Giant Deer in Headlights

By: Dustin Beutin

If you’ve ever driven through Wisconsin late at night, you know all too well to watch out for the single greatest danger to drivers on twisting, turning, single-lane roads. No, it’s not drunken Cheeseheads bombed out of their sausage-lined skulls on Jaegermeister and Leinenkugel - though that is a real danger. Rather, it is the innocent deer that wanders into the road, just out of sight for oncoming drivers. When you come zooming through a turn or over a hill at 60 MPH-plus, it’s shocking to see a creature in the middle of the road, and the situation becomes even more dangerous as this usually nimble forest dweller gets “caught” in the headlights.If you’ve never experienced this, understand the dread you feel the moment your brain realizes you aren’t watching “Bambi.” You’re thinking about how far you still have to go in order to reach the next “chalet,” and that the last hunk of summer sausage you downed at Uncle Mort’s cabin probably wasn’t a good idea. You’ve got the speedometer pegged at a speed you know is a little high for these tiny roads; but your high beams are on, so you can see anything that may be up ahead. You come off the top of a small hill and there, not more than 80 feet away, is a deer in the trough of the road. Your only hope and thought is to slam on the brakes, and as your car or SUV vainly screeches towards a halt, you think to yourself, “Why the hell doesn’t that damn deer move?!?! ”

The answer is it can’t. Evolution somehow designed these creatures to be rendered impotent by headlights, perhaps in the failing thought that two tons of metal careening towards them was a good thing. If you’re lucky, you will come to a halt just before hitting this beautiful creature; if not, you will have a repair bill that will stun you as to how something so graceful can be so destructive when slammed against your front grill. That is, if you’re not also viewing a hospital bill at the same time.

And while the accident is certainly awful for the driver, usually it is even worse for the deer, who couldn’t even move a muscle to save its own life before being turned into a bloody mass on the side of the road.

This is now the fate of the New York Giants, who - like the aforementioned deer in headlights - will be standing in the road as the five-ton Mack Truck of football known as the Patriots comes roaring towards them. The “G-men” should talk to the Chargers, who were this weekend’s most recent venison-like victim of the Patriots. They tried their best to flinch a muscle in the moment of their impending doom, but the Chargers couldn’t seem to find their knees.

The game was close, within reach for the Bolts. They even created the requisite turnovers, which are the widely recognized “key” to putting an end to the Patriots’ reign of terror. The difference in the game was that when the Chargers got within shouting distance of the end zone, they froze up - just like a deer in the headlights. Settling for field goals when facing the most predictably potent offense of the modern era is akin to trying to win the Indy 500 with only three tires. You might stay in the race, but you’ll never get the checkered flag.

The question is, “How could the Chargers get so close to the end zone so many times and fail to tally even one touchdown?” The answer is, “How many times can you say LaDainian Tomlinson?” Don’t for a second fool yourself into believing that the Chargers were the same offense with Michael Turner at running back as they would have been with LT in the backfield. Sure, Turner could start on many teams across the NFL; but the difference between an average starter and the NFL’s rushing leader is immense. Put another way, raise your hand if you think the Bulls were the same with Scottie Pippen in place of Michael Jordan - and Scottie was named one of the 50 greatest players of all time.

What will be interesting in the fallout from this game is how the fans in San Diego will treat LT’s departure from the game after only two rushes for five yards. The official line is that he took himself out when the pain became too much to bear. Team doctors are supporting this story, and Norv Turner responded to questions following the game by saying that there is no way LT would have sat if he could have played. Consider that when Cedric Benson was hurt early in Super Bowl XLI and sat for most of the game, Chicago media and fans dogged him throughout 2007, suspicious that he quit in the biggest game of the year.

Will LT’s significantly better track record afford him the benefit of the doubt? Or will the sting of losing a close game turn the fans on the most known player in San Diego history? For LaDainian’s part, he kept his helmet on so no one could see whether he too was caught in the headlights.

On the other side of the Great Lakes, the Packers and Giants squared off in weather best-suited to seal hunting and igloo building. You might not have known this, as it was only pointed out seven hundred times during the broadcast and post-game show, but cold weather games - nay, arctic weather games - are the domain of young players. Old men get grumpy in the cold, and young men - who are too stupid or brave to realize the danger inherent in playing in temperatures that can cause frostbite in ten minutes - go onto the field without sleeves, and generally enjoy the challenge.

Say what you want, but Brett Favre has carried this team all year. That isn’t to diminish the work of the coaching staff or the players who helped him, for without that productive chorus the Packers would have been watching this game from home. Still, the fact remains that Favre is a Hall of Fame QB, and as such guided this team into a deep playoff run. When he broke down Sunday night in the bitter freezer known as Lambeau, so too did the Packers.

The loss was a testament to foolishness in many ways. With an explosive running back in Ryan Grant and a solid offensive line, McCarthy allowed his awe of Brett Favre and his ego to get in the way of smart football. Instead of running the ball in a close game - as numerous, successful head coaches have done in cold-weather games for decades - McCarthy allowed his offense to go pass-whacky. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

You can point out that the Giants did the same, eschewing the run for the pass much of the game. But McCarthy showed his coaching youth in being goaded into trying to match the Giants pass for pass. The result was two teams begging to be beaten, which is part of the reason this game went into overtime. The difference came in the last few minutes of the game, when the Giants re-established their rushing attack. On consecutive drives, the Giants were able to drive cleanly into field goal range. Neither drive depended on the number of dropped passes; neither revolved around whether the frigid offensive line could be agile in conditions that prevent agility. Instead, all the offense had to do was push forward. In the cold, there is no more effective tactic. Game, set and match.

Will Favre retire? If you’re going to put money on it, bet that he’ll be back in ‘08. The reason is simple - despite his age, he is still better than most quarterbacks in the NFL and will lead a young team that has immense potential going into next season. There isn’t a single reason for Favre to hang up his cleats, when just this year he showed that he has everything it takes to play in the NFL.

With the deflating thud of the Packers, the Super Bowl becomes a Week 17 replay - an overmatched Giants team versus the seemingly unstoppable Patriots. The two-week break will be as much about gamblers convincing themselves that the Giants are a good pick and lining the pockets of bookies as it will be about New York fans causing the cost of scalped tickets to skyrocket into the tens of thousands. But make no mistake: with two weeks to scheme, Bill Belichick will be able to find a way to take advantage of a Giants team that is depleted in the secondary, has receivers easily goaded into a case of the dropsies, and features a young, mistake-prone QB playing in his first Super Bowl.

Will the Giants stand a chance? They will stand, that’s for sure: like a deer caught in the headlights. I hope everyone in New York likes venison sausage.

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Though other sportswriters in Chicago might still be unpacking their carpetbags, Dustin Beutin is a born and bred Chi-town sportswriter. Heading into the heart of the Big Ten (Purdue) broadened his sports views, and it was during the Jauron era that he lost the innocence of blind love for Chicago sports and began looking for an outlet to vent his frustration. A trip out west to USC for a Master’s in writing was only tolerable with high doses of ESPN and Dodgers games, though it gave him a respect for the national perspective. Now in the early stages of a sports-writing career, Dustin hopes to give back to the city of Chicago everything it gave him: opinions and heartburn.

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