First, Antrel Rolle challenged his teammates to show "more fight" and "more dog". Then, he showed then how to snarl just a bit.
The Giants safety was at his defiant best during his weekly paid radio spot on WFAN on Tuesday, two days after watching his team suffer its worst loss in Coughlin Era history. The 38-0 blowout in Carolina gave him a feeling he "never" wants to feel again, he said, and he vowed that it will drive him to be more aggressive on the field and more fierce (if that's even possible) off of it.
"From this point on, I don't care what the situation may be, I don't care what the outcome is," an emotional Rolle said. "I don't care what the hell has to happen. If they want to kick me up from around here, from the New York Giants, then that's gonna be what has to happen. But I'm gonna play Antrel Rolle ball the way I know how to play Antrel Rolle ball, and I'm gonna lead the way I know how to lead.
Rolle added that he doesn't "give a damn what happens" with his future.
"That feeling that I felt last Sunday, I can never have that feeling again," he said. "I'm gonna do whatever it takes, anything it takes. And whatever the outcome is, it is what it is."
From sleeping pass rush to struggling offensive line to absent run game, it's seemed like a collapse on all levels for the Giants this September. But that's not what Rolle saw on Tuesday. He said there was "no way in hell" that the Giants should have been demolished by the same Panthers team that they'd beaten, 36-7, a year ago, and pointed out that the Panthers are hardly the Broncos or Patriots.
"Carolina came out there and they punched us in the mouth and we didn't do anything," he said. "We're still bleeding to this day."
The first-year captain said the Giants' issues go "deeper than X's and O's." On Monday, former Giants linebacking great Carl Banks had spent his own WFAN spot ripping into his old team for a lack of emotion and saying that players didn't seem willing to fight for each other.
Rolle said he agreed "200 percent" with Banks' blasts.
"Do we like each other in our locker room? I believe so," he said. "We like each other. WE're all friends with one another. But are we going out there and fighting for the guy beside us? Absolutely not. There is no way I can hide it, sugarcoat it, whatever you want to say.
"I think we need to do some serious soul-searching within the locker room and try to understand and try to form an identity of who we're gonna be, for one," he added. "Do we still love to play this game? That's No. 2. And third of all: Are we going to fight like hell to get out of the situation that we're in?"
Rolle fully expects that the team will indeed "fight like hell" over the course of the rest of the season. He said he has "more confidence" in the team than he did during the summer, even added that he "wouldn't mind" finishing the season 13-3.
"We've been hit in the mouth, and we got hit in the mouth extremely bad (Sunday)," he said. "Sometimes, good things come out of bad things. Hopefully, that's exactly what we need to wake our ass up and go play football."
(nydailynews.com)