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Have you seen what the New York Giants have been up to in free agency? No? Me neither, and I cover the division!

Ah, we kid, we kid. Jokes about the Giants' offseason inactivity are so 2011. It is what it is, as they say in places where Giants fans live, and after the way last season ended, there's no reason to think it's going to change. Those of us who ripped Giants general manager Jerry Reese for not doing enough to improve his team last summer (and yes, of course, I very much include myself) are full to bursting from all the crow we had to eat once Reese's bunch won the Super Bowl. And the Giants' uninspiring list of 2012 free-agent pickups to date -- let's call them Martellus and the Special Teamers -- isn't worth getting worked up over now that even the doubters understand the way the Giants look at the NFL world.

See, the issue last year was that those of us who criticized got caught up in the impatience that defines our times. My point, after watching the Giants stubbornly ignore immediate needs at every level of the draft and do nothing in free agency to address the exodus of seemingly important passing-game targets, was that their philosophy wasn't working. Although it was admirable that they were determined to stick to a plan about which they felt strongly, that plan had produced two straight years without a playoff appearance and was therefore fair game for questioning.

But Reese and the Giants were looking at the landscape more broadly, and that's to their credit. The Giants don't use the draft to address immediate needs. They believe that's a poor use of draft picks -- that rushing to plug a hole with a first-round or second-round pick reduces the value of those picks. The Giants view the draft as a means of building, augmenting and maintaining a deep roster -- the kind of roster that can withstand free-agent defections, plug holes from within and consistently challenge for a playoff spot. The kind of roster that, in the years when it does reach the playoffs, has what it takes to win postseason games and the Super Bowl.

The Giants don't view free agency as some huge shopping mall stocked with all kinds of desirable goodies. Sure, if they see someone they like who plays a position where they need help, they're not above making an aggressive move to get him. Antrel Rolle is a good example from two years ago. Last year, they targeted a center, David Baas, and got him. This year, they targeted a tight end, Martellus Bennett, and locked him up on the first day. But their approach in free agency is measured, focused and patient, and that's the way they believe it should be.

Patience is a hard sell in today's sports culture, where two years without a playoff appearance can feel like an eternity even if the people running the team are the same ones that brought you a Super Bowl title not long before. So last year, the Giants' front office found itself under attack for inactivity. But Reese insisted that inactivity was the right path. The Giants believe in their system, in their coaching staff and in the core of veterans in their locker room. Reese told everyone he'd had a 10-win team in 2010 that missed the playoffs and believed his 2011 team could be better by just enough to get in this time. Lots of us thought he was nuts.

To his credit, at the Super Bowl, Reese declined to accept the accolades. He pointed out more than once that his 2011 team had won only nine games -- one fewer than the previous year's team -- and that he found it funny that somehow he was a genius this time around. Again with the big-picture viewpoint. Reese know there's some good fortune involved -- that if the Eagles hadn't kicked away so many September games or if Miles Austin had caught that pass down the sideline late in the game in Dallas, the Giants very well could have been looking at three straight years without a playoff game. This NFL is a razor's-edge business, and one can do very little to control the placement of that fine line between success and failure.

But what the Giants do is position themselves the best they can to take advantage when fate smiles on them. They don't want their season to ride on the worthiness of a couple of big offseason signings. They don't want their season to rise and fall on the immediate readiness of their first-round draft pick. If the Giants get an opportunity, they want to know they have a roster, driven by gutsy, respected leaders like Tom Coughlin, Eli Manning and Justin Tuck that's deep and talented and experienced and driven enough to spot it and take advantage of it.

That's what last season was. The Giants weren't the best team in the NFL in 2011. For most of it, they weren't even close. But they may have been the toughest. And when the time came for that to matter -- for the toughness and the depth of their roster to deliver -- that's exactly what happened.

So here the Giants are again, sitting idly by while the rest of the league rushes out to grab free agents. Do they have some holes they could fill? Sure they do. Might not filling them cost them a game or two this season? Absolutely. But the Giants know who they are and what they have. And after winning a second Super Bowl title in five years, they feel very good about it. They could win the Super Bowl again next year. They could go 8-8 and miss the playoffs. But these are the Giants, and they know one year won't define them. It's a lesson that a lot of other teams -- and a lot of us who analyze and predict this league -- would do well to learn.

INDIANAPOLIS -- So the New York Giants are on their way, scheduled to arrive here Monday afternoon to begin their preparations for Super Bowl XLVI. The New England Patriots got in last night, and I believe they practiced this morning. I know you're dying for updates, but to this point there just aren't many. So here's what's happening for the rest of the day.

At 3:30 p.m. ET, Patriots coach Bill Belichick will address the media at a downtown hotel. Following that, six Patriots players will be available for interviews. I'll go to the Patriots' media availability, even though this isn't the AFC East blog, because it's right here in the hotel next to me, I have nothing else to do and you never know what you'll learn when you get a chance to talk to these guys.

Giants coach Tom Coughlin is scheduled to have his news conference at 4:30 p.m., assuming the plane gets in on time and all of that. Those times tend to fluctuate on travel days. After Coughlin's done talking, six Giants players -- Eli Manning, Victor Cruz, Mathias Kiwanuka, Justin Tuck, Antrel Rolle and Chris Snee -- are supposed to be available for interviews. That list could change, but it sounds like we'll get a pretty good group of Giants to pester this afternoon.

I will of course be on hand for that, trying to ask the questions you guys would ask if you were all here and reporting back on what I find. We'll do video reports as well as the regular blogging, so do me a favor and click on the videos. Every click helps.

Back with you in a little while.

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- It's tough playing cornerback for the New York Giants, where the defensive line gets all the love and the best cornerback in the league plays for the other New York team. And for much of this season, the Giants' secondary was the team's Achilles' heel -- a near-laughingstock that was famously ridiculed on national TV by Cris Collinsworth and obviously targeted by opposing offenses.

