The New York Giants received on Thursday night their “ten-table” Super Bowl championship rings.

Strahan gave the jewelry the “ten-table” moniker because they can be seen from “ten tables” away when worn at a restaurant.

What can be seen from ten blocks away is the bull’s-eye that the Giants will have on their backs in the 2008 season, when they shift from being the hunters to the hunted.

It’s a very real dynamic in the modern NFL, where the relative talent gap from team to team is narrower than ever, and where the Super Bowl winner, the Super Bowl loser, and the conference finalists find themselves getting the “A” game from every opponent they face.

Just ask the Bears and the Saints.  Both played in the 2006 NFC title game.  Neither made it back to the playoffs.  The Colts, who won Super Bowl XLI, were bounced in the divisional round.  The Steelers, winners of Super Bowl XL, didn’t return to the playoffs.  The Patriots didn’t make it back to the playoffs after winning Super Bowl XXXVI.

But the Pats have bucked the front-runner trend more than any other team over the past decade, winning the only back-to-back titles since the 1997-98 Broncos and qualifying for the playoffs in five straight seasons.

The Giants hope to buck the trend as well; coach Tom Coughlin reportedly told each player upon giving them their hardware, “Let’s go back to work.  Let’s do this again.”

Ralph Vacchiano of the New York Daily News reports that linebacker Antonio Pierce and tight end Jeremy Shockey didn’t show for the ceremony.  Pierce is on his honeymoon.  Shockey presumably realizes that he had nothing at all to do with one of the most stunning late-season runs in league history — and Shockey might even recognize the possibility that it was his departure due to injury that allowed quarterback Eli Manning to finally come of age.