Sam Donnellon: Giants rookies paying off - on the field

Eli Manning has played some of his best football lately, finally doesn't look like an easily rattled kid. There are all types of reasons given for that, but the biggest might be due to two kids who are not easily rattled.

The New York Giants who face the Dallas Cowboys in Sunday's NFC divisional playoff game are not the New York Giants who faced the Dallas Cowboys in Week 1 or even Week 10. Ahmad Bradshaw is one reason for that. Kevin Boss is another. Neither of these 2007 late-round picks was even on the Giants' map for most of this season, one buried behind three more experienced running backs, the other buried behind Jeremy Shockey, New York's high-priced and high-profile tight end.

In the latest testament to having your general manager operate independently from your head coach, all of the Giants' eight 2008 draft picks played significant roles in their 24-14 playoff victory over Tampa Bay last Sunday. A 5-9, 198-pound juke-and-jitter back, Bradshaw has, over the last 3 weeks, added an element to the Giants' attack that was not present for most of the season. Fourth on the depth chart when the season began, he has emerged as the perfect change of pace to bruising 6-4, 264-pound Brandon Jacobs, whom the Giants have featured for much of this season.

Operating exclusively in the second half against Buffalo in the second-to-last game of the season, Bradshaw squirted and squirmed for 151 yards and almost single-handedly rescued the Giants from a debilitating defeat. In the victory over Tampa Bay, the seventh-round pick from Marshall - New York's last pick in the 2007 draft - again stepped up in the second half, carrying the ball exclusively and slicing up the Bucs' tired offense with his fresh and elusive legs.

"He just gives us a different look," Manning said this week. "We have done some things, we move him around . . . it is good to have two different styles and . . . switch up the look a little bit."

Said Jacobs: "I don't care who scores the touchdown, who gets the yards, I just want to win. I think it's a plus to us as an offense for him to come on late in the game after they've spent two, 2 1/2 quarters tackling me . . . They stand there, wait for him to run right into them, and he won't do that. He's short, it's hard to see him behind the line."

No one can say that about the 6-6 Boss, a fifth-rounder out of Western Oregon. Shockey, at 6-5, 251 pounds, was a massive target. While his hands and blocking can be inconsistent, he has been named to the Pro Bowl four times in his six seasons, and had a huge game in the 31-20 home loss to Dallas on Nov. 11, catching 12 of Manning's 23 completions for 129 yards and a touchdown.

But when Shockey's season ended via a broken left fibula in the third quarter of a Dec. 16 loss to Washington, New York was amid an offensive slump in which it scored 16 points or less in four of the five games since its home loss to Dallas.

At that point, Boss was a now-you-see-him, now-you-don't insert, catching a pass or two on most weeks. He didn't catch a pass in the Giants' 38-21 victory the next week in Buffalo, but the following game, against New England, he caught four, including one for a touchdown that put the Giants ahead at the half.

"He has played with poise," Giants coach Tom Coughlin said this week. "Boss is the kind of kid who stays afterwards and comes in on the days off. You'll find him watching tape and studying in times when he does have free time. His attitude is very good about that."

Said Manning: "He has a good feel for where he needs to be and what is going on . . . He is not doing everything exactly how it is written in the book, but he is finding holes and finding lanes and I think he is mentally prepared for what is being thrown at him and what his different looks are."

That, with Bradshaw's emergence, has left the impression that Manning's feel has improved, too. He threw one interception in the near-miss vs. New England, was error-free in his execution of the Giants' offense down in Tampa. In Boss, some believe that Manning has even found the safety valve that the NFL's elite quarterbacks - past and present - need.

Asked the other day whether there was an "indefinable connection there," Manning cautioned, "I don't know if there is anything indefinable yet - we've just had a few weeks of playing together."

A few weeks has been enough for Bradshaw, though. "I feel like, once you touch the field, you're never a rookie again," he said.

He might not want to share that with his oft-beleaguered quarterback, now in his fourth season.

Then again, since Bradshaw and the Boss man arrived, Eli has seemed far more the master of this offense than its student. *

[More at www.philly.com]