This nigga...


I'm so not into football but I was sooooo into this game last night.  SMH, that was not the way a championship team carries itself guys.

CLEVELAND - The Giants always knew their magical ride was going to end sometime, and it's probably better that it happened early.

But that won't make last night's sloppy, disappointing and surprising loss to the Cleveland Browns any easier for the defending Super Bowl champions to take.

We were just sloppy," said quarterback Eli Manning. "Sloppy football. That's unacceptable."

"We make no excuses for this," Tom Coughlin added. "We got beat."

Actually, on a nationally televised stage, they got embarrassed by the Cleveland Browns, 35-14, snapping their eight-game winning streak and their run of 12 straight wins away from home. In their worst performance in nearly 11 months, the Giants' third-ranked defense was shredded by the NFL's worst offense. And Manning helped throw the game away with three interceptions - three times as many as he had in the first four games.

One of those interceptions was returned by Cleveland cornerback Eric Wright 94 yards for a touchdown with 8:07 remaining, providing the final humiliation to an ugly night. But the real damage was done earlier by the Giants' defense, which surrendered 454 yards. Browns quarterback Derek Anderson went 18-for-29 for 310 yards and two touchdowns, including a remarkable 225 yards in the first half.

Not bad for a team that was missing tight end Kellen Winslow, and entered the game averaging an NFL-worst 123.8 passing yards per game.

"We knew they had a lot of weapons," said cornerback Aaron Ross. "We knew if we didn't execute they'd come out and do exactly what they did to us."

Ross bore the brunt of that, covering receiver Braylon Edwards, who torched the Giants with five catches for 154 yards and a touchdown. He started things off with a 49-yard reception on the third play of the game, slipping right out of Ross' grasp. And later he burned Ross for a 70-yard catch that set up the Browns' first touchdown.

The Browns were helped by a Giants pass rush that couldn't get near Anderson, but still the Giants were in the game for most of the night. In fact, after the Browns took a 17-7 lead with 2:15 left in the first half on a 22-yard touchdown pass from Anderson to ex-Giant Darnell Dinkins, Manning (18-for-28, 196 yards) answered by running the two-minute drill to perfection.

He finished by hitting the reinstated Plaxico Burress (four catches, 58 yards) for a 3-yard touchdown with 12 seconds to play. Suddenly the Giants were within 17-14, had some momentum and were going to get the ball back to start the second half.