But anyone who's played defensive back in the NFL will tell you how important it is to have a short memory and a ton of confidence, no matter how much attention anyone's paying to you. As the Giants prepare to play the Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI, their secondary remains unbowed and as confident as ever.

"If you keep doing your job, the attention will come," Giants cornerback Corey Webster said Friday. "Me, I think I'm great. I think I'm the best thing out there. I'm sure Aaron Ross feels the same way, and our whole secondary feels the same way. That's how you're supposed to feel when you take that field."

There were certainly times this year when the men in the Giants' secondary could have justifiably felt otherwise. Only three teams gave up more passing yards than the 4,082 the Giants allowed. And while those three -- Green Bay, New Orleans and New England -- were among the very best teams in the league, a number like that still isn't good for your personal or professional pride. After a four-game losing streak in which they allowed an average of 304 passing yards per game, a victory over Dallas in which they allowed 305 more and a loss to the Redskins in which Rex Grossman was 7-for-10 on third downs, the Giants' secondary looked like such an easy target that Mark Sanchez and the Jets threw 59 passes against them in the Christmas Eve game.

That turned out to be a huge mistake, however, as the Giants' secondary was in the process of turning a corner. They blanketed the Jets' receivers, won that game and haven't lost since. And while the defense still lives and dies with the performance of its pass-rushing linemen, the performance of the secondary has been a big part of the five-game win streak that has landed the Giants in the Super Bowl.

"Our play speaks for itself," said Giants safety Antrel Rolle, who does more than his own fair share of speaking. "There are a lot of reasons we've played better. We're more focused. We're on the same page with our defensive coordinator. And we're on the same page with each other, and that's the biggest improvement."

The enduring images of the Giants' secondary from last Sunday's NFC Championship victory over the 49ers are the two times San Francisco tight end Vernon Davis got behind them for long touchdowns. But true to the defensive back's code, the Giants' DBs were pointing out this week that Davis only caught one other pass, that the 49ers only caught 12 total and that six of those were caught by the running back. Safety Deon Grant said the first Davis touchdown wasn't the result of Rolle getting beat, but rather the result of zone coverage that wasn't executed correctly, and that the Giants' safeties and cornerbacks relish the challenge of slowing down the Patriots' great tight ends the way they did the Packers' Jermichael Finley two weeks ago in Green Bay.

"Those tight ends are more like tight end/wide receiver combinations, so it falls right into what we do," Grant said. "We have safeties who can cover, corners who can cover. When we're matched up against these best tight ends out there, we don't want to play zone. We want to play man-to-man and show off our skills."

You can't play defensive back in the NFL without that level of confidence, whether justified or not. And the Giants' defensive backs are a case study in forgetting the bad stuff quickly. If cornerback Aaron Ross had wallowed in early-season struggles that got him benched in Week 2, the Giants would have been floundering even more than they already were on pass defense through November and early December. But Ross shook it off and helped fill the gap created by preseason injuries to Terrell Thomas and first-round draft pick Prince Amukamara.

"Aaron was a guy they drafted in the first round," Grant said. "He was a guy who was here when they won the Super Bowl the last time. And now you're seeing that same first-round guy and that same guy who helped win that Super Bowl. He's back. He's healthy. And he's the old Aaron Ross again."

Plenty of swagger and no desire to look back. That's the way these Giants' defensive backs are built. When practice ended Friday, Rolle shared a friendly handshake with Collinsworth, who'd called the Giants' coverage "amateurish" and said Rolle had been "barbecued" by Dez Bryant in the first game against the Cowboys. In the days following that game, Rolle was critical of such analysis and explained in detail what had really happened on the play in question. But on Friday, when Collinsworth showed up for practice as part of NBC's preparations for the Super Bowl, all was forgotten.

"We're cool," Rolle said. "There's no hard feelings in this league. Collinsworth and I, we've always gotten along."

The defensive back's code: What happened in the past stays in the past. And none of it matters to the Giants now.

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- Every step Tom Brady takes now brings a new accolade. The New England Patriots quarterback is making a case as the best ever to play the game. When he faces the New York Giants on Feb. 5 in Indianapolis, it'll be his fifth appearance as a Super Bowl quarterback, tying John Elway for the most ever. If he wins, it'll be his fourth Super Bowl title, tying Terry Bradshaw and Joe Montana for the most ever. Those are Mount Rushmore quarterbacks, and the presence of Brady's name among them marks him as not just great but all-time great. If the Giants were intimidated, it'd be hard to blame them.

But they aren't, of course, and the main reason is their first-hand knowledge that Brady is beatable. They know this because they have done the beating. They beat him four years ago in Super Bowl XLII, when Brady and his Patriots were 18-0 and hadn't looked beatable all year. They beat him in Week 9 of this season, up in Foxborough, where no other team has beaten him in the regular season since 2006. Brady and the Patriots have won 10 games in a row since that one, which makes you wonder if the Giants have some sort of secret formula.

They say they do not.

"Every time you play against Tom, you have to go to the drawing board," Giants defensive end Justin Tuck said Tuesday. "He's definitely going to look at what we had success against him with the first time and come out with something to beat that. You have to do something different."

Perhaps. But there are certain basic elements of what the Giants do that have caused Brady problems in those two most recent meetings. In Super Bowl XLII, the Giants sacked Brady five times. Only once in his career has he been sacked more. In this year's Week 9 game, they got just two sacks, but the pressure they put on him led to two interceptions and a fumble. The Giants rely on their four down linemen to generate their pass rush, and Brady was a little bit less effective this year against defenses that dropped at least seven men into coverage. He averaged 8.1 yards per attempt in such situations as opposed to 9.9 when defenses rushed at least five.

Little of that matters, though, once the defense gets on the field and finds itself tasked with actually stopping Brady.

