Earlier this week, Giants safety Antrel Rolle responded to a fourth straight loss by saying that he believes the team can run the table and win the 12 games left on their roster.
Judging by the response from PFT Planet to Rolle’s comments, he has some work to do to convince the general public of that possibility. And Rolle admitted Tuesday that he has some work to do in his own locker room as well. Rolle said he has teammates who don’t believe the team can win this season.
“I really don’t believe that everybody believes we can win within our locker room, and it’s hard,” Rolle said, via the Newark Star-Ledger. “It’s guys who haven’t been there before, guys who haven’t been affiliated with how the Giants made comebacks, how we can come back at the end of game, how we can overcome adversity. So I really don’t expect every guy to have the same belief that I have or maybe other people in our organization have. That’s why we’re trying to get everyone together and get them on the same page. ... It’s not too late to turn it around.”
It’s not too late for the Giants to turn things around, as we mentioned in relation to Rolle’s earlier comments, but it’s also meaningless to mention the fact that Giants teams in the past have made comebacks in adverse situations. This isn’t 2007 or 2011, the personnel isn’t the same, the results aren’t going to be the same and the reason for that isn’t just because some players may not share Rolle’s optimistic view of things.
It would be just as easy to point out the way the team lost two games by a combined 67-14 in Weeks 15 and 16 last season to go from 8-5 to out of the playoff hunt as it is to reference the good old days. That’s a more recent memory, after all, and plenty of players were there to see how the Giants faded at the biggest moment of their season and capitulated in the face of adversity.
It would be no more accurate, though. These Giants are going to sink or float back to the surface on their own merits, not because of anything that happened in the past, and actually winning a game would be a good way to start convincing folks you can do it again.