 Brandon Jacobs Q & A Running back Brandon Jacobs of the New York Giants had some big shoes to fill coming into the 2007 season. Before he retired after the 2006 campaign, Tiki Barber had basically been the running attack for the Giants the previous seven seasons. Despite only playing in 11 games, Jacobs still managed to rush for over 1,000 yards and is now on his way to the Super Bowl. Jacobs talked about the big game with the Pats and more. How have the past couple of days been for you? I am not celebrating, I can tell you that. It feels good. I know we are going to Arizona to try to win the football game and we want to stay focused, so I am going to let my feelings take care of the Super Bowl and my focus take care of New England. How tough of a transition has it been? It has been tough. We know what we have to do and we know we have a good New England team in Arizona in the Super Bowl and we are not only satisfied by going, we want to go and try to win this thing. Does playing in New York help you to deal with the media demand this week and the next? When I got here I am not going to say that all of you guys were overwhelming to me but I think I have come a long way by being able to handle the media and talk and by being in the spotlight like this. Going to the Super Bowl, when no one ever thought you would go, I feel good, and I am handling it pretty well. It is not overwhelming. It is just trying to put everything where it needs to go and focus on one thing. Do you feel like you have to be more diligent this week in speaking to the media and not saying anything that could be conceived as trash talk? No. To be honest with you, there is nothing that anyone can get me to say because I think the New England team is a great football team and they have proven week-in and week-out that they can be a force and be a great team. There is nothing that I can say about them to stir anything up. What do you want to accomplish before you leave for Arizona? The main thing, as far as our team, is that I want to come in and have guys be focused on what we have to do and putting the game plan in and knowing what we are going to do, knowing more about how they played us last time, I want to get that kind of stuff taken care of because that is the most important thing. Is there a danger of peaking too early before the game? I think the more that we prepare and focus on the game I think that is how we are going to know more about it. To know what things that we have in our playbook that will work on them. Are you worried about losing your sharpness with the week off? No, I am not worried at all. We are in the Super Bowl. If you can’t get up to play this game, no matter how long you have been off, something is wrong with you. You just really need some help and you really need to check your insides, checking everything, check everything that you can possibly check, go to every doctor you can possibly see, and let him check you out. If you can’t get up to play this one, I don’t know what is wrong with you. How amped were you before the start of the Packers game? That game… that is a different kind of game right there. You had to get your emotions sky high to get ready to play this football game because it was so cold, I will start by saying that. We had to just go out and pretend that it wasn’t cold and that there wasn’t anything out there and that was awfully hard to do. We had to go out there and do what we can do as far as what the weather was giving us. That is what we did and I think we did it well. First carry, running over Charles Woodson? Well, you know that was the first play of the game and there is not anything better than being the guy to set the tone for your football team. We ran the play and my read wasn’t there and I had to improvise and do something different. Charles Woodson happened to be where my thoughts were and I had to go out and set the tone that way instead of cutting it up and getting a 10-yard gain. Is that proof to you that you are playing at a different level than you have? Oh yeah, most definitely. You could see that guys were rallying around each other all game long. Guys were just staying up on their feet; there weren’t many people on the bench. We just had a lot of energy on our sideline and it was like that the whole game. It could be because of that play, but it could not be also, but at least that was a chance for it to be the play.
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