Thanks to Sunday’s loss against the Ravens, the Giants no longer control their own destiny. But whether a win on Sunday earns them a playoff berth or not, Giants coach Tom Coughlin wants to see his players playing for pride.
“That’s what I talked to our team about this morning – was pride, honor, dignity, playing the game the way we’re capable of playing the game,” Coughlin said, via the Star-Ledger. “Finish the season with a game we can all be proud of.”
The Giants haven’t done anything to be proud of the last couple of weeks and are now a long shot to make the playoffs, needing not only to beat the Eagles on Sunday but also to have the Vikings lose to the Packers, the Bears lose to the Lions and the Cowboys lose to the Redskins. But Coughlin just wants his players to do their jobs well on Sunday and not worry about everything else.
“It’s all three phases playing well together,” Coughlin said. “You have a couple phases that are not doing their job right now and they have to if we’re going to resurrect a little bit of pride here in our last game. . . . I would like to see our team play an astounding football game, a game in which the execution of our team is significantly better than what we have seen over the last couple weeks.”
This Giants team has shown that it’s capable of turning things around and playing its best football at playoff time. But at this point it may be too late for a turnaround to mean anything, other than to show that the Giants still take pride in their work.