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Tiki Barber will make his preseason debut tonight when the Giants face the Chiefs at the Meadowlands.
Two areas are of prime interest for Coach Tom Coughlin: The Giants did not run the ball well (2.3-yard average) and were not effective in stopping the run (5.3-yard average allowed). The presence of Barber likely will spark the ground game, and on defense, figure tackles William Joseph and Fred Robbins will be watched closely; neither did an adequate job last week. All 11 starters are expected to play. The gang's all here for this one, with every starter expected to play at least through the first quarter. With the unit intact, the Giants want to see signs of progress in the brief time their stars will be in the game.
"I don't know if you need to be hitting on all cylinders in a preseason game, because as evidenced in many teams' cases the preseason means nothing," Barber said. "It's just a tune-up to see what we need to work on."
Healthy Barber was held out of the opener, Shockey sat out after experiencing a concussion a week earlier, and Snee was on the shelf with a knee injury. With the unit intact, the Giants want to see signs of progress in the brief time their stars will be in the game. Barber said, "See what we're really made of right now. It will be a good test. The second preseason game is where you start game-planning a little bit instead of just basically having a practice, which is what it was last week."
"When you get all your guys, especially two guys who are such a big part of this offense, get them back, that's gonna help us out," Manning said. ....This vision that keeps dancing around the head of Plaxico Burress, an exciting vision he's anxious to transport from his mind to the football field. What the towering receiver envisions is dominance from the Giants offense, a systematic bludgeoning of the opposing defense, a forceful display he'd like to see unveiled tonight in a preseason meeting with the Chiefs at Giants Stadium. "For the first time, all 11 of our guys will be on the football field," Burress said. "We can run it, we can throw it, we can do all the things we want to do; we just got to focus on what we want to do. We can pitch and catch and run and do all exciting things, but we got to go do it and stop talking about it.
Barber said, "Like I told [Jeremy] Shockey, it can be fun, we can go out and pretty much do what we want to do, give defenses headaches, but we have to go out and play as one, jell as a unit and stay on the football field. Stop killing ourselves. We go out and do that - the sky's the limit for this offense. "The gang's all here for this one, with every starter expected to play at least through the first quarter. Healthy Barber was held out of the opener, Shockey sat out after experiencing a concussion a week earlier, and Snee was on the shelf with a knee injury. With the unit intact, the Giants want to see signs of progress in the brief time their stars will be in the game.
The Giants never came close to reaching those heights in their preseason opener, a 17-16 victory in Baltimore. Playing without three starters (Shockey, Tiki Barber and Chris Snee), the offense went three-and-out on its first possession and did the same on its second, which included an Eli Manning delay of game penalty. It was only after the Ravens substituted for their starting defense that the Giants were able to sustain a seven-play, 80-yard drive, fueled by a 43-yard completion to Burress. Brandon Jacobs completed the drive with a 1-yard touchdown run.
Last week:
"We wanted to come out and show a lot better than we did," Amani Toomer said. "I think we have a lot to prove, because we have a lot on paper, but on paper is not going to help us move the ball or win games during the season. You want to go out there and perform and get used to performing successfully, because it's a habit, everything you do on the field is a habit, so you don't want to get into bad habits, going out there and not executing the way you want to."
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