Giant Hope for a Win, Rolle’s the Good Guy, Injury Update and Other Notes from Thursday’s Locker Room
It’s been no secret that the Giants have struggled – badly at that—in the second half of this, their defense of their Super Bowl championship.
Despite being on the brink of elimination from the post season, add running back Ahmad Bradshaw and defensive end Mathias Kiwanuka to the list of players who think that the Giants will finish the year with a win on Sunday against the Eagles.
“I think, you know, this team has been here, has been in this predicament before and we just don’t want to end our season on a bad note,” Bradshaw said. “Our plans are to come out hard and play our hardest.”
But even the best laid plans can go astray, as this Giants team has found out over the last two weeks in particular. With the Giants firmly in control of their destiny, they squandered away two golden opportunities to make sure they were assured a chance at defending their title by putting together uncoordinated and, at times, lifeless showings against the Falcons and the Ravens not long after they completely dominated the likes of the Packers and the Saints.
That’s why Kiwanuka believes that the Giants need to stop worrying about the various scenarios that need to happen for them to get into the playoffs and start focusing on getting back to playing solid ball.
“I think when we play our best ball, I mean, yeah, sometimes we play better with our backs against the wall, but for this circumstance for this team, I think we need to just free our minds and be able to just go out there and play our style of football,” he said. “You start thinking about scenarios and what if this or that, then it can kind of distract you from what you need to do.”
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Safety Antrel Rolle was selected as the winner of the 12th annual George Young Good Guy Award, as voted on by the Giants’ chapter of the Professional Football Writers of America.
The award, named for the late general manager of the Giants, is given annually to honor a Giants player for his consistent and outstanding cooperation with the writers who cover the team. Rolle has emerged as a go-to guy for the writers in the locker room over the last two seasons for his willingness to stand up and answer questions regardless of the situation and to give his always-honest take on the pulse of the team.
TE Martellus Bennett finished second in the voting. DT Chris Canty finished third. In all, 12 players received votes from the members of the Giants media.
Previous winners of the award who are still with the team include WR Victor Cruz (2011), DE Mathias Kiwanuka (2009), DE Justin Tuck (2007), and QB Eli Manning (2008).
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Bradshaw, who was limited in practice today, said that he’s nearing 1,000 yards rushing on the season doesn’t mean as much to him as a win would. “You know, I missed a couple of games and, you know, sat out half for a couple of games, but you know, we’re not worrying about 1,000 right now. All we can, like I said, is worry about our execution and hopefully that will come.”
Bradshaw, who said he feels a lot better, said that he didn’t think he’d need offseason surgery “ as of right now” to fix his knee and/or foot, but added, “We’ll see after physicals after the end of the year where we got to go with that.”.
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DT Chris Canty revealed today that in addition to off-season knee surgery, he also had a procedure done on his eye to correct an issue he had been having.
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The Giants cornerback situation just became more of a concern as head coach Tom Coughlin admitted that starter Prince Amukamara suffered a setback in last week’s loss against the Ravens. Amukamara said that an ultrasound on his ailing hamstring, which he aggravated trying to defend Torrey Smith on a deep pass, “extended” it a little further down his leg. Amukamara didn’t sound very optimistic about his chances of playing on Sunday.
Meanwhile rookie Jayron Hosley was added to the team’s injury report with a quad injury. Hosley was listed as limited for Thursday’s practice.
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Coughlin said that tight end Travis Beckum, who was placed on the injured reserve list on Wednesday, didn’t re-injure the ACL for which he had surgery after the Super Bowl. Coughlin did not specify the exact nature of Beckum’s injury.
