My father passed away in the early hours of Wednesday morning. I won't bore you with the details of his death, or the mourning period that we're currently going through, I'd instead like to share three awesome Giants-related stories of my dad with all of you.

First: 1986. I'm four years old. I don't understand the concept of sports, or why Dad likes watching the big guys in blue every Sunday. I really didn't understand what was going on. What I did know, though, is that when Dad and the family came over for the Superbowl I was VERY scared: every time the Giants scored, the guy would erupt in cheer, and I would run crying to my mom, scared of what was going on.

Second: 1990. I was eight years old. The Giants were in the Sueprbowl. You think I'd be used to this sort of thing by now, but truth be told, there was no way to describe the yelling that happened that night. Dad always used to tell me "you were so young it was so funny seeing you pretend to cheer when you didn't know what was going on."

It's true: I had no idea what was going on, but I learned to cheer for the Giants. I also learned what "wide right" meant.

Finally: 2007. Older, wiser, and able to enjoy the game, I really enjoyed this particular Giants season, and I'm glad I got to spend time at home with my dad to see it. I'll always remember: "how'd he do that" and "he's wide open" - two of my own quotes that dad was fond of reminding me about (and you can imagine what plays I'm talking about).

Great memories from a great Giants fan. Thanks for all of the great times we've had together.

It's often so true in the NFL that if you look at the turnovers you can pretty much figure out who won the game. Sure, there are oddities like the San Francisco 49ers who won their game despite handing the ball over 4 times; but, the New York Giants came away with a victory after having a clean game, while the Buffalo Bills go home after turning the ball over twice.

It's a strange statistic, but when two teams are very evenly matches, as the Bills and the Giants turned out to be, the one that turns the ball over the most will generally lose. These teams were so evenly matched that they basically played tit-for-tat the entire day, with the game coming down to the final few possessions, and the Giants defense holding firm on the final Bills drive of the day.

Of course this wouldn't have been the case if the Giants defense could have stopped giving up big plays in the backfield.

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I've always wanted to write an article about the various plays that happened during the game, and today I've selected two major plays (at least the ones that stick out in my mind) that either helped or hurt the Giants in their loss against the Seattle Seahawks. In this case, both plays hurt the hell out of the Giants.

Let's go ahead and break the first one down (and the one that everyone won't stop talking about): the safety.

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That sure was an ugly one with Seattle, wasn't it? The last place Seattle Seahawks were a 1-3 team, traveling across the country to face the New York Giants, who were looking to keep pace with the Washington Redskins in the NFC East.

Seattle left MetLife Stadium with a 36-25 victory over our Giants. What went wrong? I think the easier question to answer is: what went right?

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The game against the Arizona Cardinals was not a well executed one by the New York Giants. Between 7 penalties, 2 lost fumbles, less than 50% efficiency on third downs, and losing the time of possession battle, the New York Giants had no earthly right to win that game.

If it didn't come down to one judgement call on the field - and the skill of Eli Manning to lead his team to a come from behind victory in the fourth quarter - the Giants wouldn't in the race to be top in the NFC East.

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What an awesome win by the New York Giants. It wasn't a perfect win, but it was about as damn fine of a victory you'll see in the NFL. Yes, I predicted that the Giants would lose, but I'm not disappointed that they won. They played each aspect of the ball better than the Eagles did. Travis Beckham's mistake aside, Eli Manning, Justin Tuck, Jason Pierre-Paul, and the entire team performed admirably.

My only complaint is that the Giants need to attain consistency. Funny, hasn't that been Tom Coughlin's message during his entire tenure as head coach?

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It's just not going to be pretty at all this season, is it?

After coming away with a 28-16 victory over the St. Louis Rams, the only thing the media wants to talk about is Deon Grant and Jacquian Williams faking an injury in order to save a timeout and stall the Rams' hurry-up offense. As well they should, because even though the Giants managed to put up 28 points, the faked injury is about the only thing worthwhile to talk about from this game.

I'll say my piece and then move on: this is what we're going to get all season long from the New York Giants. Faking injuries, delaying the officials, and trying to draw penalties in the most obvious way is, in my opinion, the only way the Giants' secondary is going to be of any value to this team. It's disgusting, it's humiliating, and it's the kind of play you'd expect from an injury-ravaged 8-8 team.

