The Giants survived an overtime battle with the Bengals in Week 3 to make it to the bye week undefeated. Staying that way will be a challenge, even with the still-healing Seahawks coming into the Meadowlands.
The Giants will be without Plaxico Burress, and Seattle gets back its top two receivers, Deion Branch and Bobby Engram, from injuries.
Another obstacle the Giants have to overcome is their woeful record after bye week. Big Blue is 4-15 since the bye week was instituted in 1990 (two bye weeks in 1993).
“Every year is different and there could be reasons for that, it just depends on who you are playing and what is going on,” Eli Manning said. “We understand that we just have to worry about this year. We have to worry about coming in and having a great week of practice this week, being focused on what we are doing, and try to go get a win.”
Tom Couglin also said he is not concerned about the team’s historically bad post-bye-week play.
“We had three practices during that time and everyone practiced well,” Coughlin said. “We have stayed focused. There wasn’t any need to do anything other than what we were doing. I think everyone realized what we were trying to do. We did a real good job of assessing ourselves, presenting to our team, showing our team exactly what we thought we had to do to improve in a lot of different areas, and guys responded pretty well.”
Manning will be without his top weapon Sunday; Burress was suspended for two weeks and one game after missing team meetings last Monday. Domenik Hixon will enter the starting lineup in Burress’ place.
The potential is there for Hixon, but he does not have a lot of game experience to back it up. Hixon has seven career catches in his third NFL season, but six of those catches have come this year in the Giants’ first three games.
“Hixon is a young man who is a coach’s dream,” receivers coach Mike Sullivan said. “He works extremely hard, he puts in extra time, he tries to work on all the fundamental fine details, and he’s a great worker, very, very tough, great stamina. So he’s someone that is very easy to coach because he takes it all in, he’s constantly trying to get better and it’s gratifying to see the improvement. You talk in the locker room and talk to a lot of guys who are excited about his success because he is such a team oriented player and such a hard worker.”
Mario Manningham, a rookie out of Michigan, was expected to receive some snaps after being inactive for the first three games, but his progress has been deterred by a flu that had him hospitalized. He was back ata practice today.
“Obviously Mario is trying to learn, he is trying to get involved in the offense, and the more he can get out there a he has obviously got talent and ability, it is just about learning the schemes and learning all the ins and outs of it,” Manning said.