Sunday, 1 p.m., MetLife Stadium, WTTG-5

Falcons 10-6, Giants 9-7

How the Falcons can win… The Falcons are a relatively balanced team, at least by the standards of some of this year’s top playoff contenders. They ranked 10th in the league in total offense and 12th in total defense during the regular season. The Atlanta defense ranked sixth against the run, and seems likely to shut down a Giants’ running game, which struggled all year. The Falcons rediscovered RB Michael Turner when he ran for 172 yards Sunday, and QB Matt Ryan has the receivers–in WRs Roddy White and Julio Jones and TE Tony Gonzalez—to exploit the Giants’ 29th-ranked pass defense.

How the Giants can win… The Giants enter the playoffs feeling good about themselves after beating the Jets and Cowboys on the final two weekends of the regular season to win the NFC East. They get to play at MetLife Stadium again, and they’re talking about re-creating the magic of their postseason run to a Super Bowl title after the 2007 season. QB Eli Manning has been one of the league’s most dependable players all season, leading the Giants to five victories with fourth-quarter comebacks. The defense played well against the Cowboys, sacking QB Tony Romo six times. DE Jason Pierre-Paul has become the most disruptive of the Giants’ pass rushers; he had 16-1/2 sacks during the regular season.

–Mark Maske

According to a Yahoo! Sports report, the Christmas Eve clash between the New York Jets and New York Giants actually matters for a change. For all the history of these teams – the Jets have Joe Namath and Super Bowl III while the Giants have Lawrence Taylor, the David Tyree catch and three titles – none of it intersects. There is no moment that defines this rivalry, just 11 largely nondescript games over the past 42 years. In honor of the holiday season, here’s a look at the top five best active NFL players born on Christmas Eve.

Tim Jennings

Chicago Bears cornerback Tim Jennings turns 28 on Dec. 24, 2011. Jennings, a former Indianapolis Colts standout, hasn’t spread much holiday cheer to opposing offenses this season, as he tallied a season-high 10 tackles against the Detroit Lions on Nov. 13 and notched five against the Denver Broncos on Dec. 11. Even though the Bears lost four games in a row, Jennings notched two or more tackles in each of those contests. He is a true warrior on the field just about every Sunday.

Ogemdi Nwagbuo

Carolina Panthers defensive end Ogemdi Nwagbuo tallied 42 career tackles, including three this year as a member of the San Diego Chargers and one with his new team. Nwagbuo, who turns 26 on Dec. 24, has excellent footwork, great field vision and superb work ethic. He’s still young enough to blossom into one of the top defensive ends in the league if he buckles down and puts the work in to make that happen.

Chris Kluwe

Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe turns 30 on Dec. 24. In his seven seasons in the NFL, he has been one of the most consistent kickers in the game, tallying 542 career punts for an average distance of 44.3 yards per kick. Kluwe has a big, strong leg with great accuracy and the occasional ability to drive punts longer than 60 yards.

Kevin Burnett

Miami Dolphins linebacker Kevin Burnett turns 29 this holiday season. He has enjoyed a breakout year in 2011, tallying 82 tackles and 2.5 sacks with one interception. At 6’3″, 240 pounds, Burnett uses his massive frame to be a big-time playmaker along the Dolphins’ defensive front. Burnett sets himself apart from the pack by getting off blocks quickly, and he consistently puts pressure on opposing passers.

Naaman Roosevelt

24-year-old wide receiver Naaman Roosevelt hasn’t quite made a name for himself at the NFL level, but he’s still young and certainly capable enough to learn the ins and outs of the Buffalo Bills’ offense. So far in 2011, he has 13 receptions for 228 yards and a touchdown. Recently he’s been nursing a tender shoulder, so he hasn’t been 100% healthy of late. Roosevelt doesn’t have the same blistering speed as some of the top receivers in the league, but he’s a solid weapon in the slot and has a huge upside.

Eric Holden is a lifelong New York Jets fan and he is spending this Christmas Eve glued to his television set watching the big game against the Giants. Follow the author on Twitter @ericholden.

