in New York, unlike the working class goobmas who love the Jets. These people are lawyers and make gobs of money and when the Giants suck they disappear like bed bugs and spend all winter at Lincoln Center or Broadway shows, only to re-emerge when the scent of "winning" returns. They "summer" in Rhode Island, Long Island or in Cape May (nowhere north of Atlantic City). Also, "Blah blah the Mara's are the best, most morally upstanding family in the history of people post-Christ, blah fucking blah." Being rich is fucking easy. You hang out, donate money to children's hospitals and not offend anyone publicly. Lets not start acting like just because they arent the Koch brothers the Mara's are all collectively deserving of sainthood. They're still part of the unholy owners alliance that actively fucks both the fans and the players every chance they get. Brian: Can we talk about Matt Dodge? What a fucking asspile that guy was. Alpine: Look around the stadium when the Giants score a touchdown. You'll see stock brokers who suddenly turn into ghetto princes as they bump chests and chant dumb shit like "Yea SON! Yea BOYEE!" The guy who was 5 seconds ago crying for Eli Manning to be replaced by every former QB in history back to fucking Kent Graham is now nodding his head and clapping like a douche while saying: "Atta boy. Dere ya go. Dere ya go." That's if you even know there's been a touchdown, since 50% of the stadium is filled with 85 year old pepaws that need a defibrillator to show signs of life. Our Stadium: It's the most expensive garage ever built. Everywhere you look it's fucking gray concrete, the only thing to break it up is the shitty neon lights and the giant Verizon lounge. All of this, and when we're good, I mean good enough to have two amazing post season runs and beat the asshole Patriots twice in the fucking SUPER BOWL… who is on the back page of every goddamn newspaper in town? Tim TEBOW. Fuck. Sam: Giants fans are the new Patriots fans. It's all about how "disrespected" we are when analysts don't pick us to repeat as Super Bowl champs. And one more thing. Pizza and bagels are good in other places. That is all. Ryan: After the Giants won the Super Bowl last year, my friend Pat was on the verge of tears and said, "This may be the last time I ever see the Giants win a Super Bowl." You've got to be fucking kidding me right? Giants fans are so delusional that they actually think that THEY are the underdogs. Andrew: We are the luckiest team of all time. 3 of the 4 Super Bowl wins were gifts. Norwood wide right. Eli fumbling, Asante Samuel dropping an INT, Jacobs barely converting 4th and 1 and the Helmet Catch on the same game winning drive. Last year, our always hurt #1 running back scored the game winning TD when he tried to fall down and we barely survived a Hail Mary in the end zone on the final play. That was after an end-of-the-season run during which Romo overthrew Miles Austin, we caught Green Bay after it hadn't played a real game in a month (and Nicks caught a Hail Mary) and our only offense in the NFC Championship Game was courtesy of the other guy's punt returner. All of that pales in comparison to our luck on the macro level, where every year we have a chance because our division rivals are guided by Jerry Jones, Daniel Snyder and Andy Reid. Steve: The average age of a fan in the lower bowl of Metlife Stadium is approximately 102. The entire lower level is basically the New Jersey chapter of the Tea Party. I've seen as many "NOBAMA" shirts as I have Jeremy Shockey jerseys that have been "personally edited" to turn into Victor Cruz jerseys. Alex: Any drunk off the street could be our second cornerback right now. Rob: We are absolutely obnoxious and completely spoiled. Every Giants fan in my generation has seen and can remember winning FOUR SUPER BOWLS, yet all we ever talk about is how the Giants play too many close games (because watching Eli lead game-winning drives all the time is just SO brutal), Kevin Gilbride sucks, Perry Fewell sucks, our secondary has too many injuries, we haven't had a solid linebacking corps since Gary Reasons retired, blah blah blah. We can recite every bad loss the team has ever had and act like the most tortured fanbase in the world, while in reality the team has given us more joy than we truly deserve. Meanwhile, one of my best friends is a Jets fan (god bless him) who would give either of his testicles (and probably both) just to see his team get to the Super Bowl, and another is a Bears fan, and the best QB they've had in his entire life is fuckface Jay Cutler. The one time in his adult life they got to the Super Bowl, he had to watch Rex Grossman fuck it up for him. These two guys sit there every week through countless emails and it's amazing they haven't killed one of us yet. Chappy: Tom Coughlin is either physically unable to grow facial hair, or he shaves 7 times a day. Perma pre-oven turkey skinned ass motherfucker. My deepest thanks to all the readers who sent in contributions for this series. You are all far more clever than I. No more NFL previews left, gang. It's time for the real deal. Relatedunderdog testparlay playsleeper fantasy footballdabbleowners box onlinedraftkings fantasy footballfan duel fantasypromo code for underdogparlayplay promosbonus code for sleeper footballdabble promosowners box promotionsdraftkings fantasy promofanduel fantasy offers