New York Giants Suffer Last-Second Loss? No Problem—Out of Their System Now

The No. 1-ranked NFC team, The New York Giants, played about as well as any team can with nothing to "win" for. Everything for the playoffs was already sewn up, so the big question all week long was "how hard will Tom Coughlin allow the Giants to play?"

The only thing the Giants had left to win was not getting any key players injured. Sam Addison was the biggest casualty with a broken ankle.

Eli Manning and the first team played the first half and a very impressive David Carr and Co. played the second half. Carr's highlight was a beautiful 27-yard pass to Domenick Hixon for a touchdown.

One glaring hole that MUST be fixed going into the playoffs is that the Giant's secondary continues to allow receivers to get behind them for big plays. It happened twice, both times costing the Giants points, 10 total.

These points made division winners out of the Vikings, vacationers out of the Chicago Bears, and losers out of the Giants after Ryan Longwell's 50-yard field goal as time expired for a 20-19 Minnesota win.

But as a Giants fan, I am not disappointed in the loss! I would rather have them get this loss out of their system than lose any of the remaining games up to and including the Super Bowl. The team did not roll over and play opossum and allow the Vikings to "just" win to save themselves.

There should be NO second guessing of Coughlin. He could have put himself in a bad situation if anything happened that was detrimental to the team's playoff run. But he didn't.

Coughlin has come a long way since first taking over the Giants. Now with two weeks to prepare for the first playoff game, he has got to get the team healthy and ready for what what should be a fun run through the playoffs.