Giants at Lions Week 1: Coughlin calls Giants 'a work in progress'

During his Wednesday conference call with Detroit media in advance of Monday night's game vs. the Detroit Lions Tom Coughlin was asked the obligatory question about the state of the New York Giants offense. Here is how he responded:

"That question has been asked a million times because everybody jumps on the bandwagon over, "Where is the offense?" The biggest factor, of course, is the terminology change. A lot of what you see would be very difficult for anybody to differentiate. But it's there, it's a new system, new pieces in place here. We're a work in progress, let's face it. I mean, I don't feel like anybody claims that they're where they want to be before the season's even begun," Coughlin said. "There's been some progress made, but we need to go ahead and have some more. On occasion we did score some points, but our first group didn't score a lot of points, not that that's unusual. I can't remember a year that we did. We're striving to be as good as we can be."

Here are a couple of other highlights from Coughlin's presser:

On Detroit's defensive front ...

"They're a very, very good defensive front. They're aggressive, they're penetrators and powerful. They cause significant problems as you prepare. We just have to get ourselves ready and get our football team in a position that we want to be in."

On wide receiver Calvin Johnson ...

"Well, you better know where he is and where he is all the time. You better have some adjustments prepared for him and you certainly have to set your coverage, or set some of your coverages to try to be in a position to take the things he does really well, he does a lot of things really well, and at least be able to contest with those."

On Paul Brown, with whom he is tied in career coaching victories at 170 ...

"I have tremendous respect for Coach Brown and the accomplishments he had, what he did with both the Browns and the Bengals franchises and the quality of the individual that he was in terms doing exactly what he wanted to do and being advanced in the game in terms of the way in which he operated a messenger system, etc. (It was ) before its time, so (he was) an innovator certainly and (I have) great respect for Coach Brown."