david dieHl - New York Giants

The Coughlin Corner
Week 7
By Michael Eisen
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. - The Coughlin Corner, Giants.com’s exclusive weekly interview with head
coach Tom Coughlin:
Q: The Giants are 11-8 as the home team in MetLife Stadium, including 2-5 against NFC East teams.
This week you play Washington, so I would imagine you view this as an opportunity to play better
both at home and in division.
Coughlin: “Well, we’re 2-1 at home this year. You’d always like to win all your home games. I really don’t
have an answer for why that’s not the case. But I’m not worried about the past. I’m worried about the
future. This game features a divisional game plus a conference game, so it is a game of double
importance to us. We’re 0-2 in the division. It’s Washington’s first divisional game. You have a team
that’s averaging almost 30 points a game, giving up almost 29 points a game, but nevertheless a team
that we have had a lot of difficulty with and you can stretch it all the way back to ‘07. It’s the same kind
of deal. So we’ve got to snap out of this thing and play good, solid, opportunistic football against this
team and win a game at home for a very, very important divisional game.”
Q: You’ve fallen behind by 14 points in all three home games this year. I would imagine that’s a trend
you are looking to break.
Coughlin: “Quite frankly, starting fast is something we’ve been trying to do in each and every game that
we’ve played. A few times, it has helped, but it hasn’t really helped at home. It hasn’t happened at home
for whatever the reason might be and it’s not something that isn’t an initial goal, but it’s something we
continue to focus on.”
Q: The NFL cliché is if your rushing attack isn’t producing during a game you should stay with it,
because eventually it will be worth the effort. It seems you did that on a broader scale when the run
game struggled last year and in the first month of this season. In the last two games, you’re finally
benefitting from your commitment to the run game.
Coughlin: “You’re not going to do something that you’re not having much success with on a four-quarter
basis. The fact that we’ve had some success in the run gives us more confidence because you’ve run the
ball a week ago against a very difficult team (San Francisco) to run against. And to be honest with you,
this team Washington is no different. They’re eighth in the league against the run, so they’re a difficult
team to run the ball on. You not only have to block them, you have to move them. They’re very good in
their gap responsibilities. Their personnel is well-spotted, well-placed. They have the tremendous
leadership of London Fletcher there at the mike backer and he is a solid hold-them-all-together kind of a
defender. But you’ve got to have a good mix. If you look at what they’ve been able to do, because they
run the ball, they throw the play action pass very well off of the run and their action really looks a lot like
the run. So that is, in fact, what everybody that runs the ball would like to be able to do, have the quick
and easy yardage that comes off of the hard play action fake. And that’s what you mean when you say
the ability to run the ball does give you a better opportunity in terms of keeping the down and distance
manageable and allowing you to have the potential to make plays off of play action.”
Q: Have you seen that, even in the last two weeks, the balance that you’ve…
Coughlin: “Well, we’ve seen good run-pass balance, but we haven’t really taken full advantage yet of our
play action ability and I’m holding out for that.”