No sing-a-longs on this extended road trip

This was the first time we saw the Giants since they returned home from Appleton yesterday. It was a long, exhausting and ultimately disappointing trip for them that included three nights in a hotel in the middle of Wisconsin.

Unlike their last Homeric voyage when they spent a day and a half in Kansas City before playing the Vikings in Detroit, this one was not filled with rookie talent shows or players trying to stay loose. It also came not before a game but after a loss.

“We just wanted to go home,” Keith Bulluck said. “You get beat up and you have to stay in those people’s back yard, that’s not really too cool. You go next door to get something to eat and everybody wants to talk about how great the Packers beat us and all that. We were very welcomed in Appleton. I think it would have been different if we had won. They might not have been so welcoming.”

Chase Blackburn said it was good to be alone in some relative quiet (I think he means that us in the media). “We were able to spend time together and talk about it a little bit, reflect and give us some time to go through it,” he said. “It doesn’t hurt. You’re there. The people who know what’s going on are there and you can talk about it and try to figure things out. It doesn’t hurt things. Being around your teammates is never a bad thing.”

Being in Appleton, though, can be.

“I don’t understand,” Bulluck said. “The two times that we do get stuck we get stuck in the two coldest places in America.”