The Draw Play

Apparently if you are a football player and you want stupid media attention get on a boat. Boats are all the rage. Sex Boat, Gronk Boat, Giants Boat. I bet Aaron Hernandez had a boat. Or partied on one. I bet if Brady actually did deflate balls it was on a boat. Anyway congrats to the Dolphins for a successful season, they came back from the dead and proved us all wrong.  It was a season to be proud of, and maybe that team will be okay. I hope they keep it up for AFCE variety, looks like the Jets are a trash fire and the Bills are incredibly stupid. Miami, do your thing.

Miami is in the playoff news though and it’s sadly not because of the Dolphins. Lets be honest there was no chance this comic could have been about anything else, even if I wasn’t a Giants fan. So, fine, lets talk Boats and Beckham.

I think the only mistake the Giants receivers made regarding the Monday Miami Boat Party was posting a picture of it on social media. I think they were perfectly in the right to go there, perfectly in the right to enjoy their day off how they saw fit. I think people who think it “hurt their focus” or “let people down” or whatever are a bunch of whiners who don’t see the players as what they are, people. They are people, and they have the right to do what they want, they shouldn’t be scrutinized for relaxing for a day because a bunch of armchair quarterbacks think everyone has to be JJ Watt levels of football sperg. This is probably not the first time they’ve hung out and had a good time this season and anyone who thinks it played a genuine role in the poor play is reaching for excuses and reasons to shit on them, reasons and excuses that are unnecessary. Brady partied before playoff games, he admitted it. The 90’s Cowboys may as well have partied during the games. I bet a lot of players party a lot. The Party likely had zero impact on the game. They played shitty on Sunday. That’s it. They had a big game and nerves got to them, or the cold did, or they were just off. They didn’t show up. It wasn’t because of a boat party 1 week earlier. No one would be talking about the damn boat if they played well, but because they didn’t folks gotta do that loose dot connecting.

Jokes are fine and good, and they probably deserve all the jokes. They did post it to social media, and that was the mistake. Once you do that, you gotta eat the jokes like men. Beckham has to honestly be a little bit smarter about this and his immaturity has resulted in a lot of the unwanted media attention this year. By all means have fun, but be smart about it. Keep it low when it might have bullshit media consequences, even when it doesn’t deserve to, like this boat party. We’ve reached a chicken/egg situation with Beckham. How much media attention does he get because he’s actually a giant baby, and how much does he get simply because he’s already scrutinized and it’s now a feedback loop? Beckham does thing, gets attention, media gets clicks from covering Beckham, goes out of it’s way to cover Beckham more, causing more attention on Beckham, etc etc and we reach the point where during games they have cameras dedicated to watching him at any given point. It’s got to be brutal for a football player to deal with that kind of stress. Some welcome it but for most I think it might be too much, especially once you’ve become “the bad guy” and get microscoped.

Beckham clearly has his flaws. He’s clearly still immature and not terribly great at handling himself when worked up. Got a little too big too fast. But do you really think he’s the first player to punch a wall after a loss? Or the first to slap a net or get angry at a ref/opposing player when frustrated? I’ve known people to do worse for lesser frustrations and I’d wager a lot of the people who sit on their couches and scream about him being a shithead or whatever have acted in similar ways in their youth for less. I actually really love how Beckham handled the net thing. He took the moment of shame and owned it, giving us silly net moments for the next few weeks, enough to make the people so eager to laugh in the first place start getting sick of him doing net things. Beckham could be a lot worse than he is. By all accounts he’s a good teammate and his interviews are usually level headed, it’s just the heat of the game makes him act up and he’s a heart on sleeve type guy. That, plus being a star player, plus new york, recipe for what he’s dealing with now. In some ways he’s the perfect antithesis to Eli Manning. If OBJ catches a super bowl winning TD some day from Eli, we will see the craziest dance and excessive celebration in football history while Eli stares vacantly off into the middle distance. I’m kind of glad the Giants didn’t stick with Philip Rivers because oh man the tantrums and faces Rivers makes during games would be legend in NY, instead we’ve got blanky mcderp face.

The Giants loss was the worst of the season and they earned it. Playoff Eli showed up and the WRs let him down. The defense crapped itself and allowed a hail mary, and the loss of DRC cannot be understated as once Rodgers found he could pick on the slot corner the defense was routinely toasted. The O-line did jack shit and Bobby Fucking Rainey made the worst special teams error of the entire league season when he fielded that kickoff, which ruined any momentum chance the Giants may have still had in them. After that play, the game was all but lost. But 11-5 is a far better season than I ever expected and for once I feel some hope for the next year. Wildcard losses don’t hurt too bad. I think if you lose in the Wildcard it’s like “Well, honestly I was just happy to make it”. Once you hit the divisional round the losses start to actually hurt because at that point your team is supposed to be good and they’ve won a game already or been good enough to get a bye.

Finally, lets be real. The Giants didn’t lose because a bunch of receivers hung out on a boat. It was because Justin Beiber was involved. It’s Beiber’s fault.

Fuck Justin Beiber.