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EVENTS
CNNSI.com GROUP
COMMERCE
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Big pick Giants' stellar outing highlighted by Sehorn's INT return
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. (AP) -- Donovan McNabb's patience was running thin. Forced by a tenacious New York Giants defense into being a traditional quarterback instead of a flash-and-dash passer, he decided to force the issue. Trailing 10-0 in the final two minutes of the first half in Sunday's NFC divisional playoff, McNabb tried to locate wide receiver Torrance Small on a pass play. The trouble was Jason Sehorn got there first. Sehorn cut in front of Small, deflected the ball as he went down, tapping it to himself like a basketball player going after a loose rebound. The ball popped into the air and came down in Sehorn's hands. He bounced up with it and sprinted into the end zone for a touchdown. "They were trying out routes, not throwing deep," Sehorn said. "I was able to break on the ball. It hit my hands and kind of popped up. I was laying on my back and saw it. I don't know, my reaction was just to pop it up and to hit it again. I saw how high it went, so I got up and it was still there. Your instinct is just to bat it. It's not something you practice doing. It happened to stay there for a while." It was the exclamation point for a Giants defense that hounded McNabb with six sacks and produced a 20-10 victory that put New York into the NFC championship game against Minnesota. Sehorn savored the play and the moment, particularly because of the criticism the Giants have endured all season. "We're just fortunate that everybody plays badly when we play them because we're not a very good football team," he said. Good enough, though, to be playing for a trip to the Super Bowl. Michael Strahan, who had two of the Giants' six sacks, was particularly excited about Sehorn's play. "It was just one of the best interception returns I've ever seen," he said. "That was just a great athletic play and it was great looking because defensively I don't think we scored a touchdown all season." Strahan said he got off the line of scrimmage quickly on each sack. "You have to start fast on people sometimes," he said. "You start fast, they don't recover. You don't give them a chance to recover." That described McNabb's condition. The Giants gave him very little room in which to operate, covering his receivers tenaciously, cutting off running routes and containing him all day. The defensive scheme was exactly as coach Jim Fassel had planned it. "You don't have to try to kill the guy," Fassel explained to the Giants. "You have to capture him." That's what the Giants did with McNabb. "We forced him to play quarterback," Sehorn said. "We didn't allow him out of the pocket, which is not their theme. We made him be a pocket passer. Their theme is to move him around." The conventional role did not suit McNabb in the divisional playoff game. Time and again, the Giants got him in trouble, cutting off his options and capitalizing on the results. "The defense was unbelievable," Fassel said. "They took over the game. They kept McNabb where they needed to keep him. We contained him well. He rarely got away. That was a big, big part of it." The six sacks cost Philadelphia 41 yards on a day when the Eagles needed all the yards they could get. There also was a recovered fumble that led to a field goal, and Sehorn's interception that turned into a touchdown. McNabb did not get Philadelphia into the end zone until the final two minutes, and then only after a blocked punt gave the Eagles the ball on the 10. By then, it was much too little, far too late.
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