Earlier this week, we reported on the long history of smack talking between Patrick Crayton and Giants' running back Brandon Jacobs. Towards the end of the piece, I hinted that this week would almost undoubtedly provide some more golden sound bytes; there was little reason to think it wouldn't.
But alas, the smack talk inexplicably dried up sometime between Wednesday morning and Thursday afternoon.
Speaking to reporters yesterday, Crayton opted for shop talk in lieu of verbal jabs aimed at the outspoken tailback.
"It's a rivalry game," Crayton said. "It's hate versus hate. It's mano a mano. This week is really a challenge to us, can we handle the Giants blitzes, their pressures? Can we go one on one with these guys and beat them. I think we take it as a personal challenge. Number one, we're opening up a new field. You got to really kind of take that as another challenge, to protect it. We could take one up on them in the division, that'll help a lot, too, so there's a bunch of things that come into factor in this game."
"I'm going to bite my tongue," Crayton said. "I'm going to let [Jacobs] talk, and we'll see. I plan on hearing the song "Celebration" Sunday night after the game. That's what I want to hear."
Kool and the Gang hits aside, Jacobs wasn't talking either.
In a conference call with the Dallas media yesterday, Jacobs went political, praising the Cowboys as a good football team and offering not a thing that could be considered incendiary, even when asked questions that might lend themselves to controversy.
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"If you look back at last year, their last game at Texas Stadium, they didn't play as well as they were supposed to play,'' Jacobs said. "Now, they're going to come out and play extra, extra, extra hard because they don't want to open a new stadium that way."
"It's going to be a good game," Jacobs continued. "Make sure you guys put it exactly how I said it. Don't put it any other way, please.''
