Antrel Rolle praises team's coaching staff for not 'panicking' early against Cowboys

Giants safety Antrel Rolle said no one on the Giants sideline, including the coaching staff, was ruffled by an early deficit to the Cowboys.

A few weeks ago, Antrel Rolle was dismayed by what he saw from the Giants’ “so-called leaders hanging their heads” before the blowout loss to the Colts was over.

It was assumed, rightfully, Rolle was talking about the leaders in the locker room. But after the victory over the Cowboys, Rolle said the “coaching staff showed me a lot” by not getting “down” in the face of a 10-0 deficit.

It appears Rolle expected more from the coaches earlier in the season as far as encouragement, and that he’s finally getting what he wants from them.

“It works hand-in-hand – players, coaches, everyone,” the Giants’ safety said Wednesday. “We were down by a large margin in the early part of the game. Things weren’t going the way, obviously, we wanted to go. No one panicked, the coaches didn’t panic, there wasn’t any screaming or shouting on the sideline. It was kind of, ‘Okay, we’re in a hole, we know how to dig ourselves out. Let’s go play ball.’

“When you see that as a player, it gives you a boost of confidence to understand these guys have trust in us to go out there and do what we need to do, so lets go out there and show them we’re going to get it done.”

As I noted in my game review, the ESPN cameras caught a shot of Tom Coughlin after the first touchdown. Reading Coughlin’s lips, it was clear he asked someone in his headset, “Who had the flat?”

Coughlin didn’t yell. He didn’t flail his arms. He just tried to gather the information to address the issue. Rolle agreed the entire coaching staff showed such poise under fire and has done so even during the week.

“That’s something that carries over in practice. No one’s going to be perfect on each and every play,” Rolle said. “Sometimes guys are going to bust (big plays), sometimes there’s going to be some missed assignments. But it’s how you can make that adjustment. Is he going to bust again? You can’t have the same repeated mistakes.

“The thing is they understand we’re a veteran unit. We work together and work hand-in-hand with the coaches. They understand if they tell us something we’re going to do our best to get it done.”

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Rolle said Tuesday in his weekly interview on WFAN he believes the Giants are the best team in the NFL right now.

"I say what I feel," Rolle said. "It might not have been the political thing to say, but I don't care. I just feel that we're a great unit, we're a very worthy opponent and I think we're working great as a team and we're playing great team ball. Monday was a great display. Being down from that margin, honestly I don't know how many teams I've been on that would have come out of the game the way we did, scoring 31 unanswered points. It was great looking at it from my standpoint, so I can only imagine what the outsiders felt."

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On another note, Rolle said something Wednesday I haven’t heard a Giants defensive player say since at least the early part of the 2008 season: “The communication on the field is excellent.”

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(nj.com)