The 2010 NFL Game Of The Year

Article first published as The 2010 NFL Game of the Year on Technorati.

As a Giants fan, I felt like I had seen this movie before.

Early in the fourth quarter of their week 15 contest against the rival Eagles, Kevin Boss catches a touchdown pass from Eli Manning, putting them ahead by three touchdowns. It appeared to be the finishing blow in an important win for the Giants, and would send the crowd at New Meadowlands Stadium home in a celebrating mood, dizzy with Super Bowl expectations.

What happened instead felt strangely pre-ordained. You could sense it after Brent Celek caught a pass from Mike Vick and cruised 65 yards for the score less than a minute later. There was a nagging familiarity to it all. And when Desean Jackson finally capped the comeback with a punt return touchdown as time expired, it set off a seismic shift in the NFC play-off picture that altered the outcome of the rest of the season for several teams.

For the Giants, it seemed perhaps they were attempting to best other colossal collapses in recent seasons. From blowing a 24-point lead late in a 2003 play-off game in San Francisco to squandering their promising start to the 2009 season, you had to hand it to them- the team had a way of crashing and burning in grand fashion.

If they had hung on to win this one, however, they would have been sitting atop the East, needing only one more win in their last two games to seal the division and a home play-off game. Alas, despite defeating the Redskins in the final week, they found themselves on the outside looking in, wondering how one bad quarter could have lead them to ruin.

The Eagles faltered the following week in a surprising loss to the Vikings. If they had done this AND lost to the Giants, as it certainly appeared they would, there would have been little chance of them squeezing into the post-season at all. On the other hand, if they were to rebound from a hypothetical loss against New York with two victories, they would have eliminated the biggest benefactor of the Giants’ debacle.

The Super Bowl champion Green Bay Packers should be sending thank-you notes to both the Eagles and Giants. If not for the improbable final minutes of their December 16 game, Aaron Rodgers and company would almost certainly have been denied a run at the Vince Lombardi trophy because they quite simply would not even have been playing beyond the regular season.

Yes, they did win a head-to-head match-up against the Giants in Week 16, but had the likeliest of scenarios played out, they still would have been stuck watching a Giants-Eagles re-match in the wild-card round instead of participating in it.

The NFL is funny that way. In a season so short, every game is capable of causing that kind of ripple effect- landing good fortune in one team’s lap, while simultaneously crippling another.

And from one of the crippled to the fortunate: you’re welcome, Green Bay.