Arraign Storm falls on Giants

What wily defusers the New York Giants proved to be Sunday.

They weren’t much at football, but man, could they defuse.

After a dreary and clunky 20-14 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles stemmed their fine consistency and docked their record to 11-2, people with pens asked them questions along the lines of, Did this abrupt dip in caliber relate to the weeklong clamor over your best receiver’s getting arraigned after accidentally shooting himself in the thigh at a Manhattan nightclub with the .40-caliber Glock he carried in his sweat pants?

The Super Bowl champions, in turn, might have furthered the fine art of scandal-defusing with the nimble tactic of supplying answers before the completion of the questions.

Question: “Do you think the events of the last week . . .”

Coach Tom Coughlin: “No. I don’t.”

Question: “Do you feel the events of this past week impact- . . .”

Linebacker Antonio Pierce: “No.”

Surrounded at his locker as only New York can surround, Pierce, Plaxico Burress’ friend and driver-to-the-hospital on that Friday-night-after-Thanksgiving in midtown, at one point followed a “no” with another “no” and then another “no,” informing a rapt audience that fielding questions from police during the week of a game doesn’t affect the policing of the field during a game.

His fruitless chase of Philadelphia super-back Brian Westbrook on a 40-yard touchdown reception with 13 minutes left seemed a fitting end to a trying week, but Pierce, asked if he was glad to see the week go, said, “I don’t care about any week.”

As to whether their sudden harmlessness owed to distractions or coincidence, the Giants chose coincidence, with center Shaun O’Hara saying, “The fact of the matter is we’ve dealt with distractions extremely well.”

But as the winds of December blow the hot-dog wrappers around the Meadowlands and Burress sits out the duration, what might not be coincidence would be how his absence affects the Xs-and-O’s matters that preoccupy coaches, coordinators and terminally dull fans.

When the Giants beat the Eagles, 36-31, on Nov. 9, the 6-foot-5 Burress lured double coverage and the other Giants seemed to enjoy that. Brandon Jacobs ran for 126 yards and the NFL’s No. 1 ground game amassed 219 of New York’s 401 total yards.

Well, as the Eagles nudged into playoff contention at 7-5-1, they feared not the Giants’ committee of shorter-than-Burress receivers, and they clogged the place until the home team’s rushing yardage totaled 88, 72 beneath its average.

In three previous games Burress missed, Eli Manning and the Giants scored 44, 37 and 23 points, and totaled 523, 321 and 404 yards, so maybe the Eagles found something worth cribbing in allowing only seven decorative points with 15 seconds left and 211 total yards, 123 passing, 57 on that trivial last drive.

“Plax would have helped,” Jacobs said, “but it would have changed nothing.”

Yet in a peaceful exchange with a capable reporter-strategist on this matter, Coughlin first called the Eagles’ scheme “not that different from when we played before,” then after further questions of a nagging logic, Coughlin eventually said, “They weren’t going to sit there and do the same thing they did three weeks ago,” and, “I suppose they probably did” blitz more.

On such topics January days might hinge for the NFC’s season-long rulers, who had to wait for a Dallas loss to clinch the East, even given a stunning 71-yard blocked field-goal return for a touchdown on the last play of the first half.

After 12 games of serene excellence, they’d just spent a week as a topic of classic New York commotion across the Hudson, where every-other-body seemed to opine on the receiver who shot himself, the hospital that didn’t report it, the police who bemoaned the Giants’ secrecy and the mayor, Michael Bloomberg, who preached gun-law enforcement and joked about the safety of being around the Giants.

With the chatter dying down and the court dates coming up, the locker between Manning’s and tight end Darcy Johnson’s went unvisited. It had receiver David Tyree’s autobiography in the top corner, a tiny tub of lip balm in the bottom, 10 pairs of shoes, clothes hanging. It belonged to the guy who caught the winning touchdown in the most recent Super Bowl, but at the end of another loud week it felt just plain quiet.