Q. Do you feel that the Giants are dangerous in regard to the fact they are coming off their first loss?
A. Well, whether the Giants won or lost, I feel that they are a dangerous football team. They are a good team. I know from watching them play for a number of years now. It is going to be a tough game for us on Sunday night.
Q. The Saints passed on them a lot successfully, do you find there are things you can learn from their success or is your offense unique in itself and you must develop your own game plan?
A. I think we all look at games every week in the league and see ideas and try to incorporate them. The Saints do some things differently than we do offensively and we obviously feel really good about our packages and how we use guys. You certainly look at the game, that is why you have the tape, and try to learn anything that you can to incorporate into what you do. But we have seen countless times that just because it was there one Sunday doesn’t mean that is going to be there the next Sunday.
Q. Gerald Hayes, what role has he been playing in your run defense?
A. Gerald obviously excels in that part of our defense because he is so physical and because he does such a great job of tackling, getting through the holes, taking on guards, all that you expect an inside linebacker to do. He has been playing at a high level for us this year and we have been very excited about that. He is a good player for us.
Q. Do you feel that if you can get Larry Fitzgerald one on one or Anquan Boldin one on one that they will make those plays for you?
A. I certainly think that is the way it is throughout the NFL. That is the common thread, you see that every Sunday with players making plays. I think what we try to do is put our players in positions to make those plays. We have a good group of guys that make plays. I certainly don’t see a lot of difference with the Giants. I know with their offense, from watching them on tape, that is exactly what they do. Steve Smith and Manningham have been making a bunch of plays for them this year. That is really what this league is all about. Once again, we design our schemes and work hard on them to try to best fit our personnel and hopefully have success on Sundays.
Q. Are you comfortable being labeled a pass first offense?
A. A lot of people want to talk about that, that’s fine. I feel like we try to do what gives us the best chance to win week in and week out. We have obviously had a tremendous amount of success throwing the football, but if you look at us the last couple of games we have had some success running the football early in the game and that is what has led to some of the sustained drives that we have had. I don’t think we are ever going to completely ignore the run. We understand that we have to do it. I don’t think we can ignore the fact that we have some pretty good receivers and a quarterback that does a good job of getting them the ball, as well.
Q. Is Anquan Boldin’s ankle still bothering him?
A. He didn’t practice today but that wasn’t anything different than expected. Any time you have an ankle those things have a tendency to come back quicker than say a hamstring or a pulled groin or those type of things. I was pleased with his progress and the exercises that he was doing on the field today, and we’ll see how it progresses as the week goes. It is very well documented how tough Anquan is and how many things he has played through. I would never rule Anquan out.
Q. The Giants have a receiver, Hakeem Nicks, who has been getting a lot of comparisons to Anquan Boldin. Do you see any of that?
A. Well, it is hard to because he is such a young player in the league. I think there is a whole lot of evidence about Anquan, and what he has done. I haven’t seen him in practice, I haven’t seen certainly the things he has done on a day to day basis that I have with Anquan, so it is really hard for me to compare them. I know from our scouting reports and our grades on him coming out were very good, we liked him. We thought he had a number of specific athletic qualities that we thought would be good in this league and certainly thought he was a good player.
Q. You made a somewhat surprising run to the Super Bowl last year. How difficult is it to get back on that level again?
A. The hardest thing that we have had to deal with is expectations. Not necessarily from outside sources, but from our own guys trying to live up to the reputation of an NFC champion. I think that caused us to press a little bit too much early in the season and play a little too uptight. That led to a number of mistakes that really hurt us, especially a number of turnovers or missed assignments. We were trying to be too perfect. That has been the hardest thing for us. After our bye week we have just been trying to get back to playing the way we played last year in the playoffs. That is with a little more looseness, a little more excitement, not so much worried about making a mistake and just kind of turning it loose. I think that has served us well the last two weeks.
Q. Something specific in the Indianapolis game that you are referring to?
A. I think that we saw it in the San Francisco game, the first game of the season. I think we saw it even a little bit in the Jacksonville game. The reason I said the Indianapolis game is because we had the bye week after that. That is really when you have the chance to go back and look at yourself and look at what is going on. Obviously, playing on Sunday night and getting beat up pretty good by them certainly helped that because you’ve got a tendency to really look at your team and yourself after you have had a loss like that.
Q. Going East for a road game used to be not a good thing for the Cardinals. Did your playoff game at Carolina dispel that and is it really not a big deal anymore?
A. It certainly made us feel a lot better about it and gives our team more confidence. Then after going to the East coast this year and playing Jacksonville and getting a win there and then getting a win in Seattle, which is a tough place to play, that certainly helped our confidence with that standpoint. So I think we feel good about how we travel, in other words, when we are going to leave and what our expectations are. We also know that we are going against a very good football team and it is going to be a tough atmosphere. I think having been in an atmosphere like it was in Carolina last year, you know the playoff game, and being able to hang in there and have some success certainly helped and hopefully it will help us at least start out well against the Giants on Sunday night.