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Q: Do you have any timeline on Julian Edelman's injury?
BB: No, I don't have anything on him.
Q: What did you see on film of Danny Amendola's precision on running crossing routes, particularly on the final drive?
BB:I thought he showed really good awareness on that, especially on that last play. If they had tackled us where he caught the ball, it would have been an even tougher kick. It was tough as it was, but it would have been an even tougher kick. Danny showed a great instinctiveness to kind of work back inside and get away from [Jonathan] Casillas and then get what he could get and get down quickly so the ball could get spotted and we'd have enough time to clock it and kick the field goal, not try to waste time trying to dodge around and make another yard or two and waste time going through the whole end-of-the-play process. I thought his awareness on that was outstanding and his quickness and ability to get up-field and get about an extra six or seven yards after the catch was really critical to the next play, or the field goal two plays later.
Q: He said you guys go over that almost every day in practice. Is that pretty much the case?
BB:We go over a lot of stuff – meetings and practice and situational football and all that.
Q: Could you talk about your team's execution on the fourth-and-10 conversion on the final drive?
BB:We kind of had a similar play called the play before when Tom stepped up in the pocket and tried to hit [Brandon] LaFell and there was some space there, but on the completion it looked like Casillas just backed off a little bit and Danny got in front of him and got the yardage. It was a close play but it was just enough room to get in there and make it. The play before as I said was a similar kind of play. Tom got a little bit of – I think they were in probably the same defense – Tom got a little bit of pressure and stepped up and probably the throw to Amendola might have been there on the play before but when he stepped up there was a little bit of space there when LaFell came inside but the execution, we just weren't able to hit it and the ball kind of bounced out there and all that. Obviously protection was key for us on the fourth-down play and that made it a good clean pocket and a good clean play for Brady to step in and Danny to run a really good, crisp route. James White was involved in that last drive of kind of chipping the ends from his backfield position and I think that kind of helped firm up the pocket a little bit.
Q: It looked like the Giants tried to run a couple rub routes on their final drive. How do your cornerbacks work in tandem to defend those routes? Is it coordinated pre-play or is it based on something they see as the play unfolds?
BB: Right, any time you're in man-to-man coverage and there is multiple people involved – two-on-two, three-on-three or sometimes you can be three-on two or four-on-three, whatever it happens to be – yeah, I think the communication is the key thing there. There are a lot of different ways you can play it. The most important thing is that you clearly know how you're playing it and everybody is playing it the same way. If one guy is playing it one way and the other guy is playing it another way, then you're dead. Yeah, so on two-on-two's, we can combo those and switch them. Sometimes the rule changes a little bit about when we switch or when we don't depending on the type of route that they run. Yeah, that was the case. I think on the first play, which was a second-down play, we also got some pressure on that play with I want to say it was Akiem Hicks and maybe Rob [Ninkovich] coming off the edge there. I don't know if it would have got to [Eli] Manning because he kind of grabbed it and threw it but there wasn't a lot of time for him to sort out the pattern, whereas on the second one it was kind of a rollout play and then that extended a little bit longer all the way to the sideline and finally whoever it was – Rob or Malcolm [Butler] or somebody – came up there and kind of forced him to … He just went down and took the sack and kept the clock running. But the first play he really never got outside at all. It was just pressure and Logan [Ryan] took the outside route to [Dwayne] Harris and then Malcolm kind of fell off it and the combination of the pressure and the coverage, there just wasn't much there.
Q: Is there any update on Jamie Collins' health?
BB: No. We'll update you when we do the injury report and all that. We obviously didn't practice today and we'll wait until we get into a situation where we're going to be doing something – some kind of significant activity – and we'll see where our players are at that point and let you know then, the same as we always do.
Q: Did their no-huddle offense surprise you, and how did you adjust? Also, could you talk about the play of both lines?
BB: The Giants' offensive tempo and all that I think was pretty much what we've seen from them. I don't think there was really a lot new there. They ran over 50 percent of their plays this year from no-huddle, which I think that was definitely the case yesterday. Again, it's not necessarily a super-fast-paced tempo. A lot of it, the clock goes pretty far down where they're trying to read the defense and get into the right play and that kind of thing. There was plenty of that yesterday. That's kind of what we expected to see from them, that the disguise was going to be an important part of the game and not to try to give them easy looks, but again they have a good offensive system, an experienced quarterback, so even as much as you try to disguise it, he can still get it right a good part of the time, so I don't think that was really any different than what we expected it to be or what they've shown pretty much all year in this system with Coach [Ben] McAdoo as the offensive coordinator. As far as the line play goes, I thought we defended the running game pretty well for the most part, weren't really any long plays and there weren't any consistent plays, although they converted the short yardages. And I think offensively it was kind of sort of the same thing. We didn't have a lot of long plays. LeGarrette [Blount] had a couple good runs where he ran through some tackles for maybe eight or nine yards, whatever it was. They did a good job. They had the safeties down – [Landon] Collins and [Brandon] Meriweather – and a couple times even the corners were in there when we came in and blocked the safeties, so they were kind of the extra guy in the running game that we either couldn't block or he was kind of part of the front there. But we didn't run the ball as consistently as we would like to and so that wasn't as productive an area in the game as we would have hoped it would have been.
Q: What are some of the advantages of playing a tightly contested game as opposed to a blowout? Also, what is the difference when playing a team for the second time, as will be the case Monday night?
BB:I think we learn something from every game we play regardless of what the fourth-quarter situation is relative to the final score. There are a lot of situations that take place in the game and even in a couple of the games that the score hasn't been as tight at the end, there are still a lot of great teaching situations and situational football that comes up. You learn something from every game and whatever your opportunities are, I think you try to take advantage of it and learn from it regardless of what the score is. Whether it's in your favor or not in your favor, or whether it's close or not close, once the game is finished you've just got to learn from it and take advantage of those teaching situations and make sure that everybody understands them and if it comes up again do it better. Even if it turned out well just understand the situation and do it better. We're always looking to improve our overall football awareness and execution and situational football at critical points in the game. And as far as playing a team a second time, it's a restarting process. You start your preparations all over again. It's been half a season since we last played Buffalo. A lot of the players that played in that game will play in it again, but there are some new faces and some players that played in it that won't play in it. And I think you've just got to start your preparations all over again. I don't think you can ever expect games to go the way they did in the past. There is always a new dynamic and a new element and even though you might play the same team two or in some cases you even play a team three times in a season, the games are always different and you just never know how it's going to go. I'm sure we'll make some adjustments, I'm sure they'll make some adjustments and I'm sure some of the plays that we call and they call this time will match up differently than they did the last time. I think that all kind of takes care of itself. We just have to do a great job of preparing and knowing Buffalo as thoroughly as we possibly can – their schemes, their personnel and then making sure that we can execute and do what we need to do on a consistent basis, whether it's normal situations or situational football that we have to prepare for not knowing which situations will come up and which one's won't. But we have to prepare for those and be able to execute them under pressure as well. So it's really filling the tank back up in terms of preparation even though we've done it before, it really has to be done all over again to be fully prepared for this game and be able to react quickly and handle the adjustments and the in-game situations that are a part of every game that we know will come up.
