Fie On Harry!!!

No, it wasn't that Shakespearean, the Giants' basic reaction to Hall of Fame linebacker's Harry Carson's criticism of his former team hiding its collective pride yesterday.

But you get the idea.

Carson's quotes, "I'm not saying that they don't have pride, but I don't see where the pride is coming from. Wellington Mara always said, 'Once a Giant, always a Giant.' And guys who have played here have a certain sense of pride that we have to adhere to. I don't necessarily see that same pride amongst the guys who are here now," were met with mostly jeers from the current Giants.

"It doesn't mean anything to me," linebacker Michael Boley said. "These guys in this locker room, we play the game. Any words coming from the outside fall on deaf ears. I don't care who it is. If we listened to everything that was said outside these walls, we'd drive ourselves crazy. We know what goes on with us, so we can't really focus on what's said outside."

Perhaps a little crazy is what the Giants need right now.

Terrell Thomas actually agreed with the old, hard-nosed linebacker who was never adverse to re-arranging the furniture during the team's more contemplative times.

"You can't take it to heart because he's not in the locker room and he's not making the plays, but I definitely respect him," Thomas said. "And I agree with him because we didn't play with any passion. With everything on the line, the playoffs and the last game at Giants Stadium, we had too much momentum in this game not to. We had opportunities, we just didn't seize them."

Oddly enough, coach Tom Coughlin didn't see it as a lack of pride or effort. Perhaps he was just trying to cover for his players, but he said the pride of team he has preached since the day he arrived in 2004 was there before, during, and after the game.

"I don’t think that it is effort, I really don’t,” Coughlin said. “I think that every man wanted to play and wanted to play well. I think there could be some question about when things aren’t going well, how do we do. Maybe we don’t answer, we don’t play as well as we can coming from behind. Or when we talk about coming out after the half and stopping them, and they go down in four plays and score. These things are emotional, as well. They are draining. Maybe, perhaps, you can talk about that a little bit, but I would not say that the effort was not there."

As for Carson's comments about a lack of pride, he said he'd seen flashes of that very quality during the up-and-down season.

"I didn’t hear that. You are telling me this probably for the first time here. The unfortunate thing is it’s probably as inconsistent as our season has been.

"You have some very, very good examples of our pride. You have the Dallas game, I thought was well exhibited and certainly Washington was well exhibited. We tried like heck against Philadelphia here at home and if it wasn’t for the turnovers and the punt return, I think that would have been a game that came right down to it as well.

"We talk about New York Giant pride, we do know what it is. Perhaps it hasn’t been shown in all respects this year. Believe me, it is talked about and it is there."

You'd have needed an electron microscope to find it yesterday, however. Even punter Jeff Feagles acknowledged that. And there's nobody in that locker room who has seen more than the 22-year veteran.

"We are all stunned and disappointed and it is very, very embarrassing," Feagles said. "I feel sorry for what we put on that field yesterday to the fans that have been here for a long, long time and more importantly the owners of this team. To go out there and do what we did yesterday is totally unacceptable, embarrassing and we should all be very, very sad about it. I know I am.

"Of all the losses, this one hurts the most, because it had a lasting effect. We are out of the playoffs and we came in here as the last team for the Giants in Giants Stadium. (This) is no way to go out."

EP