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EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- Its not supposed to work. Every bit of NFL front-office history has taught us that you cant go out and fix your problems with one big free-agent offseason. Build through the draft, thats the way to go. Free agency is for augmentation, not foundation building.So no, the New York Giants couldnt have seen this coming. Even after doling out top-dollar deals for three defensive free agents and a generous one-year deal for one of their own, veteran defensive end?Jason Pierre-Paul, the Giants themselves couldnt have known it would turn out like this.You hope so, linebacker Jonathan Casillas said Sunday afternoon, after he and the Giants defense had delivered a second straight stifling victory over an NFC division leader, this time a 17-6 win over the Detroit Lions. You always hope its going to work, when you bring in new guys, but you never know for sure.The Giants didnt know for sure in March, or even in September. But they know now. They know they can win games with defense -- even in a down year for QB?Eli Manning, one in which the offensive game plan increasingly seems to be, Just protect the ball as best you can until Odell Beckham Jr. makes a play.You can spend a good chunk of the NFL season trying to figure out who you are. But by this point, if you want to do big things, you have to know who you are. The Giants know.Our mindset is to stop the opponent, to not let them score, said Landon Collins, the second-year safety whos emerged as a Defensive Player of the Year candidate after a rough rookie season. You obviously want to be one of the top defenses in the league, but our mindset is, Get a stop on third down. Get a stop. Get our offense back on the field in good field position.You can point to the performances of free-agent signings Olivier Vernon, Damon Harrison and Janoris Jenkins?as the reason this defense has jumped from league-worst to good-enough-to-beat-anybody in just one year. And theres some validity there. All three of those guys have played brilliantly, so far justifying the Giants decisions to spend whatever it took to get them.But its more than that, as it must be. The Giants defensive turnaround has to do with Collins being in the right position, and having a season under his belt so his heads not swimming the way it was last season. It has to do with the mindset of someone like Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie, the veteran cornerback who lost his job to rookie Eli Apple but stepped in when Jenkins left Sundays game due to injury. It has to do with young, untested defensive linemen like Romeo Okwara and Owa Odighizuwa playing better since Pierre-Paul got hurt.When your number is called, you can either go down or go up, Collins said. And a lot of us have been moving up.This kind of thing feeds on itself, and you can see it in a Giants defense that held Dallas to seven points a week ago and Detroit to six Sunday. Manning entered Week 15 ranked 26th in Total QBR and 23rd in yards per attempt, and the Giants still sit at 10-4, one victory away from qualifying for the playoffs for the first time since 2011. They left MetLife Stadium on Sunday afternoon with the knowledge that, if Dallas slips up Sunday night against the Buccaneers, they could still win the NFC East.But the reason for the Giants success is that they havent been distracted by big-picture stuff. Defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo, himself a coaching reclamation project after presiding over defenses that set records for futility in New Orleans and previously with the Giants, has found a way to keep his charges focused on and dedicated to their individual jobs from play to play and week to week.Weve got a lot of guys at their positions being asked to win one-on-one battles, and were winning them, Casillas said. [WR]?Golden Tate had a day today, and that happens sometimes, but the good thing was it was only him. We basically bottled up everybody else.Tate had 122 yards from scrimmage. No other Lion had more than 52. QB?Matthew Stafford, the king of the fourth-quarter comeback this season, threw for a pedestrian 273 yards on 24-for-39 passing?with an interception. The run-challenged Lions managed 56 rushing yards on 19 carries. Down four points in the fourth quarter, a team that has come back to win in eight of its nine victories this season instead saw its deficit grow thanks to big-play Beckham, who one-handed the game-sealing touchdown.We just have a relentless mentality, Rodgers-Cromartie said. Nobody wants to be the guy who goes out and lets down the team. Thats the way were going right now, and thats special.The Giants defense, long an Achilles heel, has a special feel to it. Playing without Pierre-Paul the past two weeks and now facing the possibility of playing without Jenkins, who injured his back and has only?three days to recover before the Thursday night game in Philadelphia, they seem convinced they can deliver.It wasnt supposed to be like this. The Giants were supposed to have an explosive offense and hope the defense could just rise from the back of the pack to the middle. Instead, theyre in December and the defense is carrying the offense. Theyll take it. Its an NFL era in which championships can once again be won with defense, as the 2015 Broncos proved. And while this years Giants have a long way to go before they can compare themselves to that group, theyre in a position now where they dont wonder whether they can stop anybody when it matters. They know they can. Adidas Yeezy NZ Shoes . Giroud, who wasnt in the starting lineup for two matches after allegations about his private life and a decline in form, scored twice in the first half. Tomas