Tom Coughlin not sold on Super Bowl comparisons
Giants Head Coach Tom Coughlin talks to media before practice at East Rutherford, New Jersey on October 28, 2015. Credit: Patrick E. McCarthy
The threads of familiarity that connect these Giants to past Super Bowl runs are beginning to wear thin. Despite some similarities between this season and 2007 and 2011 -- late-season losses to Washington, moral victories in tough losses to the Patriots, a defining game against the Jets -- Tom Coughlin said they actually have very little in common.
"I don't have them sitting in front of me in a box and go and look at them," Coughlin said of the narratives of those championship drives. "I would say each situation is different . . . I don't think they're related."
Hakeem coming along
Eli Manning said in his weekly WFAN interview that he did not want coaches to tell Hakeem Nicks where to line up or what route to run during practice last week so he could get a better feel for what Nicks knew and did not know about the offense. Nicks played 11 snaps and caught one pass for 4 yards/
Manning said he hopes to get him more involved. "We have to be smart about not putting him in there for too much or putting too much on his plate," he said. "I think as you go into the second week, he'll get more and more comfortable."
Giant steps
Coughlin still is unconvinced that Kirk Cousins scored a second-quarter touchdown Sunday on a play in which he tried to stretch the ball over the goal line, calling it "the controversial fourth-down quarterback sneak, which I understand you can't overrule it without irrefutable evidence, and there evidently wasn't any, but that was really close." . . . Coughlin said cornerback Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie is being evaluated for an ankle injury. "Hopefully, he's going to be able to go," he said . . . This is only the fourth time since the NFL reinstituted byes that the Giants lost both the game before and after their break. They did it in 2001 and 2002, then not again until 2014.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
