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EVENTS
CNNSI.com GROUP
COMMERCE
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No guarantees Fassel will keep his mouth shut now that playoffs are here
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. (AP) -- Jim Fassel didn't make any guarantees this week. The New York Giants haven't lost since Fassel promised his team would make the playoffs six weeks ago. They haven't lost to the Philadelphia Eagles in eight games since Fassel took over as head coach in 1997. But Fassel wasn't about to predict a victory for the Giants in Sunday's NFC divisional playoff game against the surprising Eagles. "You don't want to be dumb twice," Fassel said. "Everybody thought I'd lost my marbles [after the last prediction]. But we got out of it what we needed to get out of it." The Giants (12-4) won five games in a row after Fassel made an out-of-character decision and assured a playoff berth on Nov. 22, three days after a second consecutive loss at home. New York captured the NFC East, earned the top seeding in the conference and is set for its third meeting with the Eagles (12-5). In the two regular-season victories, the Giants outscored Philadelphia 57-25. But the Eagles are 7-1 since the last defeat and quarterback Donovan McNabb is out to prove this isn't the same team. "This is a new season," McNabb said. "No one worries about what happened in the past because it really doesn't matter. Everyone has to focus on what happens this weekend." Giants linebacker Jessie Armstead also doesn't think the winning streak is a factor. "You lose, you're 8-1, but you're at home and they're still playing," Armstead said. "All we've done in the past, that doesn't excite us." The Eagles have a more balanced offense this time around. The addition of running back Chris Warren, signed Dec. 7 after Dallas released him, has given Philadelphia the proven runner it has lacked since Duce Staley went down with a season-ending foot injury in Week 5. Warren had 85 yards rushing on 22 carries in a 21-3 wild-card victory against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers last Sunday. He gained 42 of those yards on 12 carries in the fourth quarter, when the Eagles were running out the clock and Tampa knew the run was coming. "[Warren] definitely puts a lot of pressure on defenses right now knowing that we have a guy back there who can run the ball effectively," McNabb said. "He can also catch the ball out of the backfield. Now we're able to do just about anything that we want to do." Still, McNabb, the runner-up to Marshall Faulk for NFL MVP, is the main focus of the offense. He had his worst game in a 24-7 loss to the Giants on Oct. 29, completing just 10-of-31 passes for 129 yards, one interception and one touchdown. McNabb was able to scramble against New York, gaining 87 yards on eight carries in two games. The Giants are expected to use a specific player to spy McNabb at certain times. "You look at it [that] he's the type of guy you should spy, but he'll kill you if you spy the whole game, because now he's got all day to throw the ball," linebacker Michael Barrow said. "It's a chance, like dialing up a blitz, you got to disguise what you're doing and calculate your strategy. "If you're too aggressive on it, thinking 'I got to get to him,' now you're out of control. If you go slower, he throws the ball away. It's a tough job to do. With him, he can pump fake, you're jumping up, he's running by you. You really got to make the right guess." The biggest challenge for the Eagles is stopping the running tandem of Tiki Barber and Ron Dayne. Barber had 258 total yards and Dayne had 143 yards rushing against Philadelphia this season. "We know we've got to stop Tiki," linebacker Jeremiah Trotter said. "I'm not saying we overlooked him the last two times, but we may not have paid enough attention to him. We really have to pay close attention." Barber has a broken left arm, but he practiced with a smaller cast on it Thursday and didn't appear to have any problems. "I think the way we are going to score is by running the ball," Barber said. "If we can control the clock like we did the last game, that's going to give us a big edge." The Giants didn't turn the ball over once against Philadelphia and held the ball for 83 of 120 minutes. New York's passing game also clicked against the Eagles. Kerry Collins was 43-of-66 for 473 yards and three TDs. "This is a good running team, it's a good offensive line but I think our run defense has improved," Eagles defensive coordinator Jim Johnson said. "The thing that we have had to do is we had to bring safeties down in the box quite a bit. When you do that against the Giants you open up the passing game and this is a very balanced team."
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