Sources

http://www.pro-football-reference.com/friv/birthdays.cgi?month=12&day=24, Pro-football-reference, Player birthdays

www.nfl.com, NFL, player and team stats

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Christmas 2011 is going to be merrier for one faction of Tri-State area football fans than the other, because the New York Giants (7-7) and New York Jets (8-6) will play a game on Christmas Eve that has playoff ramifications for both teams.

“We’ll play hard,” Giants linebacker Mathias Kiwanuka told Yahoo! Contributor Network after New York fell to the Washington Redkins 23-10 this past Sunday. “We know [the Jets are] going to come out good, but we know our offense is going to be fully ready to go. We got to be able to come out as a defense and just get stops.”

“Bragging rights,” a phrase you’ll hear ad nauseam as game day approaches, is of infinitesimal importance when juxtaposed to an inexorable truth about this game: Should the Giants lose and Dallas Cowboys (8-6) defeat the Philadelphia Eagles (6-8) this weekend, their season is over.

“The significance is, for us to achieve our goal—which is winning the Super Bowl—we have to win this game,” Kiwanuka said. “That’s it.”

“They’re a good football team,” defensive end Chris Canty said. “You are what you are in this league. And with their record, they’re a good football team. We know their brand of football. They play defense, they want to run the football.

“We’re gonna have to put them under a microscope and try to familiarize ourselves as much as we can with what they’re doing,” he added, “and try to give ourselves the best opportunity to be successful on Saturday.”

Jets cornerback Darrelle Revis will likely split time defending Big Blue’s top two receivers, Hakeem Nicks and Victor Cruz. Given how immensely talented each of the three are, watching Revis defend either play-maker should be one of the more entertaining aspects of Saturday’s New York-New York showdown.

“Always looking forward for a challenge,” Nicks told YCN. “They’re a good football team. They’re a good, strong, solid football team. [They] play defense well, play offense well. We got to go out there and play.”


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The Tim Tebow Train has left a lot of other great stories sitting on the tracks this NFL season. True, Tebow has managed to captivate the country with his improbable comebacks in leading the Broncos to six consecutive victories and into first place in the AFC West.

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But look at some of the other magic being created by quarterbacks around the league. Thanks mainly to Aaron Rodgers, who already has tied Brett Favre’s single-season touchdown record with 37, the Packers are just three wins away from a perfect 16-0 regular season.

Drew Brees of the Saints is on pace to obliterate Dan Marino’s single-season, passing yardage record of 5,084. Brees leads the NFL with 4,368 yards and needs to average just 240 yards down the stretch to break it. New England’s Tom Brady (4,373) and Rodgers (4,125) are also on pace to better Marino.

Carolina’s Cam Newton, meanwhile, needs just 167 passing yards to best Peyton Manning’s NFL rookie record (3,739).

And then we have the Giants’ Eli Manning, who has almost managed to get lost in the shuffle — and that’s nearly impossible for a quarterback playing in New York.

His 4,105 passing yards are just 20 yards fewer than Rodgers, who seems to be the unanimous lock for Most Valuable Player honors. That Manning is in position to also break Marino’s 27-year-old mark certainly puts him in some very elite company.

Even if he doesn’t catch Marino, Eli needs to average just 200 passing yards in his final three games to surpass brother Peyton’s best passing season ever — 4,700 yards just a year ago.

And say what you want about Tebow and his fourth-quarter comebacks, but no one has been better than Eli Manning this season.

He’s directed his team to six victories in the final 15 minutes and in five of those, the Giants trailed. He’s also thrown 14 fourth-quarter touchdown passes, tying the NFL record set by Johnny Unitas in 1959 and matched by his big brother in 2006.

“The great ones can do that and he has stepped up his game,” said Redskins head coach Mike Shanahan, whose team meets Manning and the Giants on today. “He has eliminated his mistakes and that’s what separates the great ones.”

Eli already has a Super Bowl ring, which he won in Glendale by beating the then-undefeated Patriots in Super Bowl XLII. And he certainly had elevated his game. But when did we get to the point where we could start calling him “great?”

Manning raised some eyebrows in the preseason when he self-proclaimed himself an elite quarterback among the likes of Brady. Well, he’s backing up his words with a pretty incredible year, even though he isn’t getting enough credit for it.

