The New York Times-20080127-Plenty of Intensity- but No Game for the Giants

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Plenty of Intensity, but No Game for the Giants

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The way the Giants approached it, the Super Bowl could be on Sunday -- this one, not the next one.

The game plan against the Patriots is in, and Coach Tom Coughlin's intensity has been ratcheted up to pregame levels. All that is missing is the game. Super Bowl XLII will have to wait a week.

He has been intense, linebacker Kawika Mitchell said of Coughlin on Saturday. I think he's talked to a lot of people who have been in this situation, who have been around the game a while, and he understands how important it is to get a good solid foundation for our game plan before we head to all the craziness. He's done a good job of that this week.

After their conference championship victory over Green Bay, the Giants had two weeks to prepare for the Super Bowl, and they treated the first almost as if there were no second. They pushed their usual game-week schedule back a day, by practicing on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Normally, they begin their three days of practice on Wednesdays.

Other than that, players said, it felt like a regular week -- just without a game at the end.

Coughlin wanted to treat the past week as a normal one, because the next one will be as abnormal as it gets in the N.F.L. And his fire is fueled, as it usually is, by the fear of squandering a chance to win.

In a team meeting, Coughlin asked players a question, one that he repeated for reporters.

Who was the loser two games ago? he asked a scrum of journalists. There was a moment of silence.

That's exactly what happened in our team meeting, Coughlin said. (It was the Seahawks who lost to the Steelers.)

After their workout in the team's practice bubble adjacent to Giants Stadium on Saturday afternoon, the players were excused until Monday morning. Coughlin asked them to rest, and he would not be pleased to see or hear reports of players gallivanting late at night.

You can just sense that he's on edge, defensive tackle Barry Cofield said. He's definitely intense, definitely vocal. Encouraging us to stay focused.

The team's charter is scheduled to leave Newark Liberty International Airport at noon on Monday, landing in Phoenix at about 3 p.m. local time. Coughlin and a few players will meet the news media at their hotel -- the Sheraton Wild Horse Pass in Chandler -- a couple of hours later.

The Patriots, veterans of three other Super Bowls this decade, will be in Arizona a day earlier. They are scheduled to arrive in Phoenix and address reporters at their hotel (the Westin Kierland Resort and Spa in Scottsdale) on Sunday evening.

The week's onslaught of festivities, usually considered a series of impractical annoyances by coaches, truly begins with Tuesday's media day, when players and coaches are brought to the stadium and planted for an hour to answer a tidal wave of questions, many of them unoriginal or inane.

The idea of working here at home and being able to get into a routine and get the majority of what our thoughts are put together is a very good thing, Coughlin said. A lot of what we have talked about is obviously being able to deal with the environment at the Super Bowl and managing ourselves and focusing when all of these things are going on around us. But when we go to work, we are going to focus on our football. And hopefully that is the formula that we need.

Only four players on the team's 53-man roster have been part of a Super Bowl team. As if to demonstrate how little the Giants know what to expect, running back Brandon Jacobs -- always smoldering with intensity -- declared that he would speak with reporters on only one day in Arizona. Told that the guidelines required all players and coaches to participate in sessions on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, Jacobs said he simply would not talk after Tuesday.

It makes for a tantalizing image: dozens of reporters circling and shouting questions at Jacobs, and Jacobs sitting tight-lipped for an hour.

The players are getting their lead from Coughlin, who coached in the Super Bowl as an assistant to Bill Parcells 17 years ago but is making his Super Bowl debut as a head coach.

Most coaches are paranoid, Cofield said. They always feel like they have to prepare for everything. And Coach Coughlin is like that more so than most coaches. He's just his same meticulous self -- not a lot of joking. And I think he sees the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. He knows that if we do the right things, we'll have a good chance of getting there.