Tuck questions team's smarts

Justin Tuck said that passion is not a problem for the Giants. But he did point to one area that obviously needs a lot of work.

“There’s no excuse for how we played today as far as intelligence,” Tuck said after the game. “We just had plays where it seemed like we had complete lapses.”

The Giants certainly weren’t playing very smart yesterday. From the emotional penalties to the left-handed passes, there were a lot of poor decisions made. Chop blocks, fumbles, dropped passes, delays of game, those aren’t matters, as Tuck called it, intelligence. But there were plenty of brain-locks for the Giants against the Titans.

Tuck seemed particularly irked by the personal foul penalties, one of them against Antrel Rolle, the guy who called out Tuck’s leadership skills earlier in the week. Rolle also blew off his penalty and his subsequent benching.

“We expect our vets to understand what this game is about and what they can get away with,” Tuck said. “Obviously Tennessee got away with some things and we got caught with some things. You don’t make any excuses about it. They were just dumb penalties and we have to play smarter.”

Tuck also said that those penalties are not on the team or the coaches.

“Penalties like that after the ball, that’s an individual penalty, that’s not a coach penalty,” he said. “Anything after the whistle blows is an individual penalty and we have to be smarter than that.”

“You can only go up to people and tell them to keep fighting,” Tuck said of talking to those who drew the penalties. “It’s an individual decision to retaliate to those things.”

The Giants aren’t used to losing like that, being out-thought and out-smarted on the field.

“We’re definitely not,” Tuck said.

So how does it get fixed?

“I don’t know,” Tuck said. “It’s a question I don’t have an answer to yet.”