Winning One-Against-Three

With all the (massive) problems the NFL has with its referees insisting on taking over the games of the biggest, best sport on the earth today, there is just something so satisfying about the Eagles going on national television on Sunday night and beating not just the Giants, but also beating the referees as well as NBC's color guy Chris Collinsworth.

Sure, the Eagles went out and did what they had to do on Sunday to beat their hated division rivals, taking the game 27-17 to nab a 7-3 record and sole possession of first place in the NFC East, which had been held almost the entire season previously by the Eli Manning and the Giants. One week after erupting for four passing touchdowns at another key divisional rival in the Redskins, Mike Vick did not throw a td pass on the day this weekend, but he ran for a crucial one and helped pace the team with 258 yards passing and, as usual, zero interceptions. Meanwhile, the Eagles defense was utterly stifling, as Eli Manning chipped in with a key fumble as well as three more interceptions, bringing his league-leading total to 17 picks on the year, if you throw out Brett Favre and his 886 interceptions so far in 2010, leaving the Giants for the most part completely unable to move the ball or do anything of any value offensively. At least until the refs stepped in, anyways.

With the Eagles leading the game 16-3 late in the third quarter and heading into the 4th, the game was such that it was clear that the Giants wouldn't find their way into the end zone no matter how much time they had to play on the day. The Eagles just shut the Giants' down, plain and simple, and every single time the Eagles needed a big play or a big stop on defense, they got it. The Eagles did what they've done a lot recently to the Giants -- won a huge game fairly late in the season, behind the power of multiple takeaways as they forced the Giants to make poor decision after poor decision in their undying quest to get at least somewhere near the end zone. And so the referees decided, in typical NFL fashion, to become the story of the game once again instead of just calling the game. They quickly awarded the Giants the ball back after overturning a pretty obvious fumble that would have effectively ended the game -- with Collinsworth all the while commenting on how genius it was of Tom Coughlin to challenge that play that every little league coach in the country would have challenged given the situation -- and then they reversed a call to give the Giants the ball after an Eagles player committed a dubious-at-best fumble, using their amazing powers of replay to get most calls wrong even on the slow-mo. What a joke. The Giants punched it in from the 10 two plays later, and then not four minutes later in gametime, there were the refs again, calling a pass interference call at the 1-yard line to bail out Eli Manning who had made a laughable heave down the field to avoid getting his head knocked off on a crucial third down play that -- once again -- would have and should have effectively ended the game. But those pesky refs were having none of it, and they did whatever they had to do over a 5-minute span or so to not just keep the New York team in it, but to quickly give them the fucking lead in a game that was a blowout to a degree that only someone who watched the entire game could understand.

But I think the most satisfying part of all for Eagles fans with the game on Sunday night had to be once again beating down Chris Collinsworth, unquestionably one of the biggest assheads in all of sports announcing. I've written about him before, because it is very difficult to measure whether his bias is greater than his stupidity, or vice versa, and Sunday night's performance out of Chrissy C. has got to rank right up there with his all-time bests. I mean, repeatedly pointing out that so many of Eli's interceptions this season have been on tips? Come on, Chris! You may want to suck Eli's wang, but the guy leads all under-40 quarterbacks in the NFL in interceptions this year! That doesn't happen because of tipped passes, even if you hate Philadelphia and would say anything good about their opponent in any game, even if it makes you look like a complete chucklehead. A real announcer of course would note that Eli is simply having an uncharacteristically sloppy year at the helm of his offense, as any monkey with half a brain who's actually watched the Giants' games this year would know, despite a few tips earlier in the season that probably could have been caught. But when Eli throws a ball two feet behind his receiver on a crossing route, and the guy spins around, leans back and gets a finger on the ball before it gets intercepted, that's not a great play by the quarterback that his receiver screwed him on. It's the opposite, Chrissy, which any non-ape in the booth with any modicum of impartiality already knows. Oh, and by the way, Chrissy, what about your unthinkable assertion during the timeout while Eagles' special teams man Ellis Hobbs was being tended to after a vicious helmet-to-helmet direct hit from Giants' dirty fuck Dave Tollefson, that the play was fully legal. Fully legal? You assyshit!! Hobbs is lucky as hell that he had movement in his extremities shortly after the injury caused by Tollefson -- the same dirty fuck who already knocked out at least one other quarterback already earlier in the season -- and Tollefson might as well crack out the checkbook now, cuz he'll be writing a nice $50k (at least) check within the next few days most likely. But it was a fully legal hit, right Chrissy? You heartless, thoughtless piece of shit.

Collinsworth, I know your head is already about 5 times taller than it is wide, and you're already one of the ugliest, stupidest bitches on television today in any capacity. But when I watch you, I and thousands of other intelligent viewers across the country literally mute the tv every time you open your big, fat, worthless yapper. If I could, I'd love to put your head in a vice like I assume your parents did when you were little to make you look like that and just squeeze it tighter and tighter and tighter until the air whooses right out of your ears. Lucky for you NBC is so clueless about football that they allow your stupid ass to be a part of the broadcast, along with other stellar commentators in the studio like Tony Dungy, Dan Patrick and Rodney Harrison. And even among those three fucking loser rejects, you're still far and away the bottom of the heap. Congratulations. Oh, and sorry about your team's loss of first place last night, too.