Jeremy Shockey Quotations

If we get off to a strong start, we can be as good as anybody. Last year we started strong and it went downhill. When everything's going right, we can't be content and let our guard down. We can't let that next opponent punch us first, like what happened last year.

No one felt like we were out of the game.

No hard feelings from our side. It's important not to get caught up in bad feelings. We don't have anything against those guys.

I didn't get drafted to be a blocking tight end or a fullback to lead up in the linebackers, ... No one works harder than this staff to get their personnel the ball. I know they are going to try and get me the ball this year.

Give him time and he'll do great. He gets more confident with every start and he'll get better every game he plays. He's really close to having a great, breakout game.

Having the leader of the team in Eli, him being around, knowing everything, knowing everybody's assignments, it gives everyone a lot more confidence. We all have confidence coming in with Eli, Plax and Tiki, those guys. We can build, not necessarily on what we did in the past, but what we can do now.

He didn't say much, ... He didn't have to.

I'm always going to be looking in a positive direction, ... If I look like a fool on national TV, so be it. I'm an emotional person, that's how I am.

He's done a great job of never letting the first guy bring him down and protecting the football. He's a guy everybody looks to.

He's going to be leading us to the playoffs for a lot of years to come.

Last year I had 61 catches and it felt like 10,

I think we left the defense out there too long. They got a little tired at the end.

I thought they might have been missing a guy on the field. I think they thought it was a run and they left me wide open. There was no one there. I don't think I've ever had that before.

We have a lot to prove. Last year was no fun for anybody.

We played pretty well the first two games and got a little complacent and thought we were better than we were.

There are no hard feelings from our side.

There are no hard feelings from our side. We don't have anything against the guys that came here and practiced against us.

We didn't want this thing to be a distraction. It was totally under the radar. This is special for me. The organization showed they'd like me to retire with it. We can just toss around the football now and that makes it so much easier.

We knew we had a chance at the game, but offensively we couldn't get anything going. We tried everything. We have to go back and really evaluate this film and see, because a lot of teams are going to take this game and really try to emulate what the Cowboys did and try to stop us.

When I was making all those crazy mistakes, he would put his arm around me and he said, 'We all make mistakes.' He helped me grow. He never gave up on me.

We've always felt like that. Not just because of this game. We just felt we can play with anybody.

There is no person on this team that deserves it more than Amani Toomer. He's been a complete team player and an outstanding teammate to play with. He made great plays all through the game and really won the game for us.

We know he's up there smiling, ... But in the same sense, he's probably saying, 'Get ready for San Francisco.'

Everybody knows in order to have a good offense you have to stretch the field. Now we have Plax, and he'll definitely be helping us in that aspect.

(The time off) was probably a blessing in disguise. He got his arm rested. He got to step back and watch like he did his first year. So it's not like he was out of it completely. He's on the same page with us.

I understand his point, but it's really not fair. It affects the whole team.

Special teams have been playing great this year. My hat goes off to them every week. They make plays and they have to continue to do so and that's just a sign of a team playing well together. That was a huge play.

You should have your best players on the field. The whole offense suffered from him not being out there. We lost, that's the bottom line, but people saw what he can do.

This can be one of those setup games where we feel like, oh, we conquered something. But you know what? We haven't done anything.

This game's hard, especially being in New York on the No. 1 stage in America,

This is the biggest stage in America, ... If you like competition, if you like the spotlight, if you like being pointed at for every little right and, more importantly, every little wrong, this is the place to play.

You're going to have your differences in the way you practice. There are no hard feelings from our side. It's an important preseason game for us, to show we're getting better. We don't have anything against the guys that came here and practiced against us. They're not in our conference; it's over with.

Injuries, yeah, I know, they happen, and they happen in every sport. I just want to get back to the player I was when I first got drafted.

I'm definitely not 100 percent. We'll just see how it goes this week. I'm going to do a little bit today and hopefully a little more tomorrow and keep building it up.

It's no fun watching your friend and teammate get hit back there, and drop back and get hit every other play. I was ticked off more than anything. I was telling some of the offensive linemen that we've got to stop this thing before it starts, unlike last year when teams kept teeing off on him. We've all got to give him time to throw because if he has time, he's definitely going to pick defenses apart.

The offense really let down the defense. We left them out there on the field too long.

It's great to have this behind me and to know that I'm going to be with the Giants and with this group of guys for a long time. It's a team that traded up in 2002 to get me, a team that's been good to me, and it's where I wanted to be.

It's good to see that Eli didn't let the crowd get to him,

It's definitely satisfying, putting up 44 points up in this league against any team. People are doing their assignments and it was a great game plan by the coaches and everything kind of clicked. As a team, we're definitely satisfied with putting 44 points up. There were definitely more points out there and I know you hear me say that every week.

It's very satisfying to have the kind of talent to put up that many points, ... Now it's a matter of being consistent.

I just know that I need to be better than what I was the past couple of years,

I'll probably never talk to you guys again.

I don't know how he feels about it, but retrospectively he probably wishes that it hadn't come out either.

I played against him a couple of times and we always put an asterisk by his name as a dangerous player.

He's a pioneer and the guy that everybody in this game looks up to.

The game isn't until Sunday, so I don't think I need to be a hundred percent until then. I did more today than I did all week, and I think I'm getting a lot better. It's still sore, but like I said, the game is Sunday, and that's when I need to be a hundred percent.

You can't shake him. How young he is, the adjustments he's making week to week -- it's pretty rare in this league.

All I can really control is what I do on the field, how I play on Sundays and how I work during the week, ... I can't really control what people think of me. They praise me now, but I guarantee if I start not doing well, they're going to start bashing me.

It's time to start turning things around here.

I tried it their way and now I wanted to try it my way,

That's one of the loudest I've heard the stadium in a long time, and it wasn't even full. As players, we hear that and it really helps us out.

I told him right when I met him, 'Whatever you heard about me, I really love to play the game,' ... I really wanted to make a good impression.

There's a lot of talent here. We can be as good as we want. If we ever lose a game, it's us losing it. We're giving it away because we have great players on offense. There should be teams that come up with turnovers and things like that, but there should be no team that shuts us out for three and a half quarters. . . . Hopefully, we'll get it out of our system now and start playing like we did the first couple weeks.

He's not going to play in a rougher environment than he played in, and he dealt with it.

I called him Duke, the Duke of the Meadowlands,

A threesome with a mother and her two twins.

After the game, I'm a completely different person. I drink some beers with friends and try to get my mind completely off football.

I think it just kind of comes naturally to me. I feel like I've been coached that way my whole life - to play dirty and to play mean.

A cult hero? I don't think of myself as any kind of hero. I don't want to say it's a fairy tale, but two years ago if you would've told me I'd be in this position, I wouldn't believe it hardly.

I don't want to sound arrogant, but the defense might shut me down on one or two out of five plays, but I'll make them pay eventually.

New York will be my home for the rest of my life as far as I'm concerned.

I think I'm a real good person off the field. I've got good character traits, I go to Church often, and I do community service. I think I'm a really good role model.

It's a war out there and either they're going to hurt you or you're going to hurt them. I just go out there and play with my heart.

I guess you can say I was a late bloomer.

Everybody who's ever done anything bad to me, anything that ever went wrong, I try to take it out on somebody-every game. It's like when you see Michael Jordan's highlights and your hair sits up on your arms? I'm like that the whole game.