Giants’ head coach Tom Coughlin has been in the business of coaching football for forty years.

He knows you don’t get anywhere by conceding before you have to.  To him, showing weakness is a weakness.

Giants fans are finding it hard right now to envision their team ever playing well again. Coughlin knows better times are ahead.  He urged his team to stay positive, and for the most part, they have. There is no backbiting or fingerpointing, His team has learned to win as professionals and now they are learning to lose as pros, a period in which Coughlin hopes will be “a quick one.”

Coughlin said the coaches spoke to the players after the game, and the mood was not one of despair as one would think.

“We said a lot of things. There wasn’t any sugar coating. You’ve got to be a man about the good and the bad. When things happen like this you just have to learn from it somehow, some way and eliminate it and maybe the next locker room will be a cheerful one. There should be no hanging of their heads or none of that stuff. What we did not get accomplished on the field is no one’s fault but our own.”

He elaborated yesterday on how he was not pleased with the way the coaches and players responded to mistakes, meaning adjustments weren’t being made.

“When we have a bad play as a team, we have always been very good and very resilient about bouncing back. It is almost like a challenge, the competitiveness. I don’t see that at this point in time and it is probably because something else would occur. These are all things that we’ve got to get a hold of, get control of.”

The issue of poor communication was also addressed: “……it is definitely correctable. I think on the long touchdown to Jackson there was a communication problem, which the coaches took responsibility for, which I will take responsibility for. It still should not have put us out of position with a two receiver route as badly as we were. We gave up the two long runs, which weren’t a communication thing. That was more of just a gap conscious type thing and when the ball did come through, we didn’t tackle well.”

In closing, Coughlin responded to a question regarding his choice to continue playing hard until the final gun, although Philadelphia had knelt on the ball in the previous series.  It is not in his makeup to surrender.  He offered some insight on the current temperature of the team.

“We have been in this type of situation before and we fought our way out of it and that is what we have to do now. As I tell the players, we’re going to fight, we’re going to battle, we’re going to scratch, we’re going to do everything we possibly can to change whatever this situation we find ourselves in right now. Until we make something happen, until we’re the ones that make the plays. That is the only sign, that’s the only way to get out of this.”