Jacksonville coach Jack “Vanessa” Del Rio was all decked out in a suit and the sartorial statement proved the winning edge as the Jaguars beat the NY Giants 26-10 on Monday night football. John Gray enjoyed the best picks record for the week with 12-4 and Harry Weiss now holds on to his lead by a slim game- the last time slim and Weiss will be used in the same sentence this week.

Harry Weiss, 101-59

Steve Seidman, Sean, www.pornlegends.com, 100-60

Gene Ross, John Gray, Mike Dickinson, 99-61

Brian, aka Plus One; Ryan from Jerry’s Deli, 98-62

Billy The Crystal, 97-63

Wankus, www.tylerfaith.com, 96-64

Brian Wallace, 94-66

Karl the Birdman; Dan Davis, Genesis Magazine, 93-67

Big Ty, 91-69

Shannon, Adult DVD Empire, 90-70

Sandy Bunz, www.sandybunz.com, 89-71

Steve Volponi, www.devilsfilm.com, 87-73

Serenity, www.serenity.net, 85-75

Steve Lane, 83-77

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. [NY Times] – After the Giants lost 26-10 to the Jacksonville Jaguars Monday night, Coach Tom Coughlin stood in the unfamiliar visitors locker room and screamed at his players loud enough to be heard through the steel doors. Then the Giants headed north, carrying with them the frustration of a season threatening to go south.

The once-surging Giants (6-4) are battered on defense, ineffective on