There’s life in these Giants.
Or at least the team ran into someone who is just as bad as they are.
Look Super Bowl XLVII is probably out, no one is thinking the Giants will run the schedule, but now, after this one win, they can at least put some hope for Super Bowl XLIX.
However, the 23-7 win, even though it was ugly, gave Tom Coughlin a chance to smile.
” I feel really good about our guys,” Coughlin said. “I’m happy for our coaches, happy for our players, happy for our owners. We’ve got to move on. Again, it’s not about me, but I sure do feel good winning and it’s one of those, “oh this is what it feels like, huh?”
At 67 Coughlin is not ready to hang it up. He deserves to go out on his own terms. And it also means he deserves to turn it around. Those two Super Bowl victories give him a lot of leeway to correct the mess that this team made for a month and a half.
And tonight, they looked decent. It was not a perfect game, by no means but they did what they has to do.
“Obviously it’s nice to win and hopefully it’ll give us some excitement, some enthusiasm, about coming to work this week, a short week preparing to play in the division this weekend,” Coughlin said.
And really the Giants have a chance to make this a respectable year. The next two weeks are winnable games. Philly is having all sorts of quarterback problems and the Raiders can be beat.
But the Giants have to do what they did tonight. Win with defense and no mistakes by Eli Manning.
“He had good vision tonight, I thought,” Coughlin said of his quarterback/ They came with a lot of pressure. They probably pressured two out of every three snaps. Don’t kid yourself, their front and those linebackers are good. They’re physical, downhill players, good football players, but yeah, Eli saw the things tonight very well. The vision was good. Obviously, he was very concerned about taking care of the ball. He did a nice job of that. That’s a great plus-two.”
There were some mistakes that could have been disasters, but it was enough for Manning to cover up and keep the game plan simple.
While the defense forced Josh Freeman to throw quickly and high to receivers he didn’t know, while stuffing Adrian Peterson and daring the new QB to throw the ball.
It was outstanding. It was an outstanding effort,” the coach said.” Guys played hard, a lot of people to the ball, which we knew we had to have. We did some good things in our coverage as well. I can’t say enough about our defense. They just kept playing. The only blemish was the punt return, which
drove us all crazy.”
So maybe this is not the lost season and the Giants will win a few games. The schedule does get a little easier over the second half and maybe, just maybe Big Blue has a chance to make some noise.
They needed one win. They got that tonight.