"I was lunging, trying to make a big hit. . . I didn't expect him to see me so quickly," said Mikell, who said he should have eschewed the attempt at a big hit for a regular old wrapup.
In a way, that's Mikell's message, on behalf of his defensive teammates: Hey, you know me, you know that's not how I'm going to play every week. Chill.
"We had a bad game," Mikell said. "Everybody's thinking we're a big problem now. It's unfortunate that happened. I think we're still a good defense. We just had a bad game. . . We can tackle. We can make plays on the ball. The important thing is to nip it in the bud, not let it carry over to this week's game against San Francisco."
Reid certainly seemed to be in a bud-nipping sort of mood.
"What you do is you go back to fundamentals," Reid said. "If you have to break out the mats, then you break out the mats and you work on it. As you teach it you have to be very specific with that player - were your eyes down? Whatever the coaching point is, eyes down, wrapping up, running through the tackle, whatever the weakness is, identify it, teach, and move on. Maybe it's leverage. Maybe with a corner, that you're driving the inside shoulder instead of the outside shoulder. All of those little fundamental things that need to take place there."
Reid then allowed that we probably will see the mats tomorrow.
Mikell said that defensively, the difference between this encounter with the Giants and the 40-17 victory at the Linc on Nov. 1 might have been that the Birds worried too much about New York countering what the Birds had done that day, when Eli Manning netted only 215 passing yards, while under constant pressure.
"We might have focused a little too much on trying to disguise things instead of on trying to kick somebody's butt," Mikell said.
