Tom Coughlin tore his team to shreds on Sunday night and his team started responding to the coach questioning their manhood on Monday.
Plenty of players addressed the need to play tougher football than they managed on Sunday night, but safety Antrel Rolle had the most pointed commentary on that front.
His words serve as the best way to summarize the day late, dollar short realization among the Giants that you don't just win games by showing up at the stadium on time.
"At the end of the day, you play within the lines, you play within the rules, but you don’t take [stuff] from nobody at the end of the day," Rolle said. "And that’s my attitude. You don’t take [stuff] from anybody and last night I felt like we took a little bit. Like I said, man, I don’t know what’s going to change and I don’t know how it’s going to change, but in order for us to be where we want to go, things are definitely about to change."
You're forgiven if you had to click through and make sure that Rolle said that this week and not after last year's losses to the Eagles or the Packers. Or if it came from someone else during the 2009 slide to irrelevance, for that matter.
We've heard this line from the Giants so many times in the last three years that it was just a question of who was going to say it this time around.
You can set your clock to a Tom Coughlin Giants team making him go red in the face by showing up without any energy for a big game and then making a lot of noise the next day about how things are going to change.
And then nothing changes. Some might call it a lack of leadership or poor motivation from the coaching staff, but the problems are a lot more tangible than that.
Watching Sunday night's game, you were definitely struck by the fact that the Eagles were the more aggressive and urgent team but you couldn't avoid noticing they also executed a lot better in every phase of the game. The most notable disparity came on the offensive lines, where the Giants were abysmal and the Eagles handled the Giants without breaking much of a sweat.
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The Giants line has been a problem all season and it is increasingly looking like Jerry Reese got rid of the wrong guys or not enough guys during the off-season.
David Diehl simply can't play at a high enough level anymore, David Baas has been a bust and Will Beatty is no closer to being a starting left tackle now than he was in August.
Jason Peters of the Eagles is a starting left tackle, as evidenced by the way he totally dominated Osi Umenyiora on Sunday night. Umenyiora, who remains a top-flight player in his mind only, is part of a defense that isn't capable of stopping both the run and the pass at the same time.
Injury has something to do with that, but so does playing one-dimensional players like Umenyiora (all pass rush) and Rolle (all run support) who can't adapt to what an offense is doing on the other side of the field. The eternal issue at linebacker is worse than ever as no one but Michael Boley can stop teams from making big pass plays over the middle of the field.
All the toughness in the world isn't going to change the fact that the Giants are lacking talent all over the field. You can have Brandon Jacobs run as tough as you want, it won't make a difference when Diehl decides he has better things to do than block the guy in front of him.
Not taking any stuff is terrific, but it won't help the receivers catch passes. More fight is welcome, but so is defensive playcalling that doesn't bury Jason Pierre-Paul on the inside of the line and doesn't keep linebackers who don't know how to play zone playing zone.
Execution was either an equal or greater problem as toughness on Sunday night and the same was true in the loss to the 49ers. Those issues need to be resolved or the Giants will simply be a tough team missing the playoffs.
Josh Alper is a writer living in New York City. You can follow him on Twitter and he is also a contributor to Pro Football Talk.
