This is a quote from Sugar Ray Robinson, and it is read to Antrel Rolle:
“To be champ, you have to believe in yourself when nobody else will.”
It unleashes the river of defiance inside Rolle, because it captures the essence of who he is and what he stands for, and it happens to be the story of this Giants season and this Giants team that stands unsteadily at the intersection of Believe and Bereave Streets, much too early.
“That goes hand-in-hand with what I’ve been going through, what we’ve been going through as Giants for the past four weeks,” Rolle told The Post. “No one’s giving us a shot. Everyone’s calling us the worst team in the league, laughing at us. I tell people we can go 12-0. I’ve seen all kinds of comments on my Instagram, on my Twitter asking what I’m smoking.”
He’s smoking belief — in himself and in his team. He has been smoking it most of his life, largely because of the example set by his father, Al Rolle, who was told he never would be the first African-American police chief in Homestead, Fla. When he proved them wrong in 1998, they sniped behind his back that he would last just six months on the job. The six months became 13 years.
“All the haters and doubters, he shut [them] up,” Antrel said.
And now Antrel Rolle and the Giants, battered and bloodied as they are, try with all their might and all their fight to remind the doomsayers that only they, the New York Football Giants, can define and dictate who they are and what they can still be.
Rolle has witnessed a transformation in the morale and psyche of his team as the days tick down to its Zero Hour on Sunday, a day when 0-4 becoming 0-5 would suck the life out of MetLife Stadium.
“I think the attitude in our locker room is extremely positive,” Rolle said.
He is one of the few perceptive enough to gauge the temperature in the room by studying faces and body language in addition to interpreting the chatter off the practice field and the energy and passion on it.
“I can tell a lot throughout the week,” Rolle said. “I pay very close attention to detail. I just notice the way they move around, the way they speak, the way they carry themselves in the locker room.
“I don’t think they’re worried about the past. … They believe we can get this thing turned around.”
Coach Tom Coughlin’s first book, written after Super Bowl XLII, was entitled “A Team To Believe in.” He has not wavered, because he can’t.
“Play four quarters. Play four solid quarters of championship quality football, supporting one another in all three phases, eliminate the foolish penalties, eliminate all that garbage that keeps you from being one,” he keeps telling this team he wants to believe in.
Another quote was read to Rolle, from Alex Karras:
“Toughness is in the soul and spirit, not in muscles.”
“What lies within your heart is everything,” Rolle said. “Many times you see the smallest man taking on the biggest guy, almost like David and Goliath. Toughness is in your soul.”
Giants-Eagles is David and David. The Giants have forgotten how to finish, have forgotten how to run the ball, have forgotten how to rush the passer. They have been injury-ravaged on the offensive line and in the secondary. And here come the Chip Kelly Eagles, with a manic attack that is designed to leave your head spinning and your lungs sapped of oxygen.
For Coughlin and the Giants, the pluck stops here. They simply cannot let LeSean McCoy and Michael Vick walk out 2-3. Giants fans will ask the football gods to allow Eli Manning to torch a vulnerable Eagles secondary Sunday at 1 o’clock — a wing and a prayer — then Peyton Manning to perform his magic in Dallas, and just like that, their team will be one game out of first place. The alternative is unthinkable.
“Impossible is a word only to be found in the dictionary of fools.” — Napoleon.
“Nothing in this world is impossible,” Rolle said. “I would take fool as a sign of weakness, not necessarily someone being a fool.”
Rolle was asked what he would tell Giants team about the kind of team they should expect to see on Sunday.
“A team you haven’t seen so far this year,” Rolle said.
So now these Giants walk shoulder to shoulder, the anguish and torment of 0-4 behind them, toward the Eagles, and away from Bereave Street.
And six days after asking Coughlin if he could speak to his teammates, Antrel Rolle believes that everyone else believes now, too, believes that every last New York Giant, cheered Sunday by their 12th man looking for a win and a prayer and a season saved, will be standing together on Believe Street.