Tom Coughlin, Giants excited about new season

Tom Coughlin is such a man of stability, such a preacher of rigidity and routine, that you'd expect him to treat this week and this game like any of the previous 16. The next game may be the most important, but it's no more important than the one before or after it.

Wrong.

This is the playoffs, baby! And even Coughlin can appreciate a little letting down of the collective hair.

"I like the different feel," the coach said. "I like the idea that this is something special. This is the second season. There are only 12 teams involved in the tournament. So I like it to be upbeat, uptick, I like it to be an exciting week.

"I like the sense that this is what, in fact, you play 16 games for, to get to this point and be able to play, hopefully, many more games. Four more, anyway."

And it all starts -- or ends -- Sunday. The Giants host the Falcons in the first-ever playoff game at MetLife Stadium and the Giants' first postseason appearance since January 2009. It's been a long drought for a team that had gone to the playoffs four seasons in a row, a team that won 10 games a year ago but was left out.

This year the Giants believe they have what it takes to win a fourth Lombardi Trophy. For the last five months, they've been working to get to that point. Now they have a month left. The journey, in some ways, begins anew.

"It's the third season," Brandon Jacobs said. "You have the preseason, which is going to be turned up from training camp. You have the regular season, which is going to be turned all the way up and is a whole different ballgame. Then the playoffs are going to be turned up a lot more as well, and that is just the way it goes. Teams are going to be that much stronger, they are going to hit that much harder and be that much faster."

The opening game of the playoffs can be a good barometer of what success lies ahead. Their average margin of victory in the four opening-round wins of their Super Bowl seasons has been 23.5 points, and no game has been decided by fewer than 10 points.

The Giants have an opportunity to not only beat the Falcons and advance, but set the tone for the next games.

Of course, the other guys are thinking the same thing. Quarterback Matt Ryan is almost exactly where Eli Manning was when he brought the wild-card Giants to Tampa Bay just over four years ago. Ryan was a first-round draft pick who came in on the heels of a popular quarterback who had postseason success, and he's lost his first two playoff appearances.

"It is the first opportunity that I have and we have as a team this postseason," Ryan said, brushing aside past questions about his winless track record. "We are excited about that. All the stuff that happened in the past doesn't really make a difference. It comes down to preparing this week and doing whatever we can to keep advancing throughout the playoffs."

That's what it's all about. And it's enough to make even Coughlin quiver.

"I'll tell you what, it's exciting," he said. "When you're sitting there late at night, it's exciting."