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TAMPA - They beat the Redskins without wowing anybody. They beat the Cowboys in spite of themselves. So when the Giants started getting ready for the Buccaneers, there was a little more on their minds than just beating them.

They had to reestablish themselves, go old school, get mad at themselves and take it out on the guys across the line of scrimmage.

"We won the football game," Justin Tuck said of the last-second thriller that spoiled Jerry Jones' housewarming party. "You'd think we'd be happy about that but we weren't. We didn't play our best game in Dallas, but I think we did it in all phases (yesterday). We responded."

Welcome back, running game. Welcome back, defense. Welcome back, Giants identity.

They didn't just win this football game. They owned it.

Tom Coughlin betrayed how annoyed he had been when he climbed to the podium after the 24-0 beatdown and spoke of two objectives the Giants had brought to sultry Florida.

He described the results as "a true kind of Giant physical day ... which we needed to have."

From the game's first handoff to Brandon Jacobs, there was an edge to the Giants, a sign of terms being dictated.

As it turned out, the Giants could not have hand-picked a better opponent to help them get back on track. Jersey guy Raheem Morris has a massive rebuilding job in front of him. He wants to model his team after the Giants. Presumably, he didn't mean Allie Sherman's 1966 squad.

"We were beat by a grown-man team today, a team we want to be like one day," Morris said. "They ... out-manned us, out-gunned us. It wasn't even close."

Quarterback Byron Leftwich was so slow he looked like he belonged on one of those grainy films from the 1950s, and the offensive line, supposedly Tampa Bay's strength, could do nothing against the Giants' depleted defensive front. The Bucs allowed the Giants to run 22 of the game's first 26 plays and got into an immediate 14-0 hole. They didn't get a first down until 4:54 remained in the third quarter.

In fact, it was exactly how the Giants drew things up after watching the tapes. In a perfect sense, everything starts with being able to run the football and the Giants, who had averaged just 3.5 yards a carry, had to be able to keep their defense off the field. They also had to be looking forward to the Tampa 'D,' which came in having allowed 900 yards in two games.

"There had to be a different mind-set," tackle Kareem McKenzie said. "There was the heat out here, they were used to it. The only option was to go out and run the ball. If you can't run the ball effectively, you don't give yourselves a chance to put any points on the board, and if you can't put any points on the board, that makes for a long day on the defensive side of the ball."

And so, as tackle David Diehl put it, they "smashed away," and the Bucs, who play a scheme where their smallish linebackers flow to the football, left open cutback lanes for backs with patience. It was a commodity neither Jacobs nor Ahmad Bradshaw had shown much of the first two weeks. Yesterday, it was imperative for them to wait for plays to develop, then hit the holes with some momentum.

"You've got to let them go ahead and set in to where they're going to be and you can make your move from there," Jacobs explained.

Jacobs, who felt he could have "stuck it in there" more, had 92 yards on 26 carries. Bradshaw had the second 100-yard game of his career with 104 on 14 carries including a nifty backside cutback and three busted tackles on a 38-yard gain. Even Gartrell Johnson had some good yards after Coughlin inserted the subs early in the fourth quarter.

It remains to be seen if the Giants can dictate this way to some of the league's stouter defenses - the Eagles come to mind. Next week, they have another cushy road game in Kansas City. Then the Raiders, with JaMarcus Russell looking like a young Leftwich, travel 3,000 miles to East Rutherford. The odds are good they will be 6-0 when they travel to New Orleans to match up with the incredible Drew Brees.

"We can't say yet that we've found our identity again," McKenzie said.

They'll certainly know who they are by then.

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