"He's tough, man," Giants safety Antrel Rolle said. "When I'm in zone coverage, I can just see him scanning the field and I'm like, 'Dang!' The way he scans the field, he's so good at it and so quick, it kind of stuns you for a second. He's an exceptional quarterback, man, and he gets all of the credit he deserves and then some."

But the Giants' healthy respect for Brady's abilities is part of the reason they've had success against him. Rather than relax and get comfortable in the knowledge that they've beaten him before, they remember how difficult it was, and their resolve and concentration intensify.

"We're going to have to have a few game plans in, and it's going to be a chess match," Tuck said. "I think every quarter, we'll have to throw something at him that he hasn't seen, or something we hope he hasn't seen from us, just to try to slow down his reads. Because if he gets a sense of what you want to do to him before he snaps the ball, it's pretty much impossible to stop him."

In the end, though, the Giants know it's not. And as they prepare to face Brady and the Patriots in the Super Bowl, that's one of their psychological advantages. They know he's great, and they know what he can do to a defense when he's on his game. But they also know that they have the ability to get him off of his game.

"He thrives on mismatches, and I think we match up well with them," Tuck said. "The people we have in our secondary, we have safeties that play like corners. They're going to do some things that we may not be ready for at the beginning of the game, and hopefully we'll be able to make those adjustments and keep them kind of stopped on offense."

Humble enough to know that "kind of stopped" is the best they can do against Brady, the Giants take comfort in knowing they can pull it off. They've done it in the Super Bowl. They've done it at his home stadium. If they've done it before, they can do it again. And when you're playing Tom Brady at this time of the year, the knowledge that it's even possible to beat him is no small thing.

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Eli Manning isn't the only one sick of the "Is Eli Elite?" story line. But in response to a question Tuesday about a half-year-old story that started out silly and hasn't grown any less so, the New York Giants' quarterback left no doubt that he's not interested in spending the next two weeks dissecting the context or the consequences of a claim he made in a radio interview last summer.

Asked at the time by ESPN New York radio host Michael Kay whether he considered himself an elite quarterback in the class of the Patriots' Tom Brady, a confident Manning answered in the affirmative. A nearly inexplicable firestorm of debate ensued, and the story has followed Manning throughout his best NFL season. As he steered the Giants into their second Super Bowl appearance in five years, Manning left little doubt that he belongs on the list of the best quarterbacks in the league. But he never had any such doubt in the first place, and as a result, he told his questioner Tuesday, he never regretted what he'd told Kay.

"I thought I gave an honest answer," Manning said Tuesday. "I didn't regret it at the time or think anything of it at the time. Obviously, it was made into a big deal, but I can't control that. I'm worried about getting ready to play this game, play my best football and get our team ready to play our best football. My job is to play the game. It's your job to talk and make up stories."

Sheesh. A little bit harsh there at the end, if you ask me. But then again, the message of the day from Manning was that it's time to get serious. Prior to meeting the media, Manning addressed his teammates and gave a speech about how it should be conducting itself during this first of two weeks of Super Bowl practice and preparation. He told them to make sure and get all of their administrative stuff taken care of — tickets, hotel accommodations for family and things like that — so they could focus on practicing as if they were playing this Sunday instead of next Sunday.

"I was just telling them a little bit about how to prepare for this," Manning said. "Just a few things on just the mindset of this week. Prepare this week like you're playing this week, because once we get to Indianapolis, you've got to take a bus ride to practice and the whole schedule gets thrown off."

Manning is one of 15 current Giants who played in the Super Bowl against the Patriots four years ago, and there are others in the locker room who have played in other Super Bowls. But Manning is taking on the role of locker room leader and making sure the team's mindset is where it needs to be with one more football game yet to play and win and a slew of distractions along the way there.

"Excellent message from Eli," Giants safety Antrel Rolle said. "Even for a player like myself who's been to a Super Bowl, it's still great to hear someone speak with that kind of leadership. Eli doesn't say much, but when he says it, he means it and you know it comes from the heart."

Oh yeah. This is Eli Manning's team now. And whether it's with his play or his measured, direct message in the locker room, he's left no doubt in the mind of anyone in the building.

SAN FRANCISCO -- There are enough New York Giants fans in the crowd here at the NFC Championship Game at Candlestick Park that you can hear shouts of "Cruuuuuuuuuuuz" whenever the Giants' Victor Cruz makes a catch. They've had plenty of chances to make noise so far.

Cruz had eight catches for 125 yards in the first half as the Giants built a 10-7 lead over the San Francisco 49ers. Giants quarterback Eli Manning has done just about everything he's wanted to do, completing 16-of-27 passes for 181 yards as his offensive line has protected him well against the 49ers' fearsome front. And he's completed passes to seven different receivers. But Cruz, the breakout second-year star who finished the regular season third in receiving yards, has given San Francisco the most trouble.

The Niners took an early lead on a 73-yard touchdown pass by Alex Smith to Vernon Davis -- a play on which Davis got behind Giants safety Antrel Rolle and never looked back. But San Francisco had just 71 total yards on its other 21 first-half plays. So other than one big play, the Giants' defense has held up.

I would keep an eye on the 49ers' running game going forward, as the line was opening big holes and Frank Gore was moving the pile on their second-to-last drive. But the story of this game so far is a Giants offense that possessed the ball for a whopping 18:03 in the first half in spite of rushing for only 35 yards on 13 carries and has yet to turn the ball over. If those trends continue, the Giants are in a good position to cash in some of that offense for points in the second half.

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- What do you do when your success comes before your adversity? You win the Super Bowl when you're 24 and you spend the ensuing years building on that, emerging as one of the dominant defensive players in the NFL, becoming a captain of your team, piling confidence on top of confidence, accolade on top of accolade. And then out of nowhere, at age 28, you're confronted with new, painful challenges that poke at your belief in yourself. What do you do?

Justin Tuck sure didn't know. The New York Giants' star defensive end has had a rough season. Groin, shoulder, neck and foot injuries kept him from being the player he's spent his whole outstanding NFL career proving he can be and the teammate his fellow Giants expect him to be.

