New Faces End Giants’ Misery
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

For a while there yesterday, the Giants were looking an awful lot like a team that had simply forgotten how to win.
This was perfectly understandable, considering they hadn’t done it in nearly a year. Neither had their new head coach, who had not accepted the handshake of a losing counterpart in 644 days. Their quarterback hadn’t won a game since the NFC championship of 2002.
Yes, it had been a long time between victories for Tom Coughlin, Kurt Warner, and the rest of the Giants. Even so, their 20-14 win over the Washington Redskins at Giants Stadium did not come as easy as it should have.
Despite taking a 20-7 lead, the Giants allowed the game to go down to the wire, needing to sweat out five Redskins possessions in the fourth quarter. Finally, Keith Washington, a holdover from the sad-sack Giants of last year, sacked Patrick Ramsey and separated him from the football with 18 seconds left in the game.
Still, it was the kind of day a lot of coaches would consider the best of circumstances for a football team: seven takeaways on defense, only one turnover on offense (in actuality, the kickoff return team), acceptable protection for Warner from the maligned offensive line, and better than that from the defense, which was shredded last week by Philadelphia’s Brian Westbrook but was able to hold the formidable Clinton Portis to a mere 69 rushing yards.
“It feels a lot better than last weekend, I can tell you that,” said Coughlin, never easy to lease under the best of circumstances.
Things are different this season, what with players needing to set their watches five minutes fast just to be on time for team meetings, and no fewer than 22 new faces on the roster. And it was the new faces who brought the Giants a new result yesterday, victory. Suddenly, it didn’t look like the same old Giants.
Yesterday, the names were not Tiki Barber or Michael Strahan or Jeremy Shockey or Amani Toomer. They were Barrett Green, a linebacker signed in March as a free agent after he was cast off by the Detroit Lions; Fred Robbins, a free agent defensive tackle signed to replace the departed Cornelius Griffin; Brent Alexander, a journeyman safety who had kicked around the league for 11 years before landing with the Giants in May to help shore up their depleted secondary; Gibril Wilson, a fifth-round draft pick pressed into service just this week when starting strong safety Omar Stoutmire went down for the year with a knee injury; and Tim Carter, a third-year wide receiver known best for a wacky story last season involving a carjacking and a missed practice, the first of which never happened. Carter looked like a different man yesterday, and so did his teammates.
“We played a real good first half and kind of hung on for dear life in the second half,” Coughlin said. “We didn’t plan to play it as close to the vest as we did, it just turned out that way.”
It would have turned out a lot worse had it not been for Carter, who outran Fred Smoot in the Washington secondary to haul in a 38-yard TD pass from Warner early in the second quarter. Six minutes later, Green scooped up a Portis fumble and took it to the house, as the players like to say, for a 16-yard TD that gave the Giants a 14-7 lead they would not surrender.
Steve Christie, the place-kicker added to the roster just before the season opener, finished up the Giants scoring with two field goals. Then it was time for the rest of the new additions to hold the door shut.
First it was Robbins, who forced a fumble early in the second quarter, picked off Skins starter Mark Brunell with an acrobatic catch in the third, and topped it off by greeting Ramsey – who came in after Brunell pulled a hamstring – with a sack on Ramsey’s second play from scrimmage.
Alexander got into the act with a pair of interceptions – one in the end zone to thwart Laveranues Coles – sandwiched around one by Wilson that stalled Washington at the Giants’ 8-yard line. Wilson made another huge play when he stepped in front of Portis to break up a pass that would have kept the Redskins’ final drive alive on a fourth-and-four.
Throughout the afternoon, new defensive coordinator Tim Lewis’s defense kept the pressure on Brunell and then Ramsey, blitzing both into a state of constant panic.
“Last week, we played timid,” Green said. “We sat back and let things happen to us. We knew we needed to be more aggressive today.”
Said cornerback Will Allen, a survivor from the Fassel era: “I’m gonna tell the guys to cherish this feeling, because it doesn’t last very long.”
Or happen very often with this team. Sometimes, it seems as if the Giants go years between wins.
Mr. Matthews is the host of the “Wally and the Keeg” sports talk show heard Monday-Friday from 4–7 p.m. on 1050 ESPN radio.