The New York Giants faded into their bye week on a two-game losing streak, but despite the tumble, the defending Super Bowl champions don't suffer from a poor self image.
Defensive end Justin Tuck said Monday that Big Blue might be, if anything, too sure of itself, despite watching the team's NFC East lead over the Dallas Cowboys shrink to a single game.
"I think we've always been very confident, sometimes maybe too confident, borderline cocky," Tuck told the New York Post. "We lost a little focus. I think everybody on this team believes we can be the best team in the league when we're playing our style of football, it's just unfortunate that we haven't played our style of football in the past couple weeks. We have to find a way to get back to playing that."
Both the 2007 and 2011 Giants surged to championships off clutch quarterback play and a dominant pass rush. Eli Manning is slumping, and New York's defensive line currently is 13th in the league with 25 sacks after finishing third in that category last season.
"We're 6-4, but we're kind of blessed to be 6-4. We realize that," Tuck said. "Look at our last four games, none of those games were good games, even though we won two of them. Our sense of urgency has to be great. It definitely needs to start now. We need to come out of this bye running."
We've wrapped more than a few recent Giants posts by suggesting that coach Tom Coughlin will get the house in order, the defense will awaken and Manning will stop throwing ducks to ghosts.
That's probable, but the Giants' schedule doesn't soften down the stretch. The Green Bay Packers, Washington Redskins and New Orleans Saints are followed by the Atlanta Falcons, Baltimore Ravens and Philadelphia Eagles. None of these teams are here to roll out the red carpet for the king. The Giants need a win.
Follow Marc Sessler on Twitter @MarcSesslerNFL.
