Let’s get one thing straight. These Giants didn’t win the Super Bowl two years ago.
The next time one of them starts hearkening back to the days of overcoming adversity or winning on the road or disproving the critics or pulling out fourth-quarter victories, feel free to ignore them. Tune them out.
Just as no one can ever take away the magnificent achievement of the 2007 edition of the Giants, no one can link that to this. That was special. This is ordinary. Many of the faces and names are the same, but don’t be fooled into believing the guys who earned the rings will be able to figure out what’s wrong and make it right.
The “we did it before and we can do it again” mindset doesn’t fly as a 5-0 start degenerated into 5-4 at the bye. The Giants believe they are a really good team ready to bust out, but those darned breaks and penalties and athletic plays by the other guys (they get paid too, you know) keep getting in the way.
What’s getting in the way of the Giants is what’s staring back at them in the mirror. They’ve lost some of their edge, and that includes Tom Coughlin. Sure, they all work hard and shake their heads and grimace when things go rotten, but there’s not much fear of failure around their spacious and luxurious Timex Performance Center, a beautiful new facility with all the accoutrements. Too bad some of the grit from the dank bowels of Giants Stadium didn’t make it across the parking lot.
It starts at the top. Coughlin is as solid as they come, but now he’s in the select head coach club reserved for Super Bowl winners. No one is calling for his job or calling him out of touch or a grouch. If two years ago he acted fatherly in shepherding the Giants, he sounds grandfatherly right now, supportive where a little old-fashioned threatening might be the ticket.
There was all this talk of Coughlin meeting with his leadership council after the blowout loss in Philadelphia. The immediate result was the best week of practice of the season, followed by some decent-to-inspired football until the late 21-20 collapse to the Chargers. The two star defensive linemen, Osi Umenyiora and Justin Tuck, made game-changing plays up until the final drive, when they failed to get a sniff of Philip Rivers.
There was the predictable fallback storyline of Eli Manning needing to “Be the Mann (clever!)” as if he himself could fix the offense, defense and special teams. There are the unusual leadership stylings of Antonio Pierce, who fills the role of spokesman sometimes, but not after Chargers 21, Giants 20, when he was nowhere to be found in a locker room full of players (sans Umenyiora as well) who weren’t keen on lingering to face the music but did so anyway.
Pierce the other day said, “We just need to find a way to win one game and then we’ll just get on a roll.” Really? This team will get on a roll because the 2007 team did in the playoffs and the 2008 team did through the first 12 games?
Umenyiora conceded, “Once you start losing games like that you might lose your edge a little bit” but added, “To be honest with you, I’m not even concerned at all. This is a situation the Giants are comfortable in right here. We have our backs against the wall and we always come out swinging.”
Not always. They swung and missed last week, once again alerting everyone that the vows of the title-winning Giants have thus far been unfulfilled promises by this bunch. These Giants aren’t champions. It’s time they stop thinking they are and perhaps they’ll start playing more like it.