New York Giants coach Tom Coughlin covered a wide range of topics in his Monday press conference. Here are some of the highlights.
On the loss of Adam Koets:
We are disappointed in the loss of Adam Koets, who hurt his ACL. Adam was running out to the right sideline right in front of our bench and all of the sudden went down. Apparently it caught his shoe, his cleat, and he just twisted the wrong way. When we got to him, the doctors were just in the process of evaluating him but he told me he felt good and I didn't think it was anything.
Coughlin, by the way, said Kevin Boothe will be activated from the Physically Unable To Perform list to replace Koets.
On Dallas' firing of Wade Phillips as head coach:
I feel very badly for Wade, to be honest with you. It's a highly competitive business that we're in, and we want to win and we want to win every game. That's the nature of our profession," Coughlin said. "No one wants to see a coach dismissed or have his family go through what they're going through, so from a professional standpoint and someone that's one of the 32, we extend our best to Wade and his family."
On the excellent play of quarterback Eli Manning Sunday:
"He's playing with confidence, he's playing very well. He's very accurate with his passes. He's communicating well with his receivers and the receivers with the quarterback. The protection was very good yesterday against a very sophisticated scheme," Coughlin said. "I don't know if you realized the number of personnel combinations that Seattle had utilized in their games that we had to prepare for and I thought that the players handled it very well and the credit goes to them and to the coaches. Eli made an awful lot of big plays and the sustaining of all of these drives and finishing the drives with touchdowns in the first half was a real positive."
On the Super Bowl buzz that has begun around the Giants:
"I'm really not interested in all of the anointing and all of that stuff. At the beginning of the season, the anointing was the other way," Coughlin said. "All we're concerned about, again, is our team, the way we're playing, trying to be as good as we can be, our personnel being as good as we can be. I think that everyone in this league tries to be the best that they can be. You're praying that none of your injuries are significant injuries so that you can keep your team together and that is as much of a concern as anybody. We all have to play through no matter what the circumstances are, which obviously will be a challenge right away for us."
On the play of Shawn Andrews Sunday in his first start at left tackle:
"Shawn played well at left tackle. He did a good job and was energetic and enthusiastic about playing and for a guy that has played 17, 18, 19 snaps, he played 79 yesterday and responded very well," Coughlin said.
On will Blackmon's performance as a return man:
"He had the one really good punt return. He showed courage in coming up and not letting the ball bounce, utilizing the fair catch sometimes and other times not and the one opportunity that he had on kickoff return, we again didn't do a very good job of giving him a place to go and that continues to be a little concern for me, but I thought Will did a really good job for a guy coming right off the street," Coughlin said.
Rich Seubert was asked Monday about all of the shuffling the Giants offensive line had to do against the Seahawks, something which is now even more prevalent with the injuries to Adam Koets and David Diehl.
"We had guys play different spots, and the thing that we can do is move around. We all know what we're doing at different positions, so that makes us versatile. Whatever the coaches want us to do, we're going to go in and do it, and we're going to give it all we've got," Seubert said. "It's not that big of a deal to go from center to guard or guard to center."
Terrell Thomas said Monday that familiarity with each other is one of the keys to the improving Giants defense.
It's early on. We just hit the midpoint of the season and it's still early in the season. We're jelling. Obviously we weren't comfortable with each other in the [Indianapolis] game - no excuses, we got our butts kicked - but we're finding what each person likes to do. The coaches are definitely scheming a better scheme for each individual and putting us in better positions. We're just becoming very familiar with each other.
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