Giants Fans Hate 'Dirty Dancing' Commercial

SECAUCUS, NJ — "So awkward." "Embarrassing." "I think I just threw up in my mouth a little bit."

There's one group that apparently didn't enjoy Eli Manning's and Odell Beckham's wildly popular Super Bowl commercial last night — and it appears to be Giants fans.

"They were 3 and 13 this year. Sixteen weeks of football and they only won three games, and this is how they're spending the off season to get ready for next year?" fumed Nathan Rivera, 35, a Hoboken resident who works in construction at Meadowlands stadium. "They’re a joke. All my friends on Facebook last night were saying it's hard to be a Giants fan after that commercial."

Rivera was inside Blackjack Mulligans Irish pub in Secaucus for an after-work beer Monday afternoon.

"I enjoyed it, but while I was watching I did kind of think to myself, 'Wow, I wonder what real hard-core Giants fans are thinking right now," said Ted E., a Vikings fan, sitting next to him at the bar.

"After a season like that you just lay low," agreed Secaucus resident Ed Boss. "How much money did they get for that commercial? It wasn't worth it. The Giants just had the worst season and do to something like that — they just embarrassed themselves."

The commercial, featuring Giants quarterback Manning and wide receiver Beckham reenacting the classic "Dirty Dancing" scene, was arguably the best of the entire Super Bowl. Except die-hard fans aren't laughing.

Call it bad timing: The ad aired after the Giants just wrapped up an especially bad 2017 season, and it ended with having to watch their most-hated rivals, the Philadelphia Eagles, become champions.

Meanwhile, the G-Men found themselves more akin to the halftime entertainment.

"Just when I thought I was done with Eli and Odell for a while, this commercial showed up," complained Utkarsh Gandhi, 33, an IT project manager who lives in Secaucus. "So now I'm scarred until next season."

"I was watching with six other guys and we thought we were drunk when it came on," said David Bruce, from Garfield, NJ. "Especially when the lift happened. One of my friends had beer coming out of his nose, he was so shocked."

At least some Big Blue fans appreciated the comic relief.

"At the end of a bad day at work, what do you do? You go home and shake it off and laugh it off," said Willie Duda, 43, of Secaucus, a lifelong fan.

Photo of Nathan Rivera inside Blackjack Mulligan's by Carly Baldwin/Patch