Let's play a little game of Good, Bad And Ugly.

Good - yesterday's tailgate. Outstanding. Despite the logistic challenges, we had one of our strongest-ever showings, with some 30 people present at the height of the gathering:









We also made some new friends in our adopted neighborhood. All nice folks, although it must be said that two of our new neighbors to the east apparently felt a shirt was a luxury rather than a necessity. Given their sexagenarian status, I won't subject anyone to a photo of that. I don't know who's recently eaten.

As is the case when we get together, there was a solid amount of shtick. Our new location, along the median and the main road into the stadium, provided new opportunities for tomfoolery (in this instance, The Professor distributing fresh-off-the grill meat to hungry passers-by):










Not so good: the weather. Probably the warmest Jets game I've attended. It earns a place on the top three hottest events I've attended at Giants Stadium:

1. Kick-Off Classic, August, 1993. 113 degrees. I could have died.
2. Bon Jovi, July 18, 2006. I don't know the actual temperature, but it certainly felt 113.
3. Yesterday's Jets-Pats game. The humidity was staggering. I attemped to sit completely still for 10 minutes, and was still sweating.

Not surprisingly, the heat didn't affect the group's enthusiasm for food and drink. We ran out of a good number of meats, and at least 120 of the beers were consumed, along with a melange of wine and mixed drinks.

After four hours in the lot, it was time to head into the stadium for some football.

At the beginning of each season, there's a level of excitement that is hard to recapture as the year progresses. There have been no bad plays, no ugly losses, no injuries. Optimism and enthusiam reign.

The Pats squelched that very quickly...

Bad: The defense. As BB said in an e-mail today, Lieutenant Dan could have run up the middle for six yards against the Jets' D. Just awful.

Good - Mike Nugent's leg. I was happily celebrating Nugent's newfound ability to reach the end zone on kickoffs at the start of the second half when...

Very Ugly - Ellis Hobbs returned said kickoff an NFL-record 108 yards. That was pretty much the ball game.

And then there is this, which doesn't fall under any of the available categories. I have been questioned about this several times today (because, really, who wants to talk about the actual game). I didn't notice a huge amount of cheering at any point during the Chad gets hurt/Kellen goes into the game exchange. Quite frankly, given the extra hours of pre-game drinking necessitated by the parking situation, the lack of excitement in the tilt and the stifling heat, there weren't many people still alert at this point in the game.

The only thing I said at the time was that it was absurd that Pennington was put back on the field, given that the game was essentially over and there was no reason for him to risk further injury.

So, given the on-field disasters, eventually our lone source of amusement was watching the scoreboard, including the Chiefs' big loss and the Packers' unlikely victory.

Given the win, why does this man look so angry?

He's no doubt just heard Randy Moss caught nine passes for 183 yards.