Rosickys chip made it 3-0 before half time at Emirates Stadium, while defender Laurent Koscielny scored an unmarked header in the second half. Clearance Adidas NZ .Y. -- Paul Byron and Matt Stajan scored as the Calgary Flames started a five-game road trip with a 2-1 overtime win over the Buffalo Sabres on Saturday afternoon. http://www.discountyeezynz.com/ . The 25-year-old Japanese star has officially been posted by his club team, the Rakuten Golden Eagles. Discount Adidas Yeezy Shoes NZ Outlet . -- Its been a long road back for Sean Bergenheim. Wholesale Adidas NZ . Ferrer, trying to win his fourth title on Mexican soil, will next play South Africas Kevin Anderson, who eliminated American Sam Querrey,7-6 (2), 6-4. Also Wednesday, Gilles Simon (6) of France beat Donald Young of the United States 6-4, 6-3, Ukraines Alexandr Dolgopolov downed Frenchman Jeremy Chardy 6-3, 6-4 and Croatias Ivo Karlovic defeated Dudi Sela of Israel 7-6 (4), 6-2. Yorkshire have expressed their anger at the ECB for not allowing Jonny Bairstow to play in the County Championship decider against Middlesex at Lords. In what is proving a fraught build-up to the match, it also emerged that Adil Rashid will not be available, having requested to be rested ahead of Englands winter.The club issued a lengthy statement which said that Bairstow had confirmed he wanted to play and questioned the reasoning of not making Bairstow available despite it being more than two weeks since he last played.The Yorkshire County Cricket Club would like to express its disappointment after the ECB refused the clubs request for Jonny Bairstow to participate in the final Specsavers County Championship fixture of the season, the statement said.Yorkshire members, supporters and other stakeholders in the game will wonder why this permission has been refused. Having been rested for 16 days since he last played for England, Bairstow said he felt refreshed and wanted to play for Yorkshire against Middlesex at Lords, where the club has the opportunity of winning three successive County Championships, a feat last achieved almost 50 years ago.They made much briefer comment about Rashid who was included in both Englands squads for the Bangladesh tour and will be expected to tour India as well. Adil Rashid has requested to be rested ahead of a busy winter schedule with England, a team-news statement said.Jason Gillespie, preparing for his final match as Yorkshire coach, told ESPNcricinfo: Im obviously frustrated about Rash and I said to him I hope he doesnt regret the decision he has made. But I fully respect his decision. He has played a lot of cricket and he feels he needs a rest.However, in a pointed tweet, Yorkshire captain Andrew Gale, who has been known to let his emotions show, posted: Yes, he wants to rest. Thats his decision. Ill take 11 lads on the field who will give everything to win.Yorkshire have to win to retain hopes of a hat-trick of titles following their defeat against Somerset last week. Even a victory would not be enough, however, if Somerset win against Nottinghamshire and gain one more point than Yorkshire in the process.Bairstow, meanwhile, is not a centrally contracted player - although he will gain a central contract under the new batch announced at the end of the month - but Yorkshire needed the ECBs permission to play him. When Martyn Moxon, Yorkshires director of cricket, approached England coach Trevor Bayliss annd director of cricket Andrew Strauss, the request was declined.ddddddddddddMoxon works closely with England due to the fact that six players from Yorkshire have represented their country regularly over the last 12 months. Bayliss approach has been to see how the player feels, and this was respected when Bairstow said that he needed a rest after the Royal London One-Day Series.To put matters into context, other centrally contracted players who are soon to tour Bangladesh and India with England, have been allowed to represent their county in critical matches. Bairstow has played five days of cricket in five weeks since the Kia Oval Test match, which finished on Sunday August 14.Bairstow would have been the ideal replacement for Jake Lehmann who has been recalled by South Australia to prepare for their domestic season. He is part of the one-day and Test squads for the Bangladesh tour and is likely to play seven consecutive Tests from mid-October to the end of the India leg shortly before Christmas.Yorkshire have been supportive of Englands rest policy in the case of Joe Root, who is another absentee from the Middlesex clash. The decision to rest Root for the rest of the season was happily accepted in recognition of his weight of cricket across all formats and, even when he was left out of Englands one-day series in Bangladesh, the county made no attempt to persuade the ECB or the player himself that he should play at Lords.Yorkshires 13-man squad does include David Willey and Liam Plunkett, who are part of Englands one-day squad, as well as Gary Ballance who will tour with the Test side.But at a time when the future of the domestic game is being shaped the absence of a star England player for a rare televised Championship match with the title at stake, and the decision of another to opt out despite the importance of the fixture, will lead to further debate about the standing of the competition.Rashids absence means Yorkshires spin for the crunch Championship match will be in the hands of Azeem Rafiq. Rashid has taken 32 wickets at 33.84 in 10 Championship games this season.Middlesex, who are set to have Steven Finn available, have also been boosted by the availability of Tim Murtagh after Cricket Ireland allowed him to remain with the county instead of flying out with the rest of the Ireland squad to South Africa. ' ' '