Coughlin blames himself for loss; players don't buy it

Each time Justin Tuck was asked about Tom Coughlin's statement that the coach would take responsibility for the loss, that it was his fault that the game against the Titans spiraled out of control and slipped away, Tuck chose a different barnyard land mine.

Horse. Bull. Cow. All of them with the same crude suffix.

"We're all men in here and we all played on that field today," Tuck said. "[Coughlin] didn't make a tackle, he didn't throw a pass, he didn't catch a pass, he didn't commit a penalty. That's big of him to say that, but we lost this football game, and it's as simple as that."

If only it were.

The Giants came away from their 29-10 loss to the Titans Sundayso disoriented that it was almost impossible to know who or what to blame for it. Turnovers? Penalties? Special-teams play? Veterans who lost their cool at key moments?

It all came together to form a big old pile of . . . disappointment.

"This is about as frustrating as it gets," Mathias Kiwanuka said. "We lost today because of a lot of combinations. There is plenty of blame to go around."

While several Giants insisted that they won the physical matchup against the Titans and improved their execution, the Titans could say the same thing. This much is undeniable, though: The Giants, despite their sloppiness, were in the game and in position to at least make a move on the lead.

Trailing 19-10 late in the third quarter, the Giants seemed poised to score at least three points, but on first-and-goal from the 6, Ahmad Bradshaw fumbled the ball to the Titans.

On the Giants' next possession, they lined up for a 39-yard field goal that would have cut their deficit to six early in the fourth quarter, but a delay-of-game penalty messed with the timing and Lawrence Tynes wound up missing wide right from 44 yards.

Then, after the Giants held the Titans to a field goal and a 22-10 lead after giving them the ball at midfield, tackle Kareem McKenzie was flagged for unnecessary roughness on a second-and-10 incompletion that resulted in a third-and-25. The Giants turned it over on downs with a fourth-and-14 incompletion with 5:56 remaining.

"We were there," Coughlin said of the team's position before the McKenzie blowup. "Well, let's put it this way: It was very winnable when we missed the field goal."

Winnable games aren't what the Giants do lately. Going back to last October, the Giants are 4-10 in their last 14 games. Seven of those losses have been by at least 19 points. Their average margin of defeat in those 10 losses is 19.1 points, so statistically, this one was right in line with the last 11 months.

"We are just not good enough as a team right now," Barry Cofield said. "We can get better, we can get worse or we can stay the same. The way we are now, we are not good enough."

The defense had the more legitimate gripe in feeling let down. They held dangerous Chris Johnson (125 yards, 32 carries, two touchdowns) in check before a late 42-yard run that sparked Tennessee's only drive of more than 60 yards.

The offense turned the ball over in its first two possessions on interceptions thrown by Eli Manning - one a drop by Hakeem Nicks and the other an ill-advised lefthanded push from the Titans' 2 toward Kevin Boss - and was shut out in the second half for the first time in almost two years.

The Giants' only touchdown drive came at the end of the first half, when they hurry-upped 63 yards to tie the score at 10 on Bradshaw's 10-yard TD run with 36 seconds left. Their first three points came on a 50-yard field goal by Tynes with 4:12 left in the second quarter.

"Yeah, it was frustrating," said Manning, who had one of his best statistical games with 386 yards on 34-for-48 passing. "It was just so many sloppy things that happened . . . You can look back on the day when we watch the film and we'll see a lot of plays - 'Hey, that is a great job, it is a great job' - but it's the bad plays that are killing us."

Coughlin tried to deflect those problems by standing in front of them. "We gave a game away that we should have won,'' he said, "and I'll take the responsibility for that." But even the players he was trying to protect seemed to know that wasn't the case.