Posts tagged TikiBarber at FanHouse - AOL Sports Blog

Six months ago, Terry Bradshaw was set to retire from Fox "NFL Sunday" once his contract expired, because, as he explained to the New York Daily News' Bob Raissman, "I see the energy and the enthusiasm these young guys (who get into broadcasting) have and I think it's time to hang it up..."

Now, after some time off, the addition of Michael Strahan, and enough steroids to kill an elephant*, Bradshaw has reconsidered.

"I'm going to do it (the Fox pregame) as long as I can. I don't want to retire," Bradshaw told me. "I just see too many people retire and say, 'I'm going to take off, travel, spend time with my family' and they are just miserable. They end up dying. People who work and stay active, and like what they are doing, live longer. I look forward to doing the show."

Bradshaw thinks Strahan will liven things up on the set, which should offset any fears he has of viewers getting tired of the on-air talent. (Something the USGA has yet to embrace when talking about Chris Berman. Moving on...)

Last week, I pointed to Mike Garafolo's article about what Ahmad Bradshaw's month-long stint in lock-up might mean for Brandon Jacobs and his desire for a shiny, new deal. Predictably, I trotted out the "running backs are fungible, there's no need to give Jacobs a big payday, even if Bradshaw gets a life sentence" reasoning. So it makes perfect sense that The Record's Vinny DiTrani writes the following:

But now that [Jacobs is] back [from traveling] negotiations are continuing on a four-year contract which could be concluded any day now.

If the Giants get Jacobs signed, come to an agreement on a much-deserved raise for Plaxico Burress, and somehow get Shockey back on the right track, what appeared to be a disruptive off-season might not be that bad after all.

Well, No. 1 sounds likes it's coming along much better than Nos. 2 and 3, but DiTrani also notes that "a source that has been accurate much of the time says the Giants have given up efforts to try to trade the tight end, and that Shockey will stay put." He admits that's hard to believe, but the voice of reason, Lawrence Taylor, makes a solid point: once the season starts, everything's forgotten.

And Tiki Barber agrees. So, apparently, there's nothing to worry about. Assuming the Giants can make it to September without Shockey going William Foster on somebody.

via PFT

Michael Strahan's a Hall of Famer and I don't think anybody begrudges him for choosing to retire after the Giants won the Super Bowl, and then taking a $2 million-a-year job to be an analyst on Fox's "NFL Sunday." Unlike Tiki Barber, who left under less happy-go-lucky circumstances, Strahan is still a fan favorite. Even when talking about his former team for the first time as a member of the media yesterday.

Strahan, a former Giant, had just been asked what he thought of his former teammates, Jeremy Shockey and Plaxico Burress. They are currently boycotting the team's off-season training and demanding contract renegotiations.

"Obviously, he is underpaid for what he does and brings to the team," Strahan said of Burress. "For him, in his defense, it is the right time to do that."

"But to be honest with you, in professional football, there is no loyalty," he added. "There is really no contract."

He then randomly added, "Tom Coughlin forced me out of football and Eli Manning isn't a leader."* Actually, Strahan, who quit talking to the media for a spell last season, has seamlessly made the transition to the other side: "I'd like to put in my first media request for an hour sit-down with Coach Coughlin," he announced. "And tell him not to be late."

Leave it to Tiki Barber to be the voice of reason when it comes to the New York Giants. The former Pro Bowl running back-turned-NBC NFL studio analyst makes pretty much the same argument philosopher Lawrence Taylor made when discussing Jason Taylor's football future: when the games start, all the offseason silliness won't matter.

So far this spring, Jeremy Shockey (random fits of anger), Plaxico Burress (wants a new deal), Shaun O'Hara (wants Burress to not be so selfish about wanting a new deal), Ahmad Bradshaw (currently in the can), and Jared Lorenzen (chubby, unemployed) have all made news for non-football-related reasons. Not to worry, though:

"This is the business of the sport," Barber told The Post. "Once football starts it's [all about] football." ...

"I don't think [Burress' contract demands] matter ... As we saw last year with Michael [Strahan, who skipped training camp], people thought it was going to be a big issue and it turned out not to be. I don't think, come Sundays in the fall, it matters too much to players."

Can't disagree with any of that. And Tiki, who questioned Eli Manning's leadership skillz almost a year ago, even had some nice things to say about the handsomest dude in the Manning family:

"He's always been [a leader] who it didn't matter what people thought of him, it only mattered how he could grow," Barber said. "When I was there you could see him growing. People will still doubt him at some point during the year, but he can know in his mind and his heart, 'I've done it already, so I can do it again.' "

See, we can all get along.

Eli Manning, June 9, 2008: We head into the 2008 season with the goal of getting better, not winning the Super Bowl.

If Peyton the Younger had uttered those (paraphrased) words 12 months ago, he would've been castigated for it by media, blogs, fans, anybody with a passing interest in football and Tiki Barber. Now, though, Manning can actually verbalize a thought without it being offered up as proof that he's waste-of-space, first-round bust.

A lights-out end-of-regular season and an even better postseason performance affords such opportunities, I suppose.

Now, four months out from a Giants championship, Manning's comments make perfect sense:

"We've said we're not going to talk about repeating or doing that, just becoming a better team," he said. "We have a lot of work to do. You look at a lot of things from last year that we did not do well. From an offensive standpoint, there's a lot of things." ...

