Sunday football

My Giants won again today. If you'd have told me at the beginning of this season that they'd start 3-1, I'd have called you an optimistic fool. They looked terrible over the entire preseason, and really didn't play all that well during week 1 against the Eagles. But they looked great today; in fact, if it wasn't for a few struggles near the end zone and two missed field goals by Steve Christie (more on that in a minute), they could have won by even more than seven points. Warner has played great football so far, and Tiki Barber went over 180 yards rushing today, winning Tom Jackson's Prime Time Player on NFL Prime Time tonight. You can help him win this week's Sunday Stud award...just go here and vote--the poll is about halfway down the page near the right side.

There was one dark cloud in today's win, though, and his name was Steve Christie. Late in the game, when it would have really taken a lot of pressure off the D, he missed two field goals from 30 and 33 yards. I've been sour on him from day one (and, in fact, I called my father after the game to give him a "told ya so"). He doesn't have a strong leg, he's over the hill, and in fact had planned to retire before the Giants picked him up. Hopefully Tom Coughlin's level of patience with him will be as low as mine. I wonder what Todd France is doing. I'll bet Coach Coughlin is wishing he hadn't cut him at the end of the preseason.

My fantasy teams did better this week than they did last week, but the final score is in for my team in my friend Pat's league. I lost by just under 20 points, thanks in large part to the awesome performance by his New England Patriots defense--they earned him 23 points, including 8 on the fumble recovery TD late in the 4th quarter. My team in the August Knights league is faring a little better. At the kickoff of tonight's Rams-Falcons game, I was up by about 33 points. But that's been cut down some since then--my opponent has Marc Bulger and Marshall Faulk playing tonight, and Tony Gonzalez and kicker Matt Stover playing in tomorrow's Monday night game.

I guess maybe it's just the fact that I'm a rookie to all this fantasy football stuff, but man alive, do my teams ever need a shot in the arm. I've made a bunch of personnel changes (most of them due to injury), but I'm particularly weak at the wide receiver position, and I only have one running back in Pat's league that I can count on for a consistent performance. Does anyone have any ideas about who I could pick up or trade for to salvage this season?