“I don’t ever feel pressure when I’m playing football,” Manning told reporters last week. “I know my assignments. I’m reading the defense, I know my plays and I try to get the ball into my receivers’ hands. It’s exciting, it’s fun. I’m competitive and I’m out there doing what I can to get a win.”

Manning was his late-game heroic self last week in another come-from-behind win, this one at division-rival Dallas. He passed for 400 yards and led his team on two touchdown drives in the final 3:14 to help topple the Cowboys 37-34.

The victory vaulted the Giants back into the NFC East lead and snapped a nasty four-game slide that almost tore the team apart. They can’t let up now, not against a very beatable Washington team, or Manning’s impressive season won’t mean anything.

Manning knows that as well as anyone.

“We can’t relax now,” he said. “We can’t start feeling great about ourselves. We have three big games left. Washington is coming to New York and we have to win that game and go from there.”

The Redskins beat the Giants in the season opener, but Antrel Rolle, New York’s talkative safety, boldly predicted last week that the Giants would beat the Redskins 99 times out of 100.

That didn’t sit well with the Redskins and it probably didn’t make Rolle’s teammates or coaches happy, either.

“It’s the NFL and nobody is going to beat anyone 99 out of 100 times,” Redskins quarterback Rex Grossman said during a conference call.

If the Giants beat Washington, they can actually afford a loss next week at the Jets and still win the division so long as they beat the Cowboys at home in Week 17.

If they do, it likely will be because of Manning, who has managed to find himself overshadowed in this season of the quarterbacks.

The New York Giants, who take a 7-6 record into Sunday’s game at MetLife Stadium against the Washington Redskins, have won once since Nov. 6. In the glory days of the NFC East, that would have made them an afterthought entering the NFL season stretch run. This season, it makes them a division leader.

The NFC East once was the division of Super Bowl powerhouses. In a 14-year stretch between the 1982 and ’95 seasons, teams in the division won eight Super Bowl titles — three each by the Redskins and Dallas Cowboys and two by the Giants. NFC East clubs had four straight Super Bowl triumphs between the ’90 and ’93 seasons.

But such dominance is a rapidly fading memory. The Giants’ title in the 2007 season is the lone Super Bowl victory for an NFC East team in the past 15 years. That drought seems likely to continue this season, with the Giants and Cowboys tied for first place at a modest one game above .500 with three games left. The division’s two top contenders have obvious deficiencies.

“I think both of these teams have flaws in the secondary,” Charley Casserly, the former general manager of the Redskins and Houston Texans, said Tuesday. “So both of them are going to give up yards and they’re going to give up points.”

Only one other division in the NFL, the AFC West, has a leader with fewer than 10 victories. In that division, the Denver Broncos are in first place at 8-5. The NFC East’s teams have combined for 23 wins this season, fewer than the total for any other division except the AFC South, whose teams have 21 wins.

With the Giants and Cowboys scheduled to play each other again, the NFC East is not in jeopardy of sinking to the level of last season’s NFC West, which the Seattle Seahawks captured with a 7-9 record to become the NFL’s first playoff team with a losing record.

But it has reached the point that the disappointing Philadelphia Eagles (5-8) still could win the division.

Even so, Casserly said he’s not yet ready to declare this season a low point for the NFC East. The offensive capabilities of the Giants and Cowboys make each of them a threat, he said, to finish with a flourish.

“They’re both explosive offensively,” Casserly said. “The Giants came within one possession of beating Green Bay. I think Dallas could do the same thing. Whatever team gets in [the playoffs] will have a chance to beat someone. One of those teams could still be 10-6. No one would say anything about that. Let’s let the last three games play out and see how it goes.”

The division is not lacking in drama or football entertainment. Both were abundant Sunday night in Arlington, Tex., when the Giants erased a 12-point deficit in the game’s final six minutes and beat the Cowboys, 37-34.

The Cowboys had the division title all but wrapped up when they led, 34-22, after quarterback Tony Romo’s 50-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Dez Bryant. But it all unraveled from there. Giants quarterback Eli Manning led his team to two late touchdowns, with a two-point conversion on the second. And the Giants blocked a 49-yard field goal attempt by Cowboys rookie Dan Bailey with one second left.