IS GETTING ITS DRAFT BOARD READY
Unlike Andy Reid, who began his news conference with a long list of injuries, Giants coach Tom Coughlin was keeping things close to the vest, as he usually does.
Asked specifically about the health of running back Brandon Jacobs and defensive tackle Fred Robbins, Coughlin said: "They seem to be doing okay. I am not going to say what their status will be on Wednesday. We will take full advantage of today and tomorrow to get ourselves closer to that. But hopefully we can work even if it is in a limited basis. But we will see."
The Giants ended the regular season with losses in three of their last four. The Eagles have now won five of six after Sunday's victory over Minnesota. So, who has the momentum?
"Any time you lose you are upset and anytime you win you feel pretty good about it," Coughlin said. "But it never stops your ability to try to improve, to make corrections, to get your team individually and as a group playing better. And that is the thing that we have been focusing on. So that is what is most important to me. The regular season is over, whatever the numbers might be. We have been cast into a situation where we had the bye. You heard me say that I thought the bye was good for our team. I don’t know that I would necessarily say that every year. In this case, I thought it was. And so therefore we worked, we studied, and had an opportunity to have a weekend without a game and now we are back to work."
The Giants clinched a playoff berth on the day they lost to the Eagles when the Cowboys lost later that afternoon. The perception is the Eagles had much more to play for when the teams met in December and the Giants were not at their best. Coughlin was having none of that, either.
"I don’t know about that. I wouldn’t say that. I think we missed opportunities. We missed three fourth-downs that would have made, I think, a difference in the game; a fourth-and-four, and fourth-and-three, and a fourth-and-one. We had some opportunities we really didn’t take advantage of much. It was almost like a reversal of the first game over in Philadelphia where the scores weren’t – it wasn’t necessarily a high scoring game but time of possession was quite imbalanced. When we were over there it was in our favor. When Philadelphia was here it was in their favor. We had some outstanding rushing stats over there. They had some over here. So it was a game that was, as usual, a very, very physical game – as it always is. We didn’t take advantage of the opportunities that we had."
Obviously, plenty more on Giants-Eagles coming in tomorrow's Daily News.
Les Bowen has covered the Eagles for the Daily News since 2002. Before that, he spent nearly 13 years covering the Flyers. It took Les only a few seasons after the switch to figure out that there was no penalty box at the Linc, and that the time really wasn't his, despite what Andy Reid kept saying. Les came to Philadelphia and the Daily News from Charlotte in 1983. In the intervening years, he has pretty much lost track of NASCAR, and his accent. He, his wife Barbara, and their two sons live in Haddon Township, New Jersey.
Paul Domowitch has been with the Daily News since 1982. He has spent most of his 27 years at the paper covering the Eagles and pro football. For the last 10 years, he’s been a selector for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. A native of Wilkes-Barre and a graduate of Wilkes University, Domo came to the Daily News from the Fort Worth (Tx.) Star-Telegram, where he covered some god-awful Texas Ranger baseball teams. His first beat at the Daily News actually wa s boxing, which he covered just long enough to lose two sports coats to blood spatter before moving on to football. Domo and his wife Shelley, a University of Oklahoma grad and very dangerous to be around following a Sooner loss, have been married 29 years and have raised 2 terrific daughters – Allison, 26, a lawyer and graduate of Boston University School of Law; and Amy, 23, who graduated from Clemson and works in marketing and sales for a professional baseball team.
