NFL Preseason: Giants vs Lions

Preseason Opener Looms Several Giants talk about the start of the 2008 Preseason
By Michael Eisen, Giants.com

AUGUST 6, 2008

ALBANY, NY - The Giants will play their first game since Super Bowl XLII tomorrow night when they open their four-game preseason schedule against the Detroit Lions in Ford Field. Besides the fact that the Giants will be one of the two competing teams, little about tomorrow's game will resemble the Super Bowl. The latter, of course, was for the NFL championship and included the most exciting fourth quarter in Super Bowl history, one that will be remembered for as long as football is played. Tomorrow’s game will be played for much lower stakes, will be contested for the most part by backups and players who won’t be in uniform a month from now and the score will quickly recede from memory.

But to the Giants players and coaches, the game is important. Here is a sampling of what several of them had to say about the Giants’ first game of the 2008 preseason.

Head Coach Tom Coughlin:
“We are going to play a lot of people and see how they perform under game conditions, see how they do with the speed of the game, which I’m sure will be a surprise to a lot of these young guys. It’s a turf game, it’s an indoor game. See how they are under the pressure of having to execute assignments. How quickly they can react to what the opponent is doing. Be very conscious of who it is that is contributing on special teams and how they might be used going forward. (To) start on some of the objectives that were put forth in the offseason to our players in terms of our improvement. To assess, each and every time we play, but a big personnel-type of evaluation. I don’t think there will be any mystery about how we play. I’m not sure what Detroit will have in mind.”

Quarterback Eli Manning:
“Everybody is always looking forward to getting into a game situation. It’s good to kind of mix it up instead of going up against the same guys every day in practice. We’ve prepared for Detroit; we’ve watched a lot of film on them. I think everybody is looking forward to going over there and playing the game.

“I think you learn from every practice and every game that you play in. This game will help us get back into game speed and will help me get back to throwing under pressure, getting the ball off on time, and getting used to taking the hits. You know guys are coming after you and you’re going to get hit, knocked down, hopefully not too often, but it’s going to happen. It’s not a bad thing, because it will help you get back into form.”

Middle linebacker Antonio Pierce:
“We’re tired of hitting each other. I’m tired of seeing Brandon Jacobs, Derrick Ward, (Ahmad) Bradshaw and Eli. I want to hit someone else for once. You just want to get out there and compete and the only thing we’ve done at that kind of level was goal line and that’s not realistic. The offensive line has the ball at the two-yard line and they didn’t have to do any work for it. It will be good to go out there against another team. Detroit has a lot of weapons and we’re excited to go out there and play. We’ve got new faces on the defense, so it’ll be good to see the guys working well together in a game situation.”

Defensive end Justin Tuck, who will start his first game on the left side as the replacement for the recently-retired Michael Strahan:

“I don’t get bogged down with all that. It’s just a little asterisk next to your name that says you’re a starter now. Other than that, you continue to go out there and do what you did up until now. It’s still the same.

“Obviously we won’t play a whole game, but for the plays we are out there, we're going to take it like it’s the Super Bowl. We’re going to try and get our timing down and get a feeling for playing with one another again in a real live situation and work on the little things we didn’t do well last season.

http://www.giants.com/news/headlines/story.asp?story_id=27931