T-Rock's Take on the Giants

This is a big transition week for the Giants. They get their Super Bowl rings and begin their OTAs, code-name for organized team activities. After spending the last few weeks trying to “turn the page” on the 2007 championship season, it finally flops over this week. To be fair, it’s a very heavy page.

“It is new for most of us, coming off a Super Bowl win,” defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo said recently (recently being one of those vague journalism words that in this case means about a week ago). “I have been on the other side and came off a Super Bowl loss, and it is not quite as tough to motivate. But I have a tremendous amount of trust in the veteran leadership.”

One of the guys who knows about defending a Super Bowl championship is Mike Pope, the tight ends coach who was with the Giants for their previous titles. In between questions about Jeremy Shockey last week, Pope was asked about the difficulty of starting a season as a champion. He said there is a balance between young players getting better and older players getting, well, older.

“I look at a lot of our players in the weight room and I know we’re bigger and stronger than we were at this time a year ago,” he said. “A lot of our young players you can really see a marked difference.

“Should those guys play better with a year behind them? Absolutely. You’d like to think that a lot of those players will come back and be better players than they were.”