Healthy Boley puts charge in 'D'

The Giants won six of their first eight games and were looking strong in what might have become their seventh win when Michael Boley fell injured on the grass at Candlestick Park. The linebacker had pulled his hamstring, and he missed the next 21/2 games. The Giants lost all of them, including the one he left against the 49ers.

He came back and was running at about 70 percent for another few weeks, he said recently. The Giants lost two of those three games.

Finally he started playing the way he did earlier in the season. The Giants haven't lost since.

Anyone see a relationship there?

"A little bit, yeah," Boley said Monday, trying to remain humble while acknowledging the connection between his availability and the Giants' success.

Not everyone is as bashful. Defensive end Dave Tollefson was asked what has sparked the defense to play so much better in the last month.

"Boley coming back healthy," he said quickly. "I don't think it's one thing, but maybe you could say that."

Boley certainly made an impact against the Packers on Sunday. He led the team with nine tackles, was credited with two sacks and deflected a pass. His two sacks came at key times, too. The first was on a third-and-6 and forced the Packers to punt with less than a minute remaining in the first half, which led to the Hakeem Nicks Hail Mary touchdown. The second was on fourth-and-5 from the Giants' 39 in the fourth quarter and gave the Giants the ball on downs.

"He did an awful lot of things," Tom Coughlin said. "He rushed the passer with the two sacks, he had hits on the quarterback, he was very physical in his tackling and he covered well. He displayed a lot of the things that he can do [Sunday night], and when he is on the field, we have a lot more options than we have when he is not."

His absence was felt immediately in the 49ers game. Backpedaling in coverage against Vernon Davis near the Giants' goal line, he collapsed with 41 seconds left in the second quarter and the Giants trailing 9-6. They had to put in rookies Spencer Paysinger and Greg Jones to replace him. Jones got lost in coverage on a 31-yard touchdown pass to Davis early in the fourth quarter, part of the 49ers' 15-point outburst in 61 seconds. The 49ers won, 27-20.

"I guess going back up there could be a little extra incentive because I didn't finish the first one," Boley said of this week's NFC Championship Game in San Francisco.

Boley said the game plans remained the same in his absence but admitted that the execution did not.

"That's like taking your corner away and expecting to have the same coverage as the guy before," he said. "It's just different."

Now it's coming back to being the same. And Boley? He wouldn't put a percentage on how his hamstring feels, but clearly it's improving. Perhaps even back to where it was when he went down against the 49ers.

"Almost," he said. "Stay tuned."