New York Giants safety Stevie Brown took a too-shallow route and got burned on the 44-yard Damaris Johnson touchdown catch that cut the Giants' lead over Houston to 17-10 in the third quarter of Sunday's game. Brown did not play again after that, replaced by fifth-round rookie Nat Berhe.

"We made a position change there, and that's all I'm going to say about that," Giants coach Tom Coughlin said on a conference call Monday. "He was not hurt, no."

So that makes it pretty clear Brown was benched for performance reasons rather than injury reasons, and it leads one to wonder whether Berhe might have a chance to get the start or at least a few more snaps in Thursday night's game in Washington.

Brown missed the entire 2013 season after tearing his ACL in training camp last year, and Coughlin made a comment last week about Brown not being all the way back to the player he was when he had eight interceptions in 2012. So there has been some level of dissatisfaction with Brown's performance so far by the coaching staff.

It might be that they have determined he's not able, because of his physical condition, to play a whole game and be as productive as they'd like him to be, and in that case they might have to work out some kind of timeshare with Brown and Berhe and maybe Quintin Demps in the mix. Or it might be that they're upset with Brown for not playing as well as they need him to play and they sat him down Sunday to send a message after a particularly bad error. We'll explore this further Tuesday when we get to go into the locker room for interviews, I promise. Definitely something to keep an eye on this week.