Giants Nicks out 3 weeks with leg injury

Giants receivers have spent the last three weeks acting like a single-file line of lemmings, following each other one by one over the injury cliff. The latest to take the plunge is Hakeem Nicks, the team's leader in receptions, receiving yardage and touchdowns.

That Nicks was limping around on the field or after the game against the Eagles on Sunday was nothing unusual. He's been battling ankle injuries all season. But when doctors took a closer look at his latest problem Monday morning, they determined he had compartment syndrome in his lower right leg. He was sent to the Hospital for Special Surgery for a fasciotomy Monday afternoon. He is expected to be out for three weeks or so.

Compartment syndrome is swelling in the lower leg that compresses nerves and blood vessels. It can lead to muscle and nerve damage if not treated immediately.

The loss of Nicks along with the continued absence of Steve Smith - who is still another week or two away from returning from his partially torn pectoral muscle - leaves the Giants with only three healthy and available true receivers on the roster.

One of them, Derek Hagan, spent the first 10 weeks of the NFL season working out on his own after being cut by the Giants in September. He was re-signed by the team last week when depth issues at the position reached crisis proportions.

"I've got to be ready," Hagan said of his likely promotion to a starting job. "I have no choice. I have to be ready, I want to be ready, and I know I'm ready."

Another, Duke Calhoun, is an undrafted rookie out of Memphis who has caught one pass this season, a 4-yarder Sunday against the Eagles.

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"You've got your top two receivers out, it's always a big blow," quarterback Eli Manning said of his depleted arsenal. "But we learn how to fight, learn how to fight through it and other guys have got to step up . . . You just move on. You adjust. You think, 'Hey, who's going to fill that spot? How are you going to game plan and how are we going to go win this game?' "

Good question. The Giants' offense has sputtered the past two weeks, both losses within the division and games without Smith. The Giants also put Ramses Barden on injured reserve last week, the third receiver since the offseason to land there.

"It's crazy," Mario Manningham said of the injuries.

It also leaves Manningham as the only established receiver so far for this week's game against the Jaguars.

"Just have to make plays," said Manningham, the de facto No. 1. "Me and Eli have to be on the same page. I guess the wide receiver corps is depending on, I don't want to say me, but depending on us. We have to be big this week. We have to win this week. We must win."

Tom Coughlin said of the team's reaction to the injury: "They're men and they're going to have to handle this like all of us. Everybody in this league experiences injuries and how you deal with them is as important as anything else. We'll have to do some things offensively to pull all of this under control, to be aware of what we have and what we don't have."