When a team that KSK collectively loathes makes it to the Super Bowl, we can get a little carried away with rooting for their opponent. This might lead some to believe that we objectively approve of a slapdick team like the Giants. We do not. We hate everyone. Just some a little more than others. The Giants are goddamn annoying, but only slightly less annoying than the Patriots. Given a little more sustained success and the attending sense of entitlement, who knows? The gap isn’t as wide as it used to be.

We’re glad the Giants were able to beat the Pats in the Super Bowl in a fashion somewhat similar to the way they did four years ago. But if it weren’t you, it would have just been the Niners or the Packers. Expedience doesn’t excuse the fact that you’re mostly Yankees fans and denizens of Durrty Jerzz. Despite your constant protestations, you’re just as trashy as Jets fans, so stop putting on airs, you dicks.

Stop calling your team the New York Football Giants. The baseball team left more than 50 years ago. There’s no confusion. SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP.

Yeah, I know, all us other fan bases are super jealous that your team won the title and that they made the incredible run twice in five years. It’s true. So we’re gonna take extra satisfaction when your team hopefully follows up this title like they did the last time, by running roughshod through the NFC, getting the top seed, then sh*tting the bed against the rival Eagles in the playoffs. Make us another crying Giants fan.

By the way, thanks for getting swept by the Redskins. Now D.C. fans have something, even sarcastically, to crow about. That’s never good. Getting Devin Thomas a ring for ‘Skins trolling purposes only provides minor relief.

Dammit, Eli: now that we finally have to admit you’re good, the least you could do is embrace it and talk a little sh*t about your brother.

YOU’VE BEEN IN PEYTON’S SHADOW YOUR WHOLE LIFE. WE KNOW YOU’RE ENJOYING THIS. ACT LIKE IT. NO ONE SAID YOU HAD TO WAVE YOUR DICK AT HIM, BUT MAKE A JOKE, YOU AWKWARDLY STOIC OLIVIA OEDIPUS.

NeckAIDS better run in the family.

Despite getting a handful of just horrible, horrible calls in their favor, the Packers were the first home team to drop a game this postseason. Very sad. But also hilarious to the point of gut laughter pain. Those State Farm ads will take on a very plaintive tone over the next week. It was a mixed weekend for teams with superior offenses and wretched defenses. The Saints and Packers, teams that many hoped to meet in the NFC Championship after a memorable Week 1 shootout and a season of putting up huge points, were downed by opponents that could actually bring pressure with their front four.

The Patriots, another team that fits the mold of defensively inept shootout kings, lived to grit it up another week because they ran into a Broncos team wholly unprepared to face a defense that wouldn’t stupidly stack nine in the box against them all game. Luckily, they’ll face Joe Flacco, who couldn’t make a throw today to save anyone’s life, let alone those who Ray Lewis helped kill but escaped serious conviction by ratting out his friends in a plea bargain with the court. The Ravens won’t be quite as stymied offensively next week, as Houston’s defense is far superior to New England’s. This also isn’t the floundering ’09 Pats team that Baltimore came into Foxboro and wiped their ass with in the Wild Card round a week after Wes Welker was lost for the season. The Patriots will put up points and Joe Flacco is actually going to have to do something, anything to keep up. Best of luck, Fu Manchu.

As for the NFC, the Giants will get the heft of the hype this week, by virtue of having felled the seemingly juggernaut droptastic Packers and also just being a team from New York. I wouldn’t bet the Niners will allow Eli to convert 5,000 third downs the way Green Bay’s porous defense did. And the Giants might do something to guard against Vernon Davis running free down the middle of the field. As PK would say, it’s an INTERESTING matchup, except for the potential of Alex Smith regressing to regular Alex Smith.

We’ll have live blogs for both conference championship games next weekend. Until then, I don’t know, get drunk and touch yourself.

You might have heard that the last time a playoff game was hosted at Lambeau Field, Eli Manning and the Giants won to advance to Super Bowl XLII. Well I’m here to tell you that was an elaborately constructed fiction fobbed off on the masses to sell Citizen Eco-Drive watches and Oreo cookies. It was actually Brett Favre who went on to defeat the then-unbeaten Patriots. Yeah, the shocking revelation still isn’t enough to make me tolerate Brittfar or even not wish gruesome tractor accident-related death on him, but at least now you know the truth.

Don’t mock the Dirty Bird! That’s only what every Falcons opponent has done since 1998. Fairly certain all Jamal Anderson does these days does is feign outrage whenever a Falcons opponent imitates it on a score.

