Antrel Rolle Fears No Team

Rolle doesn't see the Giants schedule as a problem.

It isn't often that a 5-2 team gets to play the "everyone's against us" card, but the Giants are doing just that this week.

Safety Antrel Rolle was asked about the difficult stretch of schedule coming up for the Giants and bristled at the notion that it means something bad for the Giants. He rejected the premise of the question and flipped the whole thing back around.

"I don’t worry about our schedule," Rolle said. "I think our schedule needs to worry about us."

Rolle doesn't usually make a lot of sense when he gets in front of a microphone -- anyone who has seen him in pass coverage this season knows his comments about Wes Welker are delusional -- but he hit a bullseye on this front.

The Giants have no reason to be quaking in their boots about the schedule because they have no reason to think that they aren't capable of hanging with the teams coming in the next nine weeks.

The Giants might not have been tested much by the schedule makers during the first seven weeks of the season, but that doesn't mean that they should feel bad about winning five of those games.

Rolle isn't saying anything critical of the teams to come and he's not doing anything silly like guaranteeing wins in all the games, he's simply saying that he thinks the Giants aren't going to roll over and die because of the teams on the other side of the field.

Judging by the line for Sunday's game, bookmakers don't agree with Rolle's assessment of things. They have installed the Patriots as 8.5-point favorites, something that's sure to fuel the newfound underdog ethos in Giants camp.

The line doesn't make a great deal of sense on the field, seeing as how the Patriots offense has been slowed considerably in their last two games while their secondary seems to be at a serious disadvantage against Eli Manning and the Giants receivers. It makes more sense when you include the context of the Giants' body of work through the first seven weeks.

That works both ways, though. The Giants win this week and it matters a lot less that they came close to losing to the terrible Cardinals and Dolphins and lost to a bad Seahawks team at home. 

Rolle is obviously confident that the Giants can do it and you couldn't ask for anything more at this point in the season.

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.

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