"The way I like to lead is by example, by going out on the football field and doing it," Tuck said Wednesday. "So this year's been tough for me in that regard, as far as leadership. It's been growing pains, learning how to get your point across without doing it on the football field, which I had previously liked to do."

Fortunately for the Giants, Tuck figured this out before it was too late. Along about Week 16, when teammate Antrel Rolle started making public comments about guys who weren't practicing every day but maybe could, Tuck started changing the way he felt about his nagging injuries. That same week, Giants coach Tom Coughlin and GM Jerry Reese spoke with Tuck about shaking off the pain -- of accepting that he wasn't going to feel his best, but playing and leading by example anyway.

The result has been brilliant for the Giants, and brilliantly timed. Tuck has played his best football of the season over the last four weeks. And as the Giants get ready for Sunday's NFC Championship Game in San Francisco, their defensive leader finds himself in that blissfully right state of mind that had eluded him all season.

"One thing I learned this year is that the guys respect what you've done," Tuck said. "A lot of times this year, I wasn't saying anything, and guys would come up to me and ask, 'Why are you so quiet? Why didn't you do this or that?' And I'd tell them why. And they came to me and were like, 'You don't have to worry about that. We know you're not 100 percent, but that doesn't stop you from being a leader.'"

Tuck is a smart and thoughtful guy. You see it instantly when you interview him. A lot of athletes go right to the easy sound bite, but Tuck engages his interviewer, thinks about his answer and offers helpful insight. He seems willing to consider outside points of view and differing perspectives. So it's not surprising to learn that when his teammates, his coach and his GM started talking to him about ways to change his mindset, he was receptive. It also helps that he's strong enough mentally to actually do it.

"I like the adjustments that he made," Coughlin said. "He just decided that he's not going to allow any more distractions from the standpoint of the hurts. He has made that decision and he has stuck with it, and I think it's a very smart move. He's been very productive since doing it."

We forget sometimes, as outside observers of these games, that these are actual people who play them, and young ones at that. We like to put these players in boxes and assume we have them figured out. Tuck won the Super Bowl when he was 24 years old and played great for the three years that followed. Why should we have thought he'd ever be anything other than what we already knew him to be?

But none of us is a finished product at 24, 25, 26 or 27 years old, and neither is our favorite star athlete. Compared to a lot of teams and a lot of people, things came easily for a lot of these Giants early in their careers. Tuck, Eli Manning, Brandon Jacobs, Osi Umenyiora ... all of these guys were wearing Super Bowl rings in their mid-20s. But each had the bulk of his career still ahead of him, and growing to do. True greatness isn't measured by the title you win when you're a kid who got hot and didn't know any better. It's measured by the way you build on that, learn from the adversity sure to follow and find a way to be great again.

Those early career champion Giants all went through this. Manning with the interceptions. Jacobs with his demotion and weird behavior issues. Umenyiora with his contract dispute and ugly public feud with GM Jerry Reese. And Tuck, this year, with his injuries. Each of those players has emerged from his mid-career adversity better for the experience. Manning led the way, playing brilliantly from the start of this season. But the light has gone on for the others at the right time.

Jacobs is running as hard as in the old days, no matter what Jerry Rice thinks. Umenyiora has shoved the contract stuff to the back burner and is focused on knocking down quarterbacks again. And Tuck? Well, yeah, the nagging injuries are still there. He's still in more pain than he'd like to be, and it's still keeping him from doing everything he'd like to be doing on the field. But this year, at a still-young 28, Tuck has learned that that's OK.

"My teammates know where my heart is," Tuck said. "My coaches know where my heart is. And I just came to the realization that I'm not going to be healthy this year. I'm not going to put up the stats that I've put up. But that doesn't mean that I can't help this football team win games. And at the end of the day, that's the goal."

The wind blows, fish swim and New York Giants safety Antrel Rolle talks. Rolle is a very good football player, but talking is the activity for which he is best known. At a time when pro athletes are looking for ways not to talk the media -- specifying only one day per week on which they'll do interviews, for example -- Rolle is a nonstop talking machine.

He talks on Mondays, when players are still weary from the game and the flight home. He talks on Wednesdays and Thursday and Fridays, when the locker room fills with reporters looking for colorful quotes and insight. He talks after games, win or lose, happy or angry. Heck, he even talks on Tuesdays, which is the players' day off. He does a weekly radio appearance on Tuesdays that's appointment listening for everyone who covers the team because it almost always generates news.

"Trel likes to talk, but he's a guy you listen to," Giants linebacker Mathias Kiwanuka said Sunday, after Rolle turned in his best game as a Giant in the playoff victory over the Packers at Lambeau Field. "When he says something, he usually has a reason why he said it."

Of this season's Giant developments, the emergence of Rolle as a voice of locker-room reason had to be among the least likely. This is his second year in New York; he signed as a free agent from Arizona before the 2010 season. A year ago, he was complaining about Tom Coughlin and saying the playoff-bound Jets had better team chemistry. A month ago, after the loss to the Redskins that dropped the Giants to 7-7, Rolle stood at his locker and talked about how guys needed to stop sitting out practice with minor injuries.

This is stuff you're not supposed to say to the media -- stuff that stirs controversy and can injure that aforementioned team chemistry. And with the Giants' secondary playing as poorly as it was at the time, the immediate reaction was to proclaim Rolle a malcontent. Columns were written in New York suggesting that all Rolle did was talk -- first guy to the microphone, last guy to the ball, stuff like that. Outside the Giants' locker room, the first reaction to Rolle's words was concern that the team could be on the verge of a meltdown.

