Tuck now says he'll likely play Monday

If there is one thing Justin Tuck cannot stomach, he said, it is seeing a football player limp off the field, then return to action two or three snaps later. He sees that as a lack of toughness, and that's a trait Tuck holds dear.

He said it comes from his grandfather and his father, both tough men. He wrote about it in his new children's book, explaining that growing up with older sisters made him tough. "It's embedded in me," he said.

So when Tuck spoke Tuesday at an event at Central Park East Middle School, where he handed out copies of his book, it shouldn't come as a surprise that he thinks he'll play against the St. Louis Rams on Monday night.

"Talking to me right now, I do not see how I will not play on Monday," he said. "That's me."

The problem is, this neck injury is not something he can tough his way through. It's not like the shoulder problem that lingered throughout the 2009 season, or even the foot issues that he has played through for most of his career. This is his neck. Though he was happy to be told by doctors that this injury is not structural but muscular, that there is no chance of nerve damage, and that his situation is very different from the ones that caused Peyton Manning to have surgery last week and cost friend and teammate Mathias Kiwanuka his season last year . . . it's his neck.

As safety Antrel Rolle said, "You don't ---- around with that."

Tuck's instinct is to play through this. But he's smart enough to know that is not the wise move. In fact, perhaps he's too smart because he basically admitted that even though the doctors have told him all of those nuggets of good news, he's a little spooked. For the first time, he even wondered if he could do enough damage by playing too soon to end his career.

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"Your mind kind of comes into play with that a little bit, too," Tuck said. "You just want to take your time with it."

Tuck can move his neck well and has a good range of motion. He said the pain is mostly gone, but there is an irritation -- "an annoyance," he called it -- that lingers. He can go about his life fine, but he knows that banging his head into the Rams on Monday night could change that.

"If they had left it to me, I probably would have gone out there on Sunday [against the Redskins]," he said before tilting his head cockeyed. "And maybe I would have been walking around like this today."

He said he'd like to get a few hits in during practices this week, just to test out the area before going into the game, but Tuck said he'd be able to play without practicing. He said if his neck feels 100 percent Wednesday, he'll be practicing. If it's not, it'll be just like the last two weeks.

Tuck wants to play. He said it was difficult standing on the sideline for the first time since 2006, watching his teammates play. And watching them lose. "You always think in the back of your mind, 'What if I were to play?' "

There were some who were glad to see Tuck on the sideline, and not just Rex Grossman and Tim Hightower. Tuck said his wife, Lauran, was hoping that he would sit that game out.

"She's very supportive and I have the final decision, obviously," Tuck said. "But she was relieved that I didn't play."

There's still no telling how he -- or she -- will be feeling Monday night.

STORYLINES

Rolle: 'Skins not better

The Giants lost to the Redskins in the opener on Sunday, a game in which safety Antrel Rolle said the defense did not play with "urgency." But, he said, it was not a case of the better team winning.

"We, as a team and as an organization, we know that the Washington Redskins [are] not a better team than us," Rolle said Tuesday in his weekly radio spot on WFAN. "We know that hands down. If we played them 100 times, they might win five."

Rolle added when the teams play again in December, it will be one of the 95 times and not one of the five.

"We'll definitely prove that the next time around," he said. "We will prove that. And we will get after Rex [Grossman]. He's going to feel the Giants coming next time around."

Phillips in the box

Last week, defensive coordinator Perry Fewell said he didn't see the kind of leaps he was hoping to see from safety Kenny Phillips during the preseason. The second year after knee surgery, Fewell had said he was hoping to have the dynamic player the Giants thought they drafted in 2008. On Sunday, perhaps he got his first glimpse of that player.

Phillips had a team-high 10 tackles and two pass breakups -- one on a hit that dislodged the ball from Anthony Armstrong and another to deflect a deep pass intended for Armstrong. But the biggest change may have been the time Phillips spent at the line of scrimmage.

"Last year they were protecting me from my injury, they didn't want me to get banged up. This year I'm taking on a bigger role."

Beckum hamstrungTom Coughlin grimaced when asked if TE Travis Beckum will be able to practice this week. "I would hope so, but I don't have the answer for that," he said on Monday. Neither did Beckum, whose hamstrings tightened on him during Friday's practice causing him to miss the game on Sunday. Beckum said that he's had issues with his hamstrings that haven't gone away since he was a senior at Wisconsin. He said he suspects that it stems from compensating for another muscle, but he has no other soreness and doesn't know which muscle that might be.

"I know the coaches want to get me back," Beckum said, "but when you sit down and think about the best way to heal a hamstring, it's rest. It's one of those injuries that you don't want to keep trying to hurry back from."

Coughlin said one of the reasons the Giants' offense was ineffective on Sunday was because Beckum was not available after having practiced all week.