Posted on
1/19/2008 9:38:33 PM
Betting on NFL – NFC Championship Game – New York Giants
By Russell Edward
As anyone who likes to bet on the NFL playoffs will know, winning nine straight road games is no laughable feat. Especially when two of those road wins came in the playoffs to get your team to the NFC Championship game, and one of them made you the first team since the 1970 AFL/NFL merger to knock off the number one NFC seed in the divisional playoffs.
New York Giants +7 at Green Bay Packers –7: Total 40.5
Just two weeks into the 2007 NFL betting season, the New York Giants were being written off as dead and Tom Coughlin, the head coach, was on a seat so hot he could not even sit down on a plastic chair without melting right through it. The team was 0-2, with losses to the Cowboys and the Packers, where they allowed their opponents to score 45 and 35 points, respectively.
As such, the Giants defense, we were told over and over by the talking heads, was finished. They had no glue to them at all and Michael Strahan should probably have stayed away and retired along with his blabbermouth counterpart on the other side of the ball, Tiki Barber. In their Week Two game against the Packers, a devastating loss that occurred right at home in New Jersey, Green Bay allowed the Giants to put up just 13 points, while they put up 35 for the road win. Brett Favre completed as many passes (29) as Eli Manning attempted, and had fewer incompletions just to rub it in. There seemed to be nothing that the Giants secondary could to that could even slow down the packers passing game.
NFC Championship Game: Sunday, January 20 at 6:30 p.m. EST
Fast forward 16 games and the Packers are still dominant in the passing game, compared to the game management style that Eli is now playing so well with. The biggest difference now with these two teams is the Giants defense. After being called out by the media in the Big Apple for playing like they had never seen an NFL game in their lives, Strahan and company have tightened their play to the point that the defense is now the strongest aspect of the Giants team.
As any football betting veteran will know, you do not win your last nine games on the road with Eli Manning as your quarterback unless you have a very good defense. Manning simply is not good enough to win many games on his own merits, but he is certainly good enough to lead a team to a win if his defense can stop the other team. Is the Giants defense good enough to overcome the Favre-renaissance in Brett’s own back yard? They did it to the Cowboys last week. That secondary played a scary good game. If you are going to bet on the NFC Championship Game being played at Lambeau Field on Sunday, this is the x-factor you’d better pick correctly.
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