Anyway, Eli spotted the Falcons a hilarious grounding penalty for a safety, but after the dust of a million punts and terrible Atlanta 4th down calls cleared, the Giants had won decisively. The score will lead some to believe it might have a better outing by New York than it really was, given they did things like this:

But even though the Giants dicked around most of the first half, the Falcons, much like Detroit on Saturday, just got sick of trying late. Best of luck to the Giants to try to the Packers another noble loss next week in Lambeau. The Giants did win the last playoff game played in Green Bay, which Peter King think is INTERESTING and reminiscent of Favre.

With Mike Shanahan unlikely to qualify for the postseason anytime soon, the next two most red-faced head coaches must vie for supremacy on the big stage. Falcons-Giants is one of those games where a team that is consistently decent but never great goes against a wildly erratic opponent who can one week actually hang with Green Bay until the final whistle and then get plowed by the Redskins the next. So as much as it sucks for tepid Atlanta fans to hear, this game will be decided by which version of this schizophrenic Giants team shows up. Personally, I’d rather we wait a week for the petulant Eli derpface version, for that would at least give the blowout next week in Lambeau a watchable sideshow.

One of the main subplots for pundit yammering today will be whether Matt Ryan can be on a team that happens to win a game in the playoffs for the first time in three career tries. We’re obviously down with unfairly maligning a quarterback by boiling down his team’s shortcomings to his singular crushing failure, but it’s just not as fun to shake the choker stick at Matt Ryan as it was and is to do so at, say, Tony Romo or Peyton Manning. Clearly Matty Ice needs to be featured in more ubiquitous advertising campaigns.

There were three games this season that KSK live blogged that didn’t turn out to be complete disasters: the Saints-Packers opener, Bears-Eagles in early November and, finally and perhaps most spectacularly, the first meeting between the Giants and Cowboys that featured Tony Romo diving into his own end zone for a safety and ended with Jason Pierre-Paul blocking a potential game-tying Dallas field goal while Jerry Jones’ grandson looked on in delicious, delicious anguish. Should the second encounter, which will decide who “wins” the NFC East and hosts Atlanta next week, turn out anything like that, we can feel a tiny bit better about all those primetime games with Tyler Palko that we had to suffer through.

I was already sold on this fan fight video when it opened on a guy wearing a Plaxico Burress Jets jersey standing behind a guy in a Plaxico Burress Giants jersey. From there, things take a turn for the stompy. Chances are this conflict had less to do with the game than which one of them had dibs on the drunk chick who passed out in the aisle.

[via Busted Coverage]

If you want to be technical about it, this screencap of an anguished Jerry Jones grandson was taken just before Bailey’s second and non-iced kicked was blocked, but I feel it encapsulates the tenor of the shitheel Double J luxury box throughout the duration of the Cowboys finding a way to blow yet another huge primetime game in hilarious fashion.

Ah, so very satisfying. THE CURSE OF THE LIVE BLOG IS OVER!!!!!!

“Hmm. Yes. A squandering of an advantageous position does make one parched, does it not? My options inasmuch as liquid refreshment are limited. I supposed I must partake of this commoner sugar water. Oh, how it offends the taste buds with its coarse aggression for immediate register. Let me sluice it down my gullet such a way that it destroys as little of my precious pallet as possible. Careful now, wakeful hand.”

The sole unfortunate side effect of the Eagles’ nosedive is that very middling Giants and Cowboys teams are left to stage a derp-off for the conference’s fourth seed. While this might seem sad in concept, it’s pretty hilarious in execution when marquee teams such as these are involved. For example, New York’s noble defeat to the Packers was further marred by Tom Coughlin issuing some of the stupider challenges we’ve seen from any coach this season, Lovie included. And, of course, there was Jason Garrett’s self-induced kick icing in the Dallas loss to the Buzzsaw.

Who knows what delights tonight will bring. Drew said this week, “You know ‘Boys/Giants will have a clusterf*ck ending. I can’t wait.” I’m inclined to agree.

What’s this? A Monday night game between two teams well positioned in the playoff chase? How many times has that happened this season? Oh yeah – once. It was Week 5 with Detroit and Chicago [Okay, Philly-Chicago is arguably another and the game itself was superior to Bears-Lions, but the Eagles are hardly a playoff caliber team, so there]. Better enjoy tonight while it lasts because it’s Chargers-Jaguars keck vs. dreck next week. Though we may have to do a Superdome repeat and live blog the Sunday night game instead. We’ll see.

Speaking of the Superdome, I missed the news last month that Mercedes-Benz bought naming rights for the once decrepit death pit turned renovated non-death pit. Awww, you went and got fancy on us, Saints. ANOTHER STEP TOWARD BEING REVILED OVERDOGS!