T-Rock's Take on the Giants

He was on with Tim Ryan and Pat Kirwan earlier today. Here's the transcript:

Tim Ryan: “Talk about the meaning of being back with the NY Giants. Tell us the feeling in your heart, in your gut that [made you decide that] you’re staying.”

Steve Spagnuolo: “I tell you what. As you’re saying it it’s sending chills down my spine. I love the guys that I work with. I’m talking about coaches and players and I have a tremendous amount of respect for Coach Coughlin, the Mara family, the Tisch family. It’s a wonderful place to be and what better city to have a celebration for a Super Bowl than New York? I can’t tell you guys how humbling and how special that parade was and that celebration over at Giants Stadium I’ll remember for the rest of my life.”

On the performance of the Giants defense in Super Bowl XLII:

Spagnuolo: “Our guys made up their minds they were going to play a certain way. The leaders on our defense like Michael Strahan, Antonio Pierce, Sam Madison, Gibril Wilson, those guys just continued to will their teammates to keep playing the way we talked about all week. Really, a lot of credit goes to the players for taking what we talked about for two weeks and executing [in] the game. I know it sounds simple and a little bit cliché but that’s exactly what happened.”

On the Patriots go-ahead drive in the fourth quarter:

Pat Kirwan: “Share what was going on in your head in the drive that Brady had, the classic Joe Montana/Tom Brady drive in the fourth quarter as it went down the field and maybe what it did to resolve what you were going to do to finish it off.”

Spagnuolo: “Well, at that particular point - of course, there’s a lot of times I lose sight of what the actual score is because you know, Pat, no matter what the defense’s job doesn’t change, especially in a close game. You’ve still got to go out there and stop them. When they began that drive I was treating it like any other drive, trying to mix it up. I knew we didn’t want to give them an easy score so that was in the back of my mind, and yet, didn’t want to back off from what we had been doing which was staying aggressive. So [we] tried to mix it a little bit. If I had to do it all over again I might have pressured on that last play. Of course, hindsight is 20/20 but a couple plays before that I thought Tom Brady had sensed and picked up that we were blitzing, he’s changed the protection and picked up the blitz. I was afraid of the same thing happening. I thought somewhere in there we’d make a play. Certainly, in games before that, when we got in that situation I usually just kind of hung it on the d-line and let them just be the four guys that could get some pressure on them. I think we might have got a little winded, Pat and Tim, because I know guys were trying to go in and out on the d-line and that’s going to happen in an emotional game at the end. But we had enough juice left and we just couldn’t stop that one last play at the end. I tell you what, after that I looked up at the scoreboard and I was like, ‘Oh my god, I hope this is not going to happen like this.’ But thank god our offense came back.”

On David Tyree’s now famous acrobatic catch in the closing minutes of the game:

Spagnuolo: “Talk about using your head. That was unbelievable. I was down the ways a little bit and I remember seeing Eli get in trouble and then saw him get out of trouble. Now, you guys are going to laugh when I say this, when he decides to uncork it, in my mind from a defensive coach’s point of view, I’m saying, ‘Oh, no. That thing’s going to be picked off.’ Because he just kind of threw it but he knew better than I did. He had Dave in his sights and he got it there and they made a great play. I’m not going to lie to you, I was back to my praying on that drive. I was so distraught in a lot of ways that we had given up that touchdown and I just was obviously hoping and praying that our offense could come through and they did and it was wonderful.”

On the Patriots final drive of the game:

Spagnuolo: “We decided right from the get-go, that the very first play that we would blitz. We just wanted to send a message that we weren’t going to just sit back. It was somewhere around 30 seconds, I think and let’s face it now, Tom Brady is certainly capable of getting the team down there in field goal range. It wasn’t like they needed a touchdown, just needed a field goal. So we were not going to sit back. We were not going to take one of our linemen out of the pass rush and play any kind of prevent because it was those four guys that had led us all year long. We did pressure the first down and then after that we just kind of turned it over to our defensive line. Jay [Alford] got that sack, I think, on third down. And then when it was fourth-and-forever we just backed up a little bit and just tried to defend the stake. As long as we didn’t give them a first down we were going to win the Super Bowl. I tell you what, that drive was typical. Our guys just willed themselves, each individual, all 11 positions doing their job and doing it really at a high level.”

On DE Justin Tuck:

Spagnuolo: “He was awesome and Justin’s been doing that kind of thing all year long. When Mathias Kiwanuka got hurt in mid-season – because Mathias was the guy that we kind of moved around in those third-down situations with the four defensive ends we had in there - we knew that Justin was smart enough in the middle of the season to fit that role and so we just set out from that point on, you know, we had Freddy Robbins in there for a little while as the fourth lineman until Jay kind of emerged. We knew we could move Justin around. We knew we could drop him. We knew he could do things to kind of create some protection problems and what he did on that day was no different than what he’d been doing all year long and it’s great to have a versatile big guy like that.”