Giants Draft: No Toughness no Title

When the Giants play tough, they win. It's a pretty simple axiom but something they seemed to fall away from after Plax shot himself back in 2008. Let's re-set: the Giants were awesome that season, just pounding on everyone, and had smacked perennially tough teams like the Steelers and Ravens right in the mouth. It was old Erik Howard/Leonard Marshall type physicality all over the place. Then Plax shot himself, injuries piled up and the Giants stopped playing like the Giants much of the time.

I really didn't see them get that back till the Super Bowl run this year, and it has to be maintained if they want to repeat and stay in the tourney year in and year out -- as they should.

Of course, the way to keep that going is by drafting tough kids and drilling the message home in every practice and meeting.

They've lost a lot of their toughness over the past few years with the releases of Seubert, Kareem, Jacobs and a few of the others. They have to really keep renewing it, because when they don't play like that, they just don't win and they are not the Giants.

So I think the Giants are going to be looking for more tough cookies come the end of the week, I'll be disappointed if I see the word "finesse" in any of the prospect write-ups.