This week on The Armchair Quarterbacks, the guys give you in-depth analysis of the football’s most exciting game: the 2008 Pro Bowl, where the NFL’s best shine their brightest … kidding. What you will hear is Benglish reliving the most glorious moment of his sports life — the thrilling spectacle of the New York Giants 17-14 upset of the Patriots in Super Bowl XLII. With apologies to fans of other teams, Benglish spends a goodly portion of this week’s show waxing poetic about the ins and outs of the 2007 season finale. For non-Giants fans, it’s likely to be vaguely nauseating.
Dino the Cowboys die-hard reveals his pitch-black soul as he explains how he even rooted for the Giants — a team he usually despises — because he knew that a NYG victory would result in brain-scrambling agony for Patriots Nation. The guys break down how the combination of Giants love and Patriots hate seemed to have most of America’s NFL fans rooting hard for the Pats to get taken down.
It’s all here: did Eli deserve the MVP? Is Benglish a bad fan? Is blind faith in one’s team more fun or just the road to severe heartbreak? Was Tyree’s catch the catch that will replace “The Catch” as “The Catch?” Is the Super Bowl more fun in real time or frame-by-agonizing-frame as Benglish viewed it?
After all the talk of the final game of the 2007, AQB looks ahead to 2008 as the NFL’s “business season” begins in earnest. You’ll get a quick overview of some of the more intriguing — and in the case of the Redskins, hilarious — coaching moves that have happened, a discussion about some possible off-season moves (with the usual emphasis on the Giants and the Cowboys), how the NFC East is about to become a two-team race for the foreseeable future, and more.
It’s all here on the special NEW YORK GIANTS SUPER BOWL XLII CHAMPIONS EDITION of the loudest, most annoying, and increasingly unfunny NFL podcast on the internet — The Armchair Quarterbacks!
YOUTUBE WILL HAUNT BRADY FOREVER
As we mention on this week’s show, Tom Brady’s somewhat arrogant chuckle at Plaxico Burress’s pre-game prediction of the final score (23-17), has come back to haunt him big time on the internet. If you’ll recall, Brady seemed to think it was funny that Burress thought the Pats would “only” score 17 points (if it’s any consolation, Tom, you’re right: Burress was silly to think that you’d score that many). And Hate-triot Nation has jumped on this now infamous statement. You can see funny examples here, here, and here.
OH MY GOD … JOE BUCK IS IN MY HEAD FOR THE REST OF TIME.
To say that Dino and I have been a little harsh on Fox sportscaster Joe Buck is putting it mildly. We’ve lambasted the man. Verbally tarred and feathered him. Metaphorically treated him the way the Red Army treated the women of Berlin in the spring of 1945. But now, I have to give him a little credit. For all of Buck’s faults, his play-by-play call of Plaxico Burress’s game-winning touchdown in Super Bowl XLII will be with me forever.
“Fifty-nine seconds left … Manning lobs it … BURRESS - ALONE … TOUCHDOWN NEW YORK.” Just writing it gives me chills. It’s supplanted “Here’s the kick … it’s got the distance … it is … NO GOOD!!! GIANTS WIN! GIANTS WIN!” (which was a radio call, actually) as the phrase that crystallizes the best moment in Giants history that I’ve ever experienced. The phrase that will always bring all those incredible emotions rushing back as though they’re happening for the first time.
And this phrase was said by Joe Buck of all people. Well, I’ll be damned.
So this one’s for you, Joe. I want to thank you for those words. And I want to forgive you for your past sins. And I want to apologize for all the hateful things I’m sure to say about you when the season starts up again this September. You will be with me always, Mr. Buck. Whether I like it or not.
DINO IS NOT JUST WRONG ABOUT FOOTBALL
As you heard on this week’s show, there was some disagreement as to which infamous commie douchebag coined the phrase “useful idiots.” Dino was convinced it was Stalin, one of the great monsters of world history. Benglish assured Dino it was Lenin, founder of modern communism.
As it turns out, Benglish was right about which guy from the left used the term. Rest assured, The Armchair Quarterbacks to continue to be useless idiots.
UNBELIEVABLE. INCREDIBLE. AMAZING. SHOCKING. OUTSTANDING. SPECTACULAR. AND ANY OTHER SUPERLATIVES YOU WANT TO TOSS ON THE PILE.
It’s the last game of the NFL season and, incredibly, Benglish’s Giants are 60 minutes away from a world championship. The Giants have climbed every mountain (and dipped into every conceivable valley) during their unlikely run through the 2007 NFL season, and have saved Everest for last. Needless to say, if they can find a way to knock off the 18-0 Patriots on the biggest stage in all of sports, they will have completed what, for them, would be a season with its own special kind of perfection. Though the Giants will have lost six games during the season, a win in the Super Bowl would mean that they had beaten three of those teams that had inflicted four of those losses. Though hardly a flawless record, it would have its own special kind of symmetry, and would harken back to the Giants’ “unlikely” 1990 championship season, when the team went 13-3 — but ultimately beat every team that they’d lost to over the course of that season (the Eagles, the Niners, and, finally, the Bills).
In this Super Bowl XLII preview edition of The Armchair Quarterbacks, you’ll hear how Benglish is very unlikely to enjoy this Sunday’s game, and hear how the stress of the impending clash with the seemingly invincible Patriots has been wearing on him. Of course, Dino is there to lend absolutely no moral support whatsoever. And when Dino backs an unlikely team in the big game, it send Benglish over the edge.
You’ll also hear a breakdown of all the latest NFL coaching carousel silliness, and the guys discuss all the strange moves that are sure to make the weeks following the Super Bowl very interesting indeed.