How much bang for the buck can a watch company get when it uses New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning as the athletic embodiment of how "Unstoppable!" its watch is? Its a Saturday Night Live-worthy laugh line every time I hear it, but even more so when it's airing, as it did last night, during a Giants game. I don't think "stoppable" is quite sufficent as an antithesis to describe how Manning fared against the Washington Redskins Sunday night. If he wasn't stopping himself with weak-armed throws or foolish retreats in the pocket and into enemy arms, as he was much of the first half, then his teammates were lending a hand by dropping his occasionally accurate passes, as they did much of the second half. His final numbers were 18-52 for 168 yards, or about three yards per attempt. Hard to sell a watch, I know, with the catchword "Pathetic!"

You know it's a really bad game when Giants coach Tom Coughlin looks upset on the sidelines. Okay, so he always looks a man whose head is about to implode. But who can blame him? Coughlin has spent four seasons in New York watching Manning and waiting for him to demonstrate that he is an NFL quarterback of the first rank, let alone worthy of the very first pick in the draft. And it doesn't seem to be happening. Frankly, Eli doesn't seem to be improving at all and perhaps not even a quarterback of the second rank. Coughlin surely rues the day that Manning esentially forced himself on the Giants by refusing to play in San Diego. Who in his right mind would want to hand off to Ladainian Tomlinson in the lush climes of San Diego when you can put the ball in the belly of Brandon Jacobs in the windswept Meadowlands? In that ill-fated Giants deal, San Diego not only got quarterback Philip Rivers, who may not have convinced fans either, but appears to be at least Manning's equal, as well as some draft choices, one of which yielded Shawn Merriman, a consensus first-team All-Pro.

Most NFL insiders and Giants fans were surprised when Coughlin wasn't dumped after the team's late-season fold last year so there's certainly no guarantee that making the playoffs this season will mean he's back for 2008. But even at 9-5 in the medicore NFC, the Giants are no lock for the playoffs right now. With a winter's trip to Buffalo next week and then the Patriots due in town for the final weekend of the season, the Giants could have a classic Coughlin swoon and find themselves, at 9-7, in a maze of tiebreakers with the Vikings, Saints and Redskins that, quite frankly, this correspondent is unable to decipher.

The way the Giants competed last night, one has to consider the possibility that the team simply panicked at the prospect of doing too well, say 11-5, and keeping Coughlin around to scream at them for another whole year. However it turns out they finish, if the Giants do reach the playoffs, bet the ranch that it will be one game and out. Followed very shortly by their combustible coach.