Giants running back Jacobs ready and 'wired' for Eagles
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. - Giants running back Brandon Jacobs looks enormous in a football uniform, merely huge standing behind an interview podium. And Jacobs says he is healthy and ready to go for Sunday's game against the Eagles after missing 2 of the last 3 weeks of the season because of a knee injury.
"I felt good today," he said, after the Giants' late-morning practice. "I could go out and run full speed and make all the cuts. I'm ready to go."
And?
"I'm wired," he said.
Jacobs, all 6-4 and 264 pounds of him, has had knee problems for most of the season, but he hurt it more severely in the middle of the third quarter when the Eagles beat the Giants on Dec. 7. In the Giants' last three games of the season, he sat out a loss at Dallas, played in a win against Carolina, and sat out a season-ending loss at Minnesota. Given that, and the Giants' bye week, it will be nearly 3 weeks between serious bouts of contact.
Hence, wired.
"He is pretty darn excited today," Giants coach Tom Coughlin said. "I had to remind him the game is Sunday. He is a physical presence. He is a guy that we count on to set the physical edge and we are looking forward to getting him back in the lineup, obviously."
They have three running backs, but Jacobs and his bruising style remains the Giants' signature this season. He says that the knee has bothered him since about the third week of the season but that it hasn't prevented him from playing at a high level. And just listening to him yesterday, he really did sound eager to get out on the field against the Eagles, a team whom he acknowledges "has been playing very good football lately. We have to match their intensity."
Which is where Jacobs says he comes in.
"I want to go out and produce and get my team fired up," he said, adding, "It's January, we're still playing football and all of our games are at home. It can't be any better than that." *