Much like everything else in this game, that was mostly due to St. Louis shooting themselves in the foot rather than the Giants beating up on a weaker team.

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"If the Giants can keep this close and keep the Washington Redskins special teams from scoring on us, then I think we'll pull out a close victory, 10-7."

What the hell was I thinking?

Instead of a close, hard-fought battle between the New York Giants and the Washington Redskins we ended up with a game in which Rex Grossman - career backup - out-played Eli Manning. Instead of an opening day game in which the Giants defense would come out and prove to the world that were not in trouble, we got a defense that looked like it couldn't stop the run, play the pass, or get pressure on the Quarterback. Instead of a game where the offensive line got a chance to mesh together, we get an offensive line that just couldn't do anything.

Instead of a close game, we ended up with a horrible excuse of a performance. Looking back is going to be a touch painful this week.

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I tried making this a regular posting last season, but just couldn't put enough effort into it to make it worthwhile in the later half of the year; however, I got a lot of positive comments about the series, and some people told me they actually missed this little FanPost, so I'm going to give this another shot and try to bring back Looking Back, Moving Forward. This week, we'll take a look at the previous season, move forward to the impending season, and finally take a look at the season opener at the Washington Redskins.

First, a little bit of backstory: "looking back, moving forward" is a phrase I basically stole from my old High School football coach. "If you want to be successful," he said, "you must look back at what you've done while moving forward into your next game."

Actually, now that I think about it, I don't think he said that at all. In fact, what I think he said was "Pullara! Quit being an idiot and start being smart!" Really insightful stuff. I guess that's why he was a High School coach and not in the pros.

Anyway, last year was a disappointment. At 10-6 you expect to make the playoffs in some form or another. Our New York Giants didn't, and here's why.

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I didn't like last weeks matchup. The weakness of the defense didn't match up well against the offensive attack of the Texans. The special teams weren't competent enough to take away the dominant field position that Matt Schaub would use to wear down the Giants defense.

It turns out I was completely wrong. How was I supposed to know that Tom Quinn could actually do something right on special teams?

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Now THAT was one hell of a win, wouldn't you say? The Giants came into last week's game hungry and they feasted on Chicago's poor offensive line. With 10 sacks in the game, the only real disappointment was the play of the Giants offense and the special teams, which both contributed to the 3 lonely points that Chicago put up.

The big question is can the Giants build on this victory for next week?

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If you read my last post you'd know that I said last week was a make or break game for the Giants against Tennessee at home, and they broke. They broke in a big way; however, unlike the Indianapolis game, the Giants didn't fold in the first half. They waited until the third quarter before throwing in the towel and looking forward to next week.

They gave up 29 points and yet they beat Tennessee in almost every other aspect of the game. Just what went wrong and how can we come out victorious this weekend against Chicago?

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Or should I call it "Looking Backwards Going Backwards with our fingers up our noses Going Durk Durk Durk." Man, that was a brutal game to sit through. 

Last week I thought that the Giants could have been competitive - and even pull out a win if the cards landed right -but I was worried about a lot of things.

It turns out that the few things I was worried about were the least of our problems.

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I used to write a weekly article for my own site years ago. The title, "Looking Backwards Going Forwards," was an expression taken from my high school football coach. As silly as it sounded, it was something catchy my readers could latch on to. Whether it's a feeling of nostalgia, or just the urge to get some writing done, I have the urge to revive this little article series.

I hope you all enjoy it.

The Giants won against the Panthers; but, how good of a win was it, and what can they look forward to next week against the Colts?

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After reading through several threads - more specifically, the most recent Open Sunday thread - a lot of you in Giants Land are of the opinion that Tom Coughlin and Jerry Reese are on the "Hot Seat" and their jobs are on the line if the Giants don't produce a winning team this season. The reasoning behind this includes the disappointing playoff loss in 2008 and the lackluster 8-8 team from last season.

For these reasons some of you assume that both the Head Coach and General Managers jobs are on the line. It's for these same reasons that I believe you few are complete idiots.

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