NFL

New Giants starting LB Herzlich up to Broncos challenge

Mark Herzlich has seen plenty of Peyton Manning’s record-tying, seven-touchdown performance in the Broncos’ season-opening win against the Ravens, but he doesn’t find the film scary or confusing or overwhelming. He finds it thrilling.

“When there’s a challenge that’s big like this, there’s always extra excitement,” Giants middle linebacker Mark Herzlich said after practice on Friday. “Any time there’s a great challenge like this, you need to rise to the occasion. It’s something that we’ve been proud of, the fact that we could do that over the past however many years.”

Herzlich will see much more of Manning than he could have anticipated, after starter Dan Connor was placed on season-ending injured reserve on Thursday.

Though the Giants signed Allen Bradford off waivers from the Seahawks, coach Tom Coughlin acknowledged Bradford would see limited playing time Sunday, leaving the Giants linebacking corps with only four players seeing regular action.

Herzlich, who only started four games in his first two seasons, has had issues in pass coverage — including allowing Jason Witten a poorly defended touchdown in the Week 1 loss to the Cowboys — and in squaring off against Manning, it feels as if Herzlich is being dangled above a volcano, doused in kerosene.

But the 26-year-old thinks he will validate his promotion.

“If I go out there and they don’t think I can do it, they’re just going to bring someone else in,” said Herzlich. “There’s tons of players they can grab, but I believe that I can and I believe the coaches know that I can do it. It’s a big opportunity.”

Winning the game and slowing Denver’s avalanche of an offense starts with interpreting Manning’s incessant audibles and dummy calls.

At middle linebacker, Herzlich recognizes how much responsibility is on him to communicate any changes to his defense and decipher whether what Manning is doing is anything more than a mind game.

“He does a good job of not letting you pick up on keys, but it’s not as much reading Peyton for these keys, but reading the formations and the other players on the field,” said Herzlich. “You can gauge a call on what he’s saying, but also what happens when he says something.”

Coughlin noted there has been a greater attention in meetings this week, and the defense has been “as quiet as they’d ever be.”

It’s not just because of Manning or because of what happened in Week 1, it’s because of the goals the Giants had set heading into Week 1.

“I don’t want to call it a wake-up call because it’s so early in the season. I think we’re just awake,” Herzlich said. “We know that this is a huge year. It’s not a rebuilding year. It’s not a year to say, ‘OK, we play this year then we can win the Super Bowl next year.’

“We have the Super Bowl at our spot. Everyone, all they talk about, when we envision the end of the season, it’s nothing but that paradeI think that’s what’s given us this awake feeling.”