I know the main concern is the D and giving that game tying drive is not a good sign (but Woodson wasn't there plus Hawk and Bishop - so I will actually give the D a pass).

I'm more concerned about the Football gods! I was watching the game with a Giants fan and he kept bitching about the referees - which I hate. Even when its against the Packers, I hate doing it, its an excuse at the end of the day. Most of the time stuff does not come down to one play and its takes a whole game to lose than just one play or one call.

However, it seems like this year everything is going our way. I think we deserved every SINGLE win and we didn't need calls or whatever. And I know you have the call here and there that you can complain about. But check the pass interference on that rookie for holding Jennings arm but no call on Woodson doing the same thing to Hicks in the endzone. And I'm sorry but that Jennings TD, if that was against us, most of us (me included) would be complaining. And every play it seems like we get both feet in just barely. Plus fumbles, I swear no WR or RB has fumbled all season.

I know you have to have some luck to get to 12-0 but I keep having this fear that it is all going to implode all at once in a playoff game or something - like a crap call against us or an untimely fumble. But I know what the reply will be and I know the simple solution - there's no such thing as Football gods and we will just prevail based on us just being that much better than everyone else.

I believe but I'm a negative asshole and I keep having this completely irrational fear 😞.

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The Packers franchise is controlled by the Vatican, so we've got some pretty strong mojo in the world of organized crime. We get our share of calls. Our guys are all character guys too, so it's good for NFL marketing. We saw that before the Superbowl last year with Rapistburger and shit. Arodge was the face of the game.
I do believe there is an organized criminal influence in pro sports, but I don't think they can make or break dynasties. I think the main agenda with refs is to keep games close to the end, so as to preserve television ratings.

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The defense has been giving up yards and points even when Bishop, Collins, Hawk and Woodson were on the field.

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I was gonna do a separate post about this, but this was the FIRST time in Capers' tenure that I thought the defense let us down. They didn't cost us the game though.
They've been verging on this all year, and as NonStop says, when you rely on winning games with last second INTs, sooner or later you're gonna lose by not being able to just get off the field the old fashioned way.
I DO think it's due to injuries though. Dom can only do so much with smoke and mirrors.
This year is reminiscent of 2008, with all the injuries we had on defense. We're going to see how much better Dom Capers is than Bob Sanders was. In fact we may have been seeing it all year.

“Defensively, we had the turnovers but gave up yards and gave up points,” Packers coach Mike McCarthy said. “It got to a point there where our injuries (effected) some of the calls that we had as far as the package we had to stay within. But they hung in there and, once again, it came down to the 2-minute drill and our offense got it done.” 

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Another way to look at this - we played our worst game of the year. The Giants played a heck of a game, and their running game was as good as it got this year and Eli was hitting areas that it's not possible for a DB to cover. Yeah I know, I'm giving credit to Eli Manning. I hate doing that just as much as you do. But I saw what I saw.

So, we won a game while playing our worst game of the season. And you fact checkers out there, didn't 🇦🇷 have his worst game of the season today? Also, how many dropped balls did we have? If I'm not mistaken, Finley alone killed 3 drives with dropped balls on 3rd downs.

This was one sloppy game.

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Finley costing himself a lot of money so far.

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And rightfully so. I don't think he's quite a Jimmy Graham or even a Rob Grankoski.

I noticed today he seems scared to catch the ball over the middle. Always seems to be ducking his head or something. Might be contributing to his drops. Man up buddy your way bigger than those dbacks.

disclaimer: I may have just created that idea in my head today, but regardless it is how I felt watching him all game.

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I thought so too.

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MM used the word "significant"  with reference to Quarless' knee injury. This pisses me off because of the way it happened, the fact that he's been maturing and coming on lately, and because Finley has been dropping passes like a little bitch.

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We're actually lucky those guys are having monster years. Everyone thought Finley was the poised to be the "best TE in football." His asking price will keep going down. Hopefully his agent doesn't pull a Cullen Jenkins move (assume there is more money elsewhere + piss off [TT].

Finley is a great player, but his drops could have cost us games this year. Hopefully this game will serve as a wake up call for this team.

It's unfortunate that there was so many drops yesteday, could of kept our drives going and get us more points on the board. Also, if we kept going that would make our defense look much better, considering Eli kept getting the ball back.

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I must be fair to Finley, though. The Giants wanted to take away Jennings/Nelson on the outside, and Finley had the potential to dominate this game over the middle. Of course, that didn't really work out but the fact remains that he was often open, kept the defense honest, and was the primary target on many plays. Take him away, and that game becomes much more difficult. He may not be a Graham or a Grankoski, but he is still a great weapon in our offense. As mentioned, hopefully we can retain him at a reasonable price after his season. Of course, I'd be happy with him dominating the playoffs and getting a huge payday after a super bowl MVP as well. ;-)

As for Quarless, if he in fact only suffered a "knee sprain," he is very lucky. It may keep him out the rest of the season, but he should be able to recover from that. I'm sure that's some euphemism Mike McCarthy is using, but if it's not a broken bone or an ACL, it has to be considered a good thing given the circumstances.

While the stats say that ARod had his worst game of the year this week, I say that last week was worse. Both games featured a pick, last game had less yardage, and this game featured 6 official drops and a few more that were tough but I expect multi-millionaires to catch when they hit them in the hands. Take away most of those drops and suddenly the QB rating, yardage, and completion % go way up... Not nearly as many drops last week.

RE: OP's point about refs and football gods...

I don't worry about this *UNLESS* we get Hochuli or Triplette's crew in the playoffs. Especially the latter. I kept waiting for the bonehead call that would go against the Packers at the worst time, but every close review, etc this game seemed to go with the Packers. This will not happen with either of those two incompetent crews twice in a row.

By the way, is anyone else getting tired of Mike Pereira everywhere? I hate this legalistic turn the game has taken where everyone is trying to outdo each other in their "correct" interpretation of the rules.

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