Palladino: Weather Won't Lead To Giants' Undoing In Green Bay
By Ernie Palladino
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If Odell Beckham, Jr. and Victor Cruz are smart, they will invite Justin Bieber to Green Bay for Sunday's wild card game.
Not to sing, if that's what the kids call what Bieber does on stage, but to emit some of the heat the male diva showers on his young fan base.
A few more degrees on the old thermometer, no matter how they're generated, can come in awful handy on a January afternoon at Lambeau Field. If the weathermen are right, the mercury will hover around 11 degrees at the 4:40 p.m. (EST) kickoff and fall as the sun sinks in the Wisconsin sky.
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It won't be as comfortable as that Florida nightclub where Beckham, Cruz, and Bieber partied into the wee hours of Monday morning, for sure. But with or without "The Biebs" to warm things up, at least the Giants can rest assured that the weather wildcard won't beat them. They have overcome Green Bay's legendary environment before. In fact, they became part of that history during their miracle run to the Super Bowl XLII title.
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Only Eli Manning and long-snapper Zak DeOssie survive on the roster from Ice Bowl II. But the memories they'll impart to their teammates this week should reinforce the fact that if the Giants do fail, it will be because Aaron Rodgers and his receivers beat what has become one of the NFL's best defenses, and not because of the biting chill the Lambeau winds can inflict.
Manning and the Tom Coughlin-led Giants beat those factors on Jan. 20, 2008, in the NFC Championship game. They would have signed for 11 degrees back then. Instead, they got minus-1 on the temperature gauge, with a wind that made it feel like minus-23.
Your household freezer is probably set to just a few degrees below zero, plenty cold to keep the frozen creamed spinach and shoepeg corn safe for months on end. So imagine what it was like playing in that super cold for more than three hours.
Not fun.
Early indications of the weather's severity came well before the main crowd arrived as hundreds of bright orange jackets dotted the silver stands. Hunters.
No doubt many had stalked trophies in even more severe conditions in Canada.
Then came the rest of them, all bundled up with canisters of hot chocolate or soup to sustain them. Except, that is, for the few bare-chested ones who presumably had swilled gallons of their anti-freeze of choice in the parking lot.
The Giants were about as prepared as those hearty hunters, however. The equipment managers had brought thermal gloves and socks, Vaseline, heavy underwear.
It wasn't as cold as the original Ice Bowl in 1968, which Tom Landry's Cowboys and Vince Lombardi's Packers played in a minus-38 wind chill before polyfibers and goose down became the preferred weapons against Antarctic conditions. But it was bitter enough to put Coughlin in danger of frostbite. Indeed, as Lawrence Tynes kicked the game-winning, 47-yard field goal in overtime that sent the Giants to their first Super Bowl meeting with the Patriots, Coughlin's fire engine-red face appeared ready to bust open like an overripe tomato.
Not from adrenalin, either.
Tynes, his foot black and blue, said kicking the ball was like kicking a rock.
The wide receivers had hand warmers. But they still had to inhale.
"Breathing in the air would burn your lungs," pass-catcher Amani Toomer said.
Still, Manning out-dueled Brett Favre. And the defense rose up in overtime of the 23-20 win as Corey Webster intercepted Favre's final pass in a Packers uniform to set up Tynes' kick.
Sunday should be a lot warmer than what became the third coldest game ever played in the NFL. A Giants offense that averages less than 20 points per game and a ground game that has progressed from nonexistent to iffy -- no comfort there -- present bigger threats than what Old Man Winter will throw at them.
So will Rodgers, who turned red-hot the last quarter of the season.
The weather isn't the wildcard this week. History proves the Giants can survive the cold.
Handling themselves is the bigger issue.
Follow Ernie on Twitter at @ErniePalladino
