Monday Afternoon Cornerback

* Is this the year Art Monk finally gets enshrined into the Pro Football Hall of Fame? If Peter King's change of position on the merits of Monk's inclusion is any indication, it just might be. King's MMQB takes a look at the dearth of modern receivers in the Hall and suggests maybe long-time voters should change their opinions on Monk and James Lofton. He includes the preposterous statistic that eight quarterbacks who played since 1980 currently have their busts in Canton compared to just one receiver. That's ridiculous.
I'll go into this more in January, as I always do. Maybe this year will be different. Hopefully. (Gibbs continued to support Monk's candidacy at his weekly press conference this afternoon.)

* With 9:33 left in their game against Tennessee, the New York Giants were up 21-0. Twenty-four unsanswered Titan points later, the Giants left Nashville with a devastating, possibly season-changing loss. That's a shame.
Because my DVR was acting up last night, I still haven't seen Eli's late-game pick or Mathias Kiwanuka's missed sack (you can criticize the play, just don't mention that his last name is hard to pronounce. Because making a good-natured joke about somebody's tongue-twisting last name is much more offensive than this), but I'm pretty excited about both. I'm actually recording the bastardized version of NFL Primetime for this very reason.
It's going to be fun to listen to idiots like Jeremy Shockey and Plaxico Burress rip Tom Coughlin and his coaching staff this week without having the self-awareness to realize that they suck just as much, if not more, than the Giants coaches. (Shockey, by the way, has become the most overrated player in the NFL. Besides grabbing camera-time with his petulant, on-field antics, what does he do, exactly? Catch one ball less than Ben Watson and have a lower yard-per-reception average than Owen Daniels?)

* Two schools placed five players on the postseason All-ACC football team. Neither was named Florida State, Miami or Virginia Tech. In an ongoing series of signs that the apocalypse is near, Wake Forest (along with Clemson) had the most players on the All-ACC team for the first time in school history.

* I'll write about the Wake/MD game and the upcoming ACC Championship later this week, but before I do I had to mention the most ridiculous playcall of the season. Up seven points with 7:21 left, Wake had a fourth-and-goal from the one-yard line. A field goal would have been a sure thing (one of those All-ACC members is kicker Sam Swank) and would have given the Deacs two-possession lead. For some reason that I still haven't heard explained, Grobe decided to go for the TD, thusly, making it possible for Maryland to possibly tie the game on their following possession should Wake have been stopped.
That the Rich Belton made it to the endzone is irrelevant. This was the single-dumbest playcall I've seen from any football team all season.
Let me first address the critics who will say, "but they made it, so it couldn't have been that bad a call": You can drive a car with your feet, but it doesn't make it a good freakin' idea. Just because a poor decision ends up working out, doesn't mean it was a good decision. By going for it, Jim Grobe ran the risk of swinging the momentum completely to Maryland's side. Playing on the road in a stadium filled with people begging for a reason to cheer, a 4th-and-goal stand and the possibility of tying a game that had, just moments before, is reason enough to play it safe.
Maybe Grobe figured that the fates would continue to smile upon Wake Forest this season. Maybe he wanted a little drama at the end of the game. Maybe he wanted to take himself out of the running for National Coach of the Year. Whatever the reason he decided to go for it, Grobe should feel fortunate that Belton's second effort got him across the goalline. If the Terps had held and marched down the field for the tying score, all those "Jim Grobe is a genius" articles would have been lost to Word caches forever.