But inside the locker room, the reaction was much different. Rolle's words in the wake of the Redskins loss hit home with defensive end Justin Tuck, who had been sitting out practices with nagging injuries but playing on Sundays. Never mind that Rolle went out of his way, that day and in his radio spot two days later, to say specifically that he wasn't calling out Tuck. Tuck, a tenured Giant with a Super Bowl ring who could either have easily brushed off Rolle's perceived swipe or angrily fired back, took the words to heart. In Tuck's own words, what Rolle said "struck a chord." After that, and a conversation with Coughlin, Tuck was back on the practice field that week along with Ahmad Bradshaw and several other teammates whose nicks and bruises had been keeping them on the exercise bikes.

"I can't take credit for that," Rolle said Tuesday on that weekly radio appearance on WFAN in New York City. "Guys have turned things around on their own and for the betterment of this team. We have one goal in mind, and that's to compete and win a championship."

In that same interview, Rolle was asked about 49ers tight end Vernon Davis, who'd said a few days earlier that he'd "prayed" for the Giants to beat the Packers. Rolle's answer was this:

"If he said that, I can only hope that he was saying it just because they wanted to get a home game. You know, they'd better be careful what they ask for, because their wish has been granted and we will see those boys come Sunday."

The second part of the quote is the one being played up, because that's the way things work in this league and this business these days. But the fact is, Davis was clearly, and as he himself explained, only saying what he said because the 49ers preferred to play the NFC Championship Game at home. By now, Rolle surely knows that, and although it's possible this "Rolle vs. Davis" storyline will be kept alive this week, you can be certain Rolle won't be the one responsible for doing so. He talks, yes, but he doesn't appear to suffer nonsense. Rolle's talking has a purpose.

He may come off as a blustery yapper, but what Rolle has done over the past few weeks defies the modern sports establishments' attempts at easy categorization. This is a guy who talks -- all the time, yes -- but also backs it up. His individual performance against the Packers, which included occasional one-on-one coverage of Greg Jennings and Jermichael Finley in addition to his usual safety role, was one of the main reasons the Giants' secondary held up against Green Bay's aerial attack. Earlier this year, while they were waiting for top draft pick Prince Amukamara to return from injury, Rolle served as the nickel cornerback. For all of his talk, he has been an obvious and willing team player since arriving in New York. And upon further examination, all of Rolle's talk seems to have real, team-oriented purpose behind it.

Rolle's not out there bellowing about how great he is. He's not getting in the opposing coach's face and yelling, "Time to shut up, fat boy!" as a teammate of his did. He's not planting deleterious information about teammates in off-the-record interviews. Rolle is out there, playing hard, and the talking he does is intended for the good of the team. Although his personality might not appear to fit the traditional Big Blue profile, Rolle has emerged late this season as one of the leaders in the Giants' locker room.

He's doing it his own way, sure, and it's doubtful anyone saw Rolle-as-leader coming. But when he talks, even the veterans in that room listen. And leaders are judged, in the end, on results.

Little bit of snow and ice on the ground here as I went to bed last night, but it all seems to have melted away by morning. Must be the proximity to those red-hot Giants.

Also hot, fresh and ready to go are today's links.

New York Giants

Antrel Rolle articulates the vibe emanating from every corner of the Giants' locker room and organization at this point. "In our minds," he says, "we can't be beat." I've said this a few times over the past week or so: There's something about the way these guys are saying this that, when you hear it, doesn't sound arrogant. I know that's crazy to say, but the sincerity with which this team believes in its own abilities right now is striking. I've covered championship Yankee baseball teams that hedged more when they talked about what they could accomplish. And those guys almost always sounded arrogant!

With the help of some of the participants, Sam Borden and Richard Sandomir relive the last Giants-49ers playoff game from nine years ago. Beware, though, Giants fans who remember the game. It's not for the faint of heart.

Philadelphia Eagles

This Giants run isn't sitting very well in Philadelphia, where fans of the brutally disappointing 2011 Eagles are naturally wondering if their team could have made it this far if it had managed to get itself in the playoffs. Rich Hoffman says no, and he's got a few reasons, not the least of which is the difference between the two teams' quarterbacks.

The DeSean Jackson situation still looms as the most pressing player-related issue the Eagles face this offseason. Garry Cobb writes that, should the Eagles lose Jackson or decide to let him go, it's a good offseason in which to find a replacement No. 1 receiver.

Dallas Cowboys

Calvin Watkins writes that the main difference between the Cowboys and the Giants is that the Giants are more mentally tough. He also writes that the Cowboys have greater personnel deficiencies at offensive line, secondary, pass rush and wide receiver depth than do the Giants. Maybe, maybe not on some of those, but the fact remains, if the Cowboys had just beaten them once, or held on against the Cardinals, this story would read a lot differently. The fact that the Giants have made this run doesn't obscure the fact that the NFC East race could have gone any one of three ways with two weeks to go. What's not in dispute, though -- and never was -- is the Giants' mental toughness. They have that in buckets.

Yeah, and Dez Bryant's in the news again, reportedly having been detained after a fight at a Miami nightclub. Hey, who hasn't been in fight at a Miami nightclub, right? Seriously, though, we obviously don't have all the facts, and it doesn't appear Bryant was arrested. But when you're Dez, and you have Dez's record of off-field knuckleheadery, then justified or not, this goes on the pile, doesn't it?

Washington Redskins

Ryan Kerrigan spoke with his hometown paper about his rookie season with the Redskins, the adjustments he had to make to have the success he had, and what it was like for he and his fellow rookie linebackers to have to buy dinner for the veterans.

Folks in Washington, D.C., and Prince George's County, Md., have been working on ways to try and get the Redskins to move their training facility to one of those places, but it appears Loudon County, Va., which is where they are now, is going to at least put up a fight. Says here they're offering to build Dan Snyder a Redskins Hall of Fame. Snyder's in luck if multiple entities are bidding against each other for this, of course.

GREEN BAY, Wis. -- A few thoughts on the New York Giants' 37-20 playoff victory over the Green Bay Packers on Sunday at Lambeau Field.

