Kieran Darcy, ESPN Staff Writer 10y

Giants 0-2 again, but Coughlin still has faith

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- Tom Coughlin borrowed a phrase from the New York Mets on Monday -- the Mets, or maybe The Monkees.

"I believe! I’m a believer!" the New York Giants' coach said, at the very end of a 19-minute news conference at the team's practice facility. "Put me up at the top, OK? Blame me for the problems, put me at the top, as far as getting this thing done. And I think they can go do it."

Coughlin was responding to a question about the heavy criticism his team is facing after opening the season 0-2 for the second year in a row. Many fans left MetLife Stadium early Sunday afternoon, even when the Giants were still within one score of the Arizona Cardinals in the fourth quarter. But the coach thinks the fan base has reason to remain on the bandwagon.

"I would like in an ideal world that they would stay and remain as positive and as upbeat as they possibly can, because of the way they affect the young men that are on the field," Coughlin said. "They are fans, they bleed, they live and die the circumstances. It wasn't good yesterday -- it was better, but it wasn't the end result that everyone was looking for."

The Giants as a whole sounded surprisingly upbeat Monday, despite losing their home opener by 11 points to a team starting a backup quarterback who hadn't thrown a pass in a regular-season game since 2010.

They also lost cornerback Walter Thurmond for the season and may have lost middle linebacker Jon Beason for a long time as well.

To be fair, though, the Giants did look much better offensively than they did in Week 1 -- particularly in the passing game. Eli Manning completed 26 of 39 for 277 yards, and several of those incompletions were drops by his receivers. Manning's QBR on the day, 77.7, was higher than in any game last season -- his highest since the Giants' 2012 regular-season finale, a 42-7 win over the Philadelphia Eagles.

"I thought we did some good things," Manning said. "We just made too many mistakes that were big mistakes, and left a few opportunities out there on the field that we needed to make."

Victor Cruz, who voiced a desire for more balls thrown his way last week, had multiple dropped passes and heard some boos from the fans. But Coughlin stuck up for Cruz, and what he said, Monday.

"For me, it wasn’t offensive, because of the way it read," Coughlin said. "When Victor made the statement, 'I’d like to be a captain, I’d like to be considered a captain of this team,' that’s a good thing. A guy wants the football, it’s not necessarily a bad thing if he understands that obviously there’s other people, there’s progressions, there’s reasons that you do and don’t get the football."

Larry Donnell (seven catches, 81 yards) looked good for the second week in a row, and Rueben Randle made a beautiful one-handed touchdown grab. The Giants accumulated 341 yards -- 144 more than they did against the Lions.

But thanks in part to four turnovers -- three on offense, one on special teams -- the final result was 14 points, for the second week in a row.

"You're not going to beat anybody in the National Football League with 14 points," Coughlin said. "We've got to score. We had some better numbers offensively, we had better contributions. The quarterback played better without a doubt. But we still didn't have the ball in the end zone, and we certainly were there any number of times."

Next up? The 2-0 Houston Texans, who have given up just 20 points in two games, the lowest average in the league.

Tom Coughlin believes the Giants are up to the task. The question is, does anybody else?

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