MANN, THAT HURTS! After Eli Manning and the Giants were blindsided by Lawrence Timmons and the Steelers last week, coach Tom Coughlin said this week the message has been to refocus and go out and grab a win at Cincinnati tomorrow before the team gets its bye week. (
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The sun was shining bright and the temperature outside had reached the mid-50s. It was a perfect day for football yesterday, yet the Giants practiced inside the controlled elements of the Timex Performance Center.
It seemed a bit odd the week after a game that prompted head coach Tom Coughlin to call his team’s play “soft.” But Coughlin had good reason for holding the final full practice before tomorrow’s game at Cincinnati indoors.
“It’s a beautiful looking day,” the coach said yesterday. “Gosh, we would have loved to have been outside. It was too wet. We didn’t want anyone to go out there and slip and fall.”
Coughlin might have eliminated the chances of players slipping and falling yesterday, but his primary mission is to keep his Giants (6-3) upright against the Bengals (3-5).
“We need to win a game,” Coughlin said. “It’s important to win and focus and play. That’s what our point has been all week.”
The urgency in his voice didn’t sound like a coach with the cushion of a 2 1/2-game lead in the NFC East. At 6-3, the Giants still have a season regardless of the outcome of tomorrow’s game. There is more desperation coming out of Dallas and Philadelphia, where the Cowboys and the Eagles will meet with 3-5 records, and the Redskins are out of rhythm at 3-6. The division is there for the taking.
Yet, it is too soon for the Giants to exhale. With a bye week looming and the memory of last year’s 6-2 record turning to 7-7, the Giants are looking at the Bengals game as a must win to maintain their confidence for the stretch run. A 24-20 loss to the Steelers last week has put the Giants on high alert to keep any kind of negative vibes out of their locker room.
“There’s a big difference between winning and losing around here,” said offensive lineman Sean Locklear. “You lose and it’s like the end of the world. If you win you can feel good.”
The Giants want to take confidence and swagger into the bye week. It feels better to visit friends and family after a victory. Lose to the Bengals, it not only would spoil the bye week, but also would invite further discussion of whether the defense is championship caliber and whether Eli Manning is in a slump.
The defending Super Bowl champions went through all of that last year when they lost five of six games before barely making the playoffs. They don’t want a repeat of that misery.
“We understand the last thing we want to do is lose a couple of games in the middle of our season,” receiver Victor Cruz said. “But we’re not panicking or anything. We just want to make sure we get a quality victory going into our bye so we can leave on a positive note.”
There was little positive to take out of the loss to the Steelers. The Giants blew a 20-10 lead; the defense played “soft,” according to Coughlin and Manning’s performance has people wondering why he’s struggling.
“I don’t think a couple of non-Eli type games makes you in a slump,” Cruz said. “It’s more a matter of us getting our timing down and getting the fluidity back in our offense and being smooth again.”
The struggling Bengals, who have lost four straight games, could be the perfect foils or this could be the kind of trap game in which a lack of focus hurts the Giants. Coughlin is trying to make sure the latter doesn’t happen.
“Any win is a big win,” the coach said, repeating himself. “Obviously coming into the bye, we want to continue to keep our focus and understand that this win is crucial for us and we want to get this win to go into the bye on a positive note and then come back for Green Bay feeling good about ourselves, feeling healthy and continue to go from there.”
No slips allowed.