Now that your two offensive draft picks are hurt do you have the rest of camp off?
Ha ha, no, no.  We have a lot of guys we have to look at.  Obviously we are disappointed with the injuries because you need every rep you can possibly get to get them prepared for when they actually go into practice with the veterans.  It is disappointing, but those things happen and we will just have to make the best of it.

Especially with a guy like Manningham who you might count on in the regular season?
To be honest with you I don’t count on anybody until the real season starts.  If he comes, which we are hoping he is, obviously, it will be a great bonus for us.  We know he has a lot of talent and it is just a matter of giving a guy enough exposure to what we do so that when he gets his chance, when you start to depend on him, he doesn’t hurt you by making mistakes.  That is where you get penalized by being injured, you just miss the opportunity to go out and experience things.

Do you think he is a guy that can get vertical for you?
We are hoping.  That is why we drafted him.  We thought that he not only had quickness that reminded us of some of the guys, a Steve Smith type quickness, but we thought that he has been labeled as a guy with great speed.  Obviously that is something we thought we needed so we are looking forward to seeing what he can do.  Unfortunately this afternoon we had the routes in where we would have been able to see if he could do those things and he is not going to be able to participate.

How did he injury himself this morning?
Running what we call a pivot route, just going straight down the field 14 yards and turning inside.  You are trying to give the impression that you are going deep and then you stop quickly and when he did he just kind of tweaked something.

Like a hamstring?
I don’t even know.  To be honest with you I don’t know either one except they are supposedly soft tissue injuries.  That is all I was told.

Is this as deep of a group of receivers as you have had going into a season?
Hopefully.  That is what you are looking for, that is one of the things that we were trying to address.  As has been mentioned we are trying to get some speed, more speed, into the mix and we thought Mario could do it.  There are a couple other guys really that look like based on two days of practice have a chance to compete.  We will see.  It is just so hard to project that far off, but you have a core coming back that you feel pretty good about and if you can add one or two to the mix it gives you the kind of firepower that you like to have.

Do you still have a good feeling about Sinorice Moss?
I think as a coach you always have to have good feelings.  Until somebody is separated from you, you are always looking forward to trying to help develop him.  You see his physical tools and it is just a matter of him showing on a consistent basis some of the things that you see flashes of.  You see the speed, you see the quickness, but you have to see it play-in and play-out.  That is our job; we have to try to bring it out in him.

What are your thoughts on Shockey?
It is so nebulous right now.  You just have no idea what is going to happen.  Right now he is on our team and we are planning on him being there.  He will be one of the guys that we look to feature and one of the guys that we will look to depend on and hopefully he will be here in good spirits and ready to do the things that we know he is capable of doing, but who knows?  It is certainly beyond my hands.

Shockey’s loss and the perceived effect it had on Eli Manning’s play?
You know I think it is more of rather than Jeremy leaving it was more Steve Smith coming back.  That is what a lot of people don’t realize.  It was Steve Smith’s return.  You look at him in the Dallas game in our opener he did some good things, he caught the pass on the third down conversion in Green Bay and all of a sudden we don’t have him again until Buffalo.  Then he comes back and little by little… I thought his emergence really has helped, and also the play the entire group contributed.  I thought the line played better, I thought Steve Smith’s addition, and I thought Kevin Boss did some good things.  A lot of those guys played a little bit better, like the supporting cast, I hate to use that term, but the supporting cast played better, which I thought allowed Eli to showcase his abilities more efficiently.

So you still think Shockey is a valuable weapon for this team?
Absolutely, no question about that.

What do you guys like about Woodson and what were other team’s concerns about him?
I don’t know what other people’s concerns were.  We were surprised he was still there.  We are trying to address all the need that we have, not just on the offensive side, but also on the defensive side.  It wasn’t necessarily the number one priority, there were other things, but when we saw him there we had had him evaluated or assessed at a value that was very difficult to overlook so that is why we picked him.  He is a guy that has played a lot of big games.  He has won a lot of games at a school and a program that hasn’t necessarily flourished in the South East Conference.  When you can get a guy that has carried his team for a long time in a very competitive environment it is hard to not take a chance on him.  We are excited about him coming in and seeing what he can do.  We think that he is a young guy that you have heard Tom refer to and Jerry Reese refer to that we have been working on getting  a young guy that can come in here and develop and become a quality backup to Eli.  Hopefully he will be that guy.

Almost guaranteeing Woodson a spot makes for a heck of a battle for the last QB spot?
Yes it does ha ha.  Yes it does. 

What do you want to see out of those guys that are competing for that second spot?
Obviously you are looking for the best player, but to me I am just looking for a guy that can go in and the fall off is minimized.  You don’t have to start changing what you have been trying to do as an offense because you have lost your starting quarterback.  Now there are going to be some alterations, some modifications, but you would like to minimize the adjustment.  So you need a guy that can come in, has a little savvy about him, has a feel for what you are trying to accomplish, so he has to have a degree of intellect and know what you are trying to accomplish, and we think that we have a couple of guys that can do that.  Until they do it, and hopefully that will not happen and we don’t have to depend upon them to do it, but if they do you would like to have somebody step forward and you don’t just get defeat, so to speak. 

It sounds like you are talking about a veteran?
Well I have been both, we have been in both cases.  I was down in Jacksonville and Rob Johnson came in and wound up playing so well he wound up getting traded for with Buffalo and Jacksonville after I left was able to get a number one pick out of him.  It can be a young guy, you would like to think that there is a veteran that can do it while you ease the transition or you slow down the transition or the dependence on a young guy, but hey if he can do it that is great.  All we are looking for is somebody, whoever it is.

How has Carr looked?
We haven’t done anything with him so I haven’t seen anything.  I just know him from watching other team’s defenses as we do in our offseason study and what have you.  He came into the league highly touted, there have been some things where he struggled a little bit, and I think there have been some extenuating circumstances so hopefully we have eliminated those extenuating circumstances and he will play well for us.

Have you talked directly to Shockey?
I did.

So the whole situation and your description of it is how he sees it?
You know 90 percent of it is coming from you guys, to be quite honest, and I just listen and read and hear what you guys are saying and hear what our organization’s responses are to your inquiries, but when I spoke to him I just told him in essence I hope he comes back and if he does come back I am looking forward to working with him and I think his teammates and coaches all feel like I do.  That we will be a better football team because he is here and I just wanted to make sure that he understood that.

He is not saying he wants to come back though?
In our conversations it wouldn’t be fair for me to divulge what was said by him and I would feel very uncomfortable in doing that.  I would feel like I was betraying a confidence, but we had a good talk.  The most important thing is that I wanted him to know the way that I felt.

Does he still think that he is valuable to this offense?
Again, I don’t feel real comfortable commenting on the exchange of ideas that came from him.  I can tell you what I said and I have already mentioned it to you.  I just want him to know that there is a place for him here, I think we are a better football team if he is here, and as far as I am concerned he is an integral part to what we are doing.