Manning said the focus for the Giants this season is to find a way to learn from last season, when they turned around their season with a six-game winning streak after losing their first two.

Actually, if Manning had uttered these words a year ago, they would've made sense then, too, but the difference, obviously, is that when he says it now, people only half-pay attention because they're too busy gawking. It's just a shame that Manning will never be the outspoken leader the Giants need. Maybe someday.

Torry Holt took a hardline stance when asked his impressions of Rams' rookie receiver Donnie Avery yesterday, which is fine -- this "prove it" stuff happens between veterans and rookies every year, and Holt has the career and locker room respect to be brash. But how much longer will Holt have that respect?

This is merely an opinion, but if Holt continues down the path he's on, I'm not sure his reputation in St. Louis is going to be regarded as lovingly as it currently is.

It seems unlikely that Holt will ever be the bad guy in St. Louis as it stands, considering his production and seemingly benevolent demeanor. But the same was thought of Tiki Barber years ago, and that didn't stop him from embarking on a degradation campaign.

The seeds were planted last year, when Holt blew up on Scott Linehan in an incident that seems to go far deeper than either side portrayed. This offseason, Holt has publicly daydreamed about a future playing in Carolina.

Hmmm, a team trying to rebound from a bad year dealing with distractions because one player couldn't get along with his coach and was playing with one foot out the door. Where have we heard that one before? I'm not saying anything definitive, and of course I can be proven very wrong this season. But the parallels are there, and I wouldn't be surprised in the least to see hostility continue to rise.

When I say "who wears #21 for the New York Giants" ... your response will most likely be retired running back Tiki Barber. Well, not anymore.

Rookie safety Kenny Phillips will be wearing that number (well, he at least was during the rookie minicamp). Interesting that the team just gives away the jersey number of their all-time rushing and receptions leader just one year after he retires. Sure, most NFL teams don't retire numbers often ... many do choose not to issue those numbers to just anyone at anytime.

However, Phillips isn't wearing it to honor or slight Tiki. He's doing it to honor fellow Miami Hurricanes safety, the late Sean Taylor.

"He was a guy who my whole career, even in high school, I had pictures of him in my locker," Phillips said. "I wanted to get a chance to meet him, and I never did. I watch him on film and he was just an exceptional athlete. The plays he made were crazy. I just wanted to pay my respects by having his number and trying to live up to that."

Awesome gesture by Phillips who could be the first of several Canes players that may do the same. Taylor was beloved by his teammates and someone that younger guys were in awe of.

Phillips, who was drafted with the final pick of the first round, will hope to become the next in a line of outstanding Miami safeties: Taylor, Baltimore's Ed Reed and New England's Brandon Meriwether.

Former Giants running back Tiki Barber, now an NBC commentator, spent much of September, October, November and December bashing his former Giants teammates and coaches. But in January opinions about these Giants shifted, and now that it's February and the Giants have won the Super Bowl, Barber is having to fend off questions of whether they're a better team without him.

Barber, pictured celebrating after the Super Bowl with Giants guard Rich Seubert, says Seubert was far from the only one who embraced him after the game: "There wasn't one guy who didn't come up and give me a big hug and say, 'God, I wish you were still here.' There wasn't one guy."

If that's true, it's a little surprising -- for most of the season Barber's ex-teammates didn't seem too broken up about his retirement. But then Barber said something else, something that could certainly be interpreted as Barber taking a measure of credit for the Super Bowl win:

"I feel great joy for them because I know in a lot of ways I helped a lot of guys on that team," Barber said. "I know Brandon [Jacobs] was someone who benefited from me being there; even criticizing someone is a way of getting them to think about themselves."

It's true that criticizing someone is a way of getting him to think of himself, but that's typically a job for a coach, not a former teammate. Barber seems to be engaging in a bit of revisionist history, now suggesting that he was encouraging his former team toward a title, when a few months ago that's not how anyone interpreted his comments.

Hat tip: PFT.

I've never gotten to experience a championship parade. I've been to three celebratory parking lot parties -- not parades -- thrown by the New Jersey Devils. And if you're an astute FanHouse reader, you might know that my NFL love belongs to the Saints. New Orleans has a ton of parades, but none of the Super Bowl variety.

So I couldn't pass up the chance to take an extended lunch and watch a bunch of people go all Britney for the Giants, a team I've been a fan of for, oh, just about four hours in my life (our own Dan Benton went as a real fan and not a blogger and, yes, there's a difference). My experience was ... um, manic.

You think it's bad being a New England Patriot right now ... try being Tiki Barber.

Barber, as you may know, played for the Giants for ten seasons but retired after the 2006 campaign. On his way out, his blasted head coach Tom Coughlin and quarterback Eli Manning. He also brushed off talk that his career is fine without a Super Bowl ring:

"I used to think my career was defined by not winning a Super Bowl," Tiki said. "But I think looking back on my career, they'll see someone who was a competitor, someone who always played hard and never gave up."

Whoops. Tiki retired and the Giants win the Super Bowl the very next season. Not only that, but the coach that he questioned the playcalling of took that team to the title. Manning? All he did was lead his team to two 4th quarter touchdowns and winning the Super Bowl MVP.

Barber? He gets to call the Macy's 4th of July fireworks spectacular and talk about football on NBC's Sunday Night Football. I'm sure those defending champion Giants will be on there quite a bit.