(New York Giants GM Jerry Reese speaks to the media after the teams bye week. Photo: Ron Antonelli NY Post)
New York Giants general manager, Jerry Reese, spoke to the media on Monday about his expectations heading into the second half of the season. The Giants won only three of their first seven games of the season with their most recent losses coming from division rivals, the Eagles and the Cowboys. The schedule doesn’t lighten up for the team either. The Giants will face the Colts on Monday Night at home followed by games against Seattle, San Francisco and Dallas. In fact its bad enough that Reese called the upcoming set of games “murderers row.”
Although the opponents might make it tough, Reese still has high confidence in his team and he wants to see them hit the ground running starting Monday night against the Indianapolis Colts, who are coming off a loss in Pittsburgh.
“We can get back in the race. It is not over right now. It is still early. There are still a lot of teams that have chance to get back in the picture. We think we are one of the teams that can do that. We have to start right here, right now, on Monday night and get ready to beat a good football team.”
Another reason that Reese has confidence is the due to the head coach for the Giants, Tom Coughlin.
“One thing I’ll never do, I’ll never bet against Tom Coughlin. He always seems to, when his back is against the wall the most, that’s when he seems to come out swinging and get his football team ready to go. I expect him to do the same right here going down the stretch. This is a big moment for all of us, the second half of this season. It starts one game at a time, one play at a time. I think Coach will get it done.”
With all that being said, Reese still thinks there are some things that the team needs to do to win a majority of the games coming down the stretch. One of the big changes that he wants to see is in the offense. Reese talked about the team not taking enough chances on the offensive side of the ball and worrying too much about making a mistake. He wants to see more trust in the receivers so that they are given chances to make plays.
“I just think, as an offense, we have to be more aggressive. I think at times we’re a little bit almost too cautious with what we’re doing offensively. This is the National Football League. You’ve got to go out there and you have to win the game. You can’t think something’s going to fall into your lap. You’ve got to go out and take the games. I think we have to be more aggressive offensively. I appreciate Eli taking care of the ball and not turning it over because that correlates to wins a lot of the time, but you can’t be too cautious. You’ve got to throw the ball down the field. You’ve got to score points in this league to win.”
The GM went on by saying he talks to the coaching staff all the time and expects a more aggressive offense for the second half of the season. I’m sure many agree that the offense needs to improve in many different assets, but how about the other side of the ball? Reese didn’t stop there. He went on by adding that not only does he want to see more aggressive play from the offense, but he also needs to see more from the defense.
“Talk about the offense, we have to play better defense as well. We had some long drives against us in that last game. We’ve got to make some stops somewhere in a game. We weren’t able to make some stops. We got some turnovers. We’ve got the 12 interceptions right there, but we still need to turn the ball over more and be more aggressive on defense.”
The Giants have also faced some big blows on the injury front. With Walter Turmond, Victor Cruz, and now Jon Beason out for the year the G-men really need help from their backups to come in and make up for the lost starters. Jerry Reese pointed out that many teams are dealing with injuries and the team can’t use that as an excuse for the team’s losses.
“It is football. It is a physical contact sport. You always have injuries. That is really no excuse. We never make that excuse for injuries. Everybody has injuries. When you have injuries, you have to take what you have left and manufacture wins.”
Lastly when asked about a possible move before tomorrow’s trade deadline, Reese said that the team has both made and taken calls from other organizations, but are happy with the production they are getting out of LB Jameel McClain.
“We keep all of our options open…We’ll see what happens by four o’clock tomorrow.”
Bobby O’Hara: PureSportsNY