Coughlin: It’s far and away the guys that came out in the second half and battled and found a way to win a football game. I was disappointed in the way we started the game off. I thought even when our second offense came in the game, we didn’t get our feet on the ground probably till after the half. Once we started to have a pretty good mix of run and pass, it was a little bit better; but we hung in there and the defensive kids created a turnover. Did a very nice job there. Gave us an opportunity to get that other field goal… I thought both defenses on both sides of the ball played very, very well. Field position was a problem for us all night long, as you saw. The punter kept us backed up pretty good. We played a lot of people. We had a chance to evaluate a lot of people. Ojomo continues to do some very nice things out there. I thought the interception at the end of the game was an outstanding play by Laron Scott. Did anybody see that ball go out of bounds at the one? I saw it skidding through the end zone.
Q: It was brief but how did Hakeem Nicks look?
Coughlin: We got him on the field and that was the objective. I have to look at the tape, but there was obviously nothing… Hopefully he got a chance to get knocked around. He did on the one catch. He got knocked around pretty good and that was good.
Q: Is there a concern at all with the replacement officials?
Coughlin: I don’t have any control over any of that, so for me to say there is or there isn’t, you just have to do the very best you can with it. That’s not my decision. We just hope that these officials know the rules, know how to enforce them and can keep the game under control and keep order and hopefully they’ll be able to do that.
Q: What did you think about Jernigan’s and Randle’s punt return and where are you with that decision?
Coughlin: Well, we’ll see on that. I’m going to look at the tape.
Q: Can you talk a little bit about Broha and Ojomo?
Coughlin: Those two kids have really done a nice job the entire preseason. They play hard. They get after the quarterback pretty good. They’ve done a nice job in practice every day. They don’t miss a thing. They’ve been a very pleasant surprise.
Q: Are you concerned about the cohesion of the offense?
Coughlin: Well yeah. The continuity factor was quite obvious tonight. You take some people out of there and there are some people who have not been in there since day one and then for whatever reason, there were some mental errors tonight and some guys that we’re really counting on, it seems as if we had some mental errors. I’m going to have to look at the tape to verify all of that, but certainly there is concern. You expect that in the fourth preseason game, you’re going to run the ball and you’ll have a little bit of rhythm and tempo and there was none. If that’s what you mean by, ‘Am I concerned?’ Yeah. I would’ve liked to see them take the ball, drive the ball, score and I would’ve been able to take them out of the game knowing that a lot of times that’s what happens the last preseason game that we play. So yeah. That was a little bit of a disappointment to me that they weren’t able to do that.
Q: Did you keep those guys on the field an extra series or two to get some rhythm?
Coughlin: No, actually the play count was about where we were supposed to be. I do it one way or the other. At the quarter, somebody was not going to be where they would be, so they would have to come back and I wish they would’ve obviously done some… turned it around and played a little bit better. The second group did turn around the second half and did some things better and I thought they ran it better. Didn’t handle the pressures very well. A simple run through the linebackers seemed to cause real problems in the run. It shouldn’t have, but we’ll have to look at the tape to decipher that.
Q: Are you a coach that seems to never think you have enough time in the preseason or do you think your team is ready right now.
Coughlin: Well, no. You never have enough. I don’t care if you had the same old… In the old days, we used to have 35, 34 practices and the preseason. You never feel like you’ve had enough. And one of the things, quite frankly, that I will tell you that happens in the preseason that’s been of late is the schedule. It seems to be an issue, it’s very difficult to get your required number of practices in from week to week because you’re going to end up playing at different times and it causes the week to change. You’d like to play basically, so that you would have a week in between. I understand that’s a nice thing to say, but it doesn’t work out. But if you did have those kinds of practice days in between games, I think you at least would have a little bit more of an opportunity. For example, New England played three games in ten days? That’s harder to do. Last year we played two games in four games. It’s very difficult because you don’t practice. You don’t practice between games, you just have enough people to go ahead and play the next preseason game. But no. I would say that from the standpoint of being a coach that… I would never be satisfied with enough.