Jacobs wants to do more for less

Brandon Jacobs, the suddenly magnanimous running back, said he was willing to take his slight pay cut (which was turned into incentives for the 2011 season) for the betterment of the team.

“I kind of knew that we would be in a situation that we would have to do that to help win some games,” Jacobs said today. “The Giants made it very fair for me and the situation I was in, let me know that they like me around here and they want me to be here.”

It also helped that he knew the money would be going towards the re-signing of Ahmad Bradshaw.

“No question about it,” he said. “He played very well last year and the year before that … He was going to want to be compensated for his work.”

Jacobs said his goals for this year are to have “a lot of carries, a lot of yards, a lot of touchdowns.” Tom Coughlin said that he plans on using Jacobs more this season, something he is very open to.

“The way I run, I could take the whole load, no question about it,” he said. “I’ve done it before. But the way this league runs you need two healthy backs in order to win. I think we have more than two actually. It doesn’t matter who’s out there first, that doesn’t bother me. I just want to win.”

Jacobs was sort of saying the same things last year when he was first bumped from the starting job by Bradshaw, but it sounds like he believes it a lot more this summer. And, of course, he’s put his money where his mouth is.

“I want to win,” he said. “It’s not about the money and everything else. I want to be able to get out and win games. At the end of the day you can be as rich as you want to be and not win any games. That doesn’t help you out. You’ll just be an unsuccessful former player with a lot of money.”

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Two other asides on Jacobs. He said he feels healthy after an offseason of working out but not “beating on myself that much.” Meaning he’s in shape but has not worn himself out during the lockout. He said he feels as fresh as his 1-year-old son Quinn.

And Jacobs said he was disappointed that Plaxico Burress did not return to the Giants. “It was very upsetting but I understood where he was coming from,” said the close friend who had told us this spring that there was no way Burress would ever return to the Giants. “He wanted to come back here. After two years of telling me this and that and the third, his mind changed a little bit. But no matter what happened to him over the last two years the man still wanted to be compensated in a good way. He went where the most money was.”