Antrel Rolle apologizes for Giants falling short

Antrel Rolle is sorry.

That's the message the Giants safety had as he punctuated the 2012 season with his final weekly appearance on WFAN Wednesday. Rolle was asked for his parting thoughts on the season that ended Sunday with a 9-7 record but no playoff berth, and he took a repentant posture in answering the question.

"My final message would be . . . to apologize for a letdown," Rolle said. "We try to go out there and give it our all when we can. Unfortunately we came up a little bit short this year. It's something that pretty much caught all of us by surprise."

The mood of the 2012 Giants was so unpredictable that Rolle said he didn't even know whether the team would come out to play hard against the Eagles in the regular-season finale on Sunday. They wound up beating the Eagles, 42-7, after losing back-to-back games by a combined score of 67-14 against the Falcons and Ravens.

"To be honest, I really didn't know what to expect," Rolle said. "I was hoping for that kind of outcome, that kind of heart, that kind of sense of urgency going into our final game of the season. But to be honest with you, was I confident? No, I wasn't too confident because I didn't know what to expect.

"Inconsistent," Rolle added. "That sums up every angle you can look at."

Next year, though, Rolle doesn't plan on needing to apologize.

"Come the 2013 season all I can do is do my part, be as [good of a] player as I can be and try the best I can to make sure the team is on the same page and that, more important, that we're hunting," he said. "That we're going to hunt from the first preseason game all the way to the Super Bowl if God [willing] we make it there. Just try to be a better overall team on a more consistent basis week in and week out and we'll see where everything else takes us from there."

Notes & quotes: Safety Stevie Brown was named the NFC Defensive Player of the Week for his interception against the Eagles. He's the first Giants safety and the team's first defensive back to win the award twice in the same season since cornerback Jason Sehorn in 1997 . . . Wide receiver Victor Cruz, on WFAN, said that negotiations on a long-term contract were "tabled" several weeks ago, but he expects them to resume now that the season is over. "You never know, it's all negotiations, but I feel positive that I'm going to be in New York for a very long time," he said. Cruz also said that he thinks the Redskins are the team to beat in the playoffs this year. In late November he said that he thought the Redskins were "a couple pieces away" from being playoff contenders.


(newsday.com)