If the Packers played their best ball against the Giants in the playoffs last season, Clay Matthews thinks Green Bay would have won the game. That may be true, but that doesn’t mean New York didn’t earn the victory. On Tuesday, Matthews told Yahoo! Sports that the Packers “beat ourselves” and that it was not the Giants who beat them. It should come as absolutely no surprise that Justin Tuck disagrees with that assessment.
“Obviously you’d believe that success would breed reality, right?” Tuck said before practice Wednesday according to the NY Daily News. “I guess people love living in Fantasy Land and want to make excuses for the situation.
“Thank you for giving us the game, Clay. I appreciate it a lot. Did they play their best ball? I don’t know. But we won the football game. Talk is cheap. Play the game. We’ll see Green Bay again this year so we will see who lays down that week.”
While I have never been a big fan of Tuck and and his typical trash talk, I tend to agree with him in this situation. Any team could claim they are a better team that simply beat themselves. It’s a cop-out. Did the Packers play their best ball that day? No, but that doesn’t mean the Giants didn’t beat them. As Tuck went on to say, New York forced them into bad situations.
“When they fumbled the ball, I think it was us that stripped it out,” explained according to ESPNNewYork.com. “We sacked them. I think it was us who beat their O-linemen and got to (Aaron) Rodgers. So I don’t think they just Ole’d everything and gave us the game. I think they were trying to win.”
While the concept of winning vs. not losing is something that Tuck himself has talked about before, it’s not like the Giants were a fluke. They went on to overcome arguably the best defense in the NFL in beating the Niners and the best offense in beating the Patriots. Nothing was handed to New York. Matthews is simply making himself feel better about a tough loss.
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