What it means: Well, it means the Giants are one game away from the Super Bowl. The defeated the 15-1 Packers on the Packers' home field and now get a chance to avenge another of their regular-season losses next week in San Francisco. It also seems to give credence to the theory that playing at playoff-level intensity in the weeks leading up to the playoffs can give a team an advantage.

Who are these guys?: These are not the same Giants that were losing four straight games to fall to .500 and into second place a little more than a month ago. We knew they were tough, and that Eli Manning was a fourth-quarter assassin. But during those tough November/December days, it did not appear as though the Giants had the manpower to win these kinds of games against these kinds of teams. They are healthier now, and they look as focused, driven and confident as any team left in the field. And they are a legitimate threat to bring home the fourth Super Bowl trophy in franchise history.

Discipline deep: The Giants looked lost in coverage in the first quarter, as they did for most of the season. But they tightened up in the second and made plays in the secondary all day when it counted. Green Bay helped out by dropping its share of passes, but Antrel Rolle led the way for a clearly fired-up Giants secondary, and for maybe the first time all year it looked as though the front four was feeding off what the guys on the back end were doing. Michael Boley got two sacks from the linebacker position as the Giants tried everything they could to get Aaron Rodgers to stop beating them with his legs. Most importantly, the Giants stayed disciplined in the secondary, so that even when they didn't break up the pass, there was a safety and/or a cornerback there to keep the gain from turning into a big, backbreaking one. It wasn't always pretty, but they did an excellent job of keeping the Packers' explosive offense in front of them, and they benefited as a result.

Winning the turnover battle: The Packers are plus-23 in the turnover category during the regular season. But the Kansas City Chiefs -- until Sunday, the only team to have beaten them -- didn't turn the ball over at all against them. And the Giants had a 3-1 turnover edge in Sunday's game. Manning threw an interception, but the Giants recovered three Green Bay fumbles to seize the edge in a category that routinely decides games in the NFL.

Who's No. 1?: Victor Cruz has been the headline-grabber in New York this year, and for good reason. But Hakeem Nicks showed everybody he's still the best wide receiver the Giants have. Nicks turned in the long catch-and-run that's becoming a Giants' staple -- a 66-yard touchdown catch in the first quarter. He caught the Manning Hail Mary in the end zone that gave the Giants a shocking 20-10 halftime lead. He finished with seven catches for 165 yards and made the biggest plays of the day.

Big plays at the right time: The Giants were 8-for-15 on third-down conversions for the game. The Packers were 6-for-11, which might have been the story if the game had swung the other way. But on this day, the Giants had the better offense.

What's next: The Giants will travel to San Francisco, where they will play the 49ers in the NFC Championship game at 6:30 pm ET. The winner of that game will advance to Super Bowl XLVI two weeks later in Indianapolis.

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — They gave up 360 passing yards the last time they played the Green Bay Packers, and that wasn't even the worst day of the season for the New York Giants' secondary. It is not the strength of their team, and the main reason it's looked better lately is the effective aggressiveness of the defensive line as it pressures quarterbacks. But while he's clearly not ready to proclaim that all is well on the back end, Giants coach Tom Coughlin believes his secondary will be better in Sunday's playoff rematch in Green Bay than it was in the 38-35 Week 13 loss at the Meadowlands.

"We're definitely going to be tested in the secondary, obviously," Coughlin said before Wednesday's practice. "There has been improvement — a plastering effect, if you will. Much better than it was a few short weeks ago. I think that's the growth of the confidence that comes from the pass rush, to the ability to stop the run and then to be able to execute on the back end — knowing full well that naturally there's yardage to be gained but nevertheless that we stay away from the big play."

Against the Packers, with their dynamic and myriad receiving threats and quarterback Aaron Rodgers' pinpoint accuracy, that's the best for which you can hope. The Giants must trust their pass rushers to harass Rodgers and then make sure their cornerbacks and safeties don't get burned for anything too deep. Rodgers can beat them by throwing short all the way down the field, but at least if you force him to play that way you're giving yourself more chances to make a play to stop him or get a turnover.

"We have to do our job in the secondary and make sure we take away their wide receivers," safety Antrel Rolle said. "I understand they're an awesome opponent, but then again so are we. I wouldn't put any opponent on a pedestal."

One thing the Giants have going in their favor is that they're much healthier on defense than they were in the first Green Bay game. That day, linebacker Michael Boley was still coming back from a hamstring injury. Chase Blackburn had just been signed off the street. Osi Umenyiora was out with an ankle injury. Safety Kenny Phillips hurt his knee in the second quarter and had to come out of the game. Safety Deon Grant said Wednesday he remembers the all-hands-on-deck feeling from a game in which he had to spend some time at middle linebacker.

"A lot of guys were just out there guessing," Grant said. "So I think the biggest thing this time will be the ability to play full-speed and just being concise on everything with everybody in the right place and knowing what they're supposed to do."

Will it be enough to slow down Rodgers & Co.? We'll find out Sunday. But the Giants definitely go into this game feeling better equipped to do so than they did six weeks ago.

Just feels like something's missing. A Tuesday with no Power Rankings. What do we have to get angry about? Well, there's the chat. And you know you can always count on the links.

New York Giants

Ian O'Connor chatted with Giants coach Tom Coughlin, who admits he missed being in the playoffs "a lot."

I don't understand the deal with Greg Jennings and what he said on Twitter, because I heard a live interview with Jennings on the radio on Sunday morning in which he said the Packers don't even think about the 2008 playoff loss to the Giants. So I don't get what that's about. Regardless, Antrel Rolle, who never stops talking, says the Giants are better now than they were when the Packers beat them by three points on Dec. 4. And I think he's right.

Philadelphia Eagles

John Smallwood says it's a mistake to read Jeffrey Lurie's postseason news conference as a Super Bowl-or-bust ultimatum for Andy Reid. I'm not sure who read it that way. But I do think Reid's 2012 team needs to at least threaten the doggone thing or else Lurie's 2012 postseason news conference is going to have a different outcome for the Eagles' head coach. The Eagles will need to be one of the best teams in the league in 2012. A Super Bowl title, as Lurie knows, depends on too many capricious elements to serve as the basis for an ultimatum.

