Don't count New York Giants coach Tom Coughlin among those who was surprised at how difficult it was for the 5-2 Giants to defeat the 0-7 Miami Dolphins.
"We talked about this earlier in the week and I will say it again, they play hard. They are in every game. Every game is a knockdown, drag out in this league. That has never changed and I don't think it ever will," Coughlin said. "I didn't want to say much during the week because of the nature of playing them, but I think Tony Sparano is a hell of a coach. He got his guys ready to play under really difficult circumstances.
"I am very happy to win. We came in here wanting to be 5-2 and we are 5-2."
Coughlin understands what the Giants have in front of them, of course.
"It was a huge game for us, to be honest with you. There wasn't any bigger game and you take them one at a time. I thought this was very, very important because we want to be 5-2 moving into this part of our schedule," Coughlin said. ""We have to play better and we talked about this all week. We wanted to ascend and play better than we played two weeks ago today. We did that, parts of it perhaps, but certainly not the whole body of work."