Justin Tuck miffed by comments from Packers' Clay Matthews

ALBANY -- Justin Tuck bounced between grateful and grated in his response to Clay Matthews' comments that the Packers beat themselves in their playoff game against the Giants.

"Thank you for giving us the game, Clay," the defensive end said yesterday. "I appreciate it a lot."

Matthews, in an interview with Yahoo! Sports, insisted that the Giants never beat the Packers in the NFC playoffs last January.

"We picked the most inopportune time to play our worst ball," Matthews said in the report. "The fact is, [the Giants] didn't beat us; we beat ourselves. We need to play our best ball when it counts. This year, I expect us to be right back where we should be."

This isn't the first time the Giants have heard other teams and other players suggest they were lucky to win the Super Bowl and that their championship was a fluke. For a while, the Giants laughed it off. Tuck isn't laughing anymore.

"I don't find it comical," he said. "I find it somewhat depressing. We lost games last year where luckily for us we got the opportunity to play the next week . . . It's football, it's a funny game."

Of course, this isn't over yet.

"We will see Green Bay again this year," Tuck said of the Nov. 25 prime time game at MetLife this season, "so we will see who lays down that week."

Coughlin: 'It's personnel'

Tom Coughlin said the Giants starters will play 15-18 snaps, the second team will go 20-25, and the third stringers will mop up the rest in Friday's preseason opener against the Jaguars. While Coughlin wants to win, that's not the goal of this game he noted.

"It's personnel, it's always about personnel," Coughlin said. "We'll play them just exactly the way I've talked about it and will not sacrifice that part of it. Hopefully we're good enough and deep enough that the guys will get in the game and respond and enjoy themselves and play hard and give us a chance to really do some evaluating and trying to figure out how people fit."

Giants steps

LT Will Beatty (back) is said to be improving but missed another practice Wednesday. Coughlin would not rule out the idea of moving David Diehl from right tackle back to the left side if Beatty misses significant time. "There's all kinds of thoughts," Coughlin said . . . Coughlin said 11 or so players won't make the trip to Jacksonville, including LB Michael Boley (hamstring) who had practiced twice this week but sat out Wednesday.