Sheil Kapadia has a breakdown of the Eagles' secondary performance in 2011 under coach Johnnie Lynn, who was fired Saturday.

Dallas Cowboys

Tim MacMahon reports that Cowboys secondary coach Dave Campo, who's been with the team 18 years, won't be back in 2012. As we've written here before, Jerry Jones is all-in on Jason Garrett as head coach, and it appears this offseason will offer Garrett the chance to make his own coaching staff a little bit.

Along those lines, Calvin Watkins wonders if former Dolphins head coach Tony Sparano, who has a good relationship with Garrett from the time they spent together on the Cowboys' staff, could return as an offensive line coach. Lots of shuffling still potentially in the works here.

Washington Redskins

Evan Bliss hands out some awards for the Redskins in the wake of their 2011 season. It's not pretty.

John Keim reviews the offensive line, and concludes that the Redskins will need to find a new right tackle and add depth behind the starters at the other positions. The line was an area of strength for the Redskins for much of the season, while it was healthy and not suspended.

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- The New York Giants' players were a little nervous when they gathered, three Tuesdays ago, for their weekly meeting with head coach Tom Coughlin. Two days earlier, they'd been embarrassed at home by the Washington Redskins in a loss that put their playoff hopes in jeopardy. Their experience with Coughlin told them that he could be a little harsh in these types of situations, and they braced for the worst.

But Coughlin surprised them by going positive. His speech that day was about the opportunity that lay in front of them. Two games, against the Jets and the Cowboys. Win them both, and you're division champs. You're a group of young, talented men who have the world by the tail. It's the week before Christmas. Relax and have fun out there. There's no better spot to be in than December in the NFL with a chance to make the playoffs.

Coughlin says it wasn't the first time he's gone positive with his message to his team, but he admits it runs counter to his stern reputation. So why did he do it this way this particular time?

"Because I know the team," Coughlin said Wednesday. "I know the people."

He also knew what time of year it was, and that factored into the decision to set an upbeat, supportive tone. Knowing his team was effectively playing playoff games from that point forward, Coughlin decided to see whether he could build an emotional wave for the Giants to ride into the postseason. It worked, and as a result, the Giants go into Sunday's wild-card playoff game against the Atlanta Falcons in their strongest mental state of the season.

"That's why he's been coaching as long as he has," Giants safety Deon Grant said. "He knows what to say and when to say it. A message like that, I'm not sure it would have been heard the same if he came out with it in the middle of the season. But he knew the message was right for the people he was talking to and for the time of year it was."

You look for reasons to believe that your team has an edge at this time of year, and the Giants have some things going for them. They have a quarterback who's been through this before and won a Super Bowl, and who's playing as well as he ever has. They have that defensive line healthy and wreaking havoc on quarterbacks. And they have a 16-year veteran head coach who's also won a Super Bowl and who's proved again that he knows which buttons to push and when.

"We responded, didn't we?" said Giants guard Chris Snee, who in addition to playing for Coughlin is also married to the coach's daughter. "We came in with a lot of enthusiasm and a lot of energy the past two games, and it showed. That's something that's got to stay with us throughout this whole playoff stretch, and I think it can."

This is one of the benefits to having a veteran coach who's been in a variety of situations. He has perspective. He can assess a lot of different options, weigh them against the circumstances and his own experience and choose the appropriate course of action. Contrast it with Cowboys coach Jason Garrett, who's been a head coach for a year and a half and couldn't get his team fired up for the game against the Giants that decided the division title. Garrett might have said the wrong thing, might have not said enough. Heck, he might have said the right thing, and his team just didn't respond to it. But Garrett's first failure under pressure is the first clinking penny hitting the bottom of his empty piggy bank of experience. Coughlin's piggy bank is hernia-inducingly heavy, and that appears to have paid off for him in the form of a division title.

"It speaks a lot for Coach Coughlin," said Giants safety Antrel Rolle, whose relationship with his coach has had its trying moments in the past two years. "Guys are going out there and fighting for him, fighting for this team. It speaks a lot about him."

Three weeks ago, the story in New York was about whether Coughlin was at risk of losing his job if the Giants missed the playoffs for a third year in a row. He's signed through only 2012, which is about as close to lame-duck status as NFL head coaches get, and much was being made of his second-half record since becoming Giants coach. But Coughlin doesn't suffer nonsense, and there was no point in getting caught up in any of that. Rather than worry about what might happen if the Giants kept losing, Coughlin thought about how great it would be if they won -- just two more games, both at their home stadium. Then he brought that message into a team meeting. He pulled Justin Tuck aside and told him it was time to start thinking positive instead of moaning about all of his nagging injuries. He set an enthusiastic, supportive tone at exactly the right time, knowing it was the right thing for his particular team.

"I think he's had this team the whole time," Snee said. "The road was bumpy, but when it came to gut-check time and we had to win two games, we delivered. He's never for one moment allowed us to think the coaching staff has lost belief in this team, and we've believed in them the whole time."

That's good coaching, folks. The kind of coaching that makes you think a guy deserves a multiyear extension this time, instead of just the one year. But Coughlin's not worrying about that right now. He's working on making sure he makes the right moves to extend this Giants playoff run as far as he can. Based on what we've seen in the past month, it might be foolish to bet against him.

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know what I think about New York Giants running back Brandon Jacobs. This is a guy who likes to yap and yap and yap when things are going well and hides when things aren't. A classic bully who compensates for his own shortcomings by attacking others only when he's 100 percent sure he has nothing to lose by doing so.

That Brandon Jacobs showed up again Saturday.

Jacobs got into a confrontation with Jets coach Rex Ryan as the Giants completed their victory over the Jets. Jacobs described the confrontation as he'd seen it, saying "the coach approached him, used an expletive and said, 'Wait till we win the Super Bowl.'

Added Jacobs: "And I told him I'll punch him in the face. I told him out of all these Giants players on this team you're talking to the wrong one. And that was that."

Ryan acknowledged that he and Jacobs "had a private conversation. He doesn't like me; I respect him."

I'll give Jacobs this: He's the wrong Giants player for an opposing coach to get into a shouting match with. Because it's just not worth it. Jacobs is the worst kind of modern athlete -- one who can't shut up when things are going well and is nowhere to be found when they're not. He and the rest of the Giants were doing plenty of well-deserved crowing when Saturday's game ended. The Jets came after them with the trash talk and the Giants won the game. But Jacobs has been in the middle of too many off-field controversies and too few big plays over the past couple of years for him to be worth the time of someone like Ryan.

Don't get me wrong here: An opposing coach has no business confronting an opposing player on the field. Ryan should have played the part of the grown-up instead of getting down in the mud and messing with a player who is clearly not. But for Jacobs, coming into the press conference and acting the tough guy was classic bully behavior. I've been around the Giants when they've lost and Jacobs has been a big part of the reason why. And on those days, he has almost nothing to say for himself -- or to anyone affiliated with the other team.

Giants safety Antrel Rolle -- never one to shy away from the microphones -- was told after the game that Ryan had admitted he was wrong when he'd said earlier in the week that the Jets were the better team.

"The thing about Rex is, he's a man," Rolle said.

He's a man who shouldn't have bothered with Brandon Jacobs, who's only a man when he's looked both ways and made sure it's safe to cross the big-mouth street.

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- With his team reeling, his defense getting pummeled week in and week out and a storm of negativity swirling around his team in the final two weeks of the season, New York Giants coach Tom Coughlin gathered his charges this past Tuesday and woke them up. This isn't so bad, he told his players. Sure, we've lost five of our past six games and our defense is giving up third-down conversions as if they were candy canes. But we have two games left, and if we win them both, we're division champs.

"I don't know if it was anything we said; I think they realized the circumstances we're in," a giddy Coughlin said after the Giants' 29-14 victory over the Jets on Saturday. "These are young men. They're talented. They've got the world by the tail. It's a great time of year. There's a lot to feel good about. If you'd said before the season that, with two games to go we could still determine our fate, we'd have signed up for that."

And now, the same is true with one game to go. The Giants' victory over the Jets sets up a one-game showdown, right back here, next Sunday against the Dallas Cowboys. If the Giants win, they're NFC East champs. If they don't, the Cowboys win the division and the Giants' season is over. In spite of all of the injuries, all of the losses and all of the blown coverages along the way, the Giants have pushed their season to the final week and they still have a chance.

"What better time to be playing your best football?" asked Giants defensive tackle Chris Canty, whose sack of Mark Sanchez in the end zone with 2:24 left in the game produced the safety that put the game on ice. "December in the NFL, that's what it's all about. We still have the opportunity to accomplish everything we set out to accomplish, and that's a good feeling."

Coughlin's message really hit home with the defense, which turned in perhaps its finest all-around effort of the season. It was another down game for quarterback Eli Manning and the passing offense (save for Victor Cruz's electrifying, game-turning 99-yard touchdown catch a couple of minutes before halftime). But unlike last week, when they lost to the Redskins, the defense bailed them out this time. After allowing opponents to convert 54 percent of their third downs over the previous five weeks, the Giants held Sanchez and the Jets to 4-for-21 on third downs.

"I think our defense played lights-out football for four quarters," Giants running back Brandon Jacobs said. "And I think we had more fans in the stands than they did, here at Giants Stadium -- a.k.a. MetLife Stadium."

It was a chippy week between these two rivals. The Jets, as is their wont, did a lot of talking and boasting. The Giants fired back a few times, but generally the Jets' chatter bothers them more than they care to admit. There's little doubt they drew extra motivation from what was going on in the week leading up to the game, and after the game the big boss admitted as much.

"Given all of the talk that was coming from Florham Park [where the Jets practice], this means a little bit more," Giants owner John Mara said in the locker room.

But while the Giants definitely play better when they can get themselves motivated, the key to this game was the toughening up of a defense that had been the league's plaything for the better part of two months. The Jets decided to attack a Giants secondary that had been giving up tons of yardage, and while Sanchez threw 59 passes, he completed only 30 for 258 yards, one touchdown and two interceptions.

"When he throws the ball 60 times and he doesn't get 300 yards, that's definitely a win in our book," Giants safety Antrel Rolle said. "They made a couple of comments in the paper about our secondary, so we knew that was probably how they were going to attack us."

Cornerbacks Corey Webster and Aaron Ross did a great job of keeping the Jets' receivers in check. Webster and safety Kenny Phillips had the interceptions. The Giants' secondary was almost unrecognizable for the tight, effective, smothering way it played. And up front, on the defensive line, there was Justin Tuck, playing like his old, All-Pro self for the first time this season.

"He changed his outlook and his demeanor this week," Coughlin said of Tuck. "He got very positive. He decided not to be concerned about the little nicks he had that have been bothering him, and instead to just ignore them and play through them."

Tuck said Coughlin approached him early in the week and challenged him to be a leader at this crucial time. He also said that Rolle's postgame comments last week about guys not practicing because of nagging injuries, but showing up on Sunday to play, caught his attention. Whatever it was, Tuck looked like a new man, helping the Giants' pass rush look like its old scary self as he and Jason Pierre-Paul hunted Sanchez from opposite sides.

"We came out and played relentless against the pass and against the run," Rolle said. "We had a game plan, and our defensive coordinator stuck with it 120 percent."

This is a newly fired-up bunch of Giants, and there can be little doubt they'll come out fired up again next Sunday against the Cowboys. The Giants are scary when motivated. And with a division title on the line, what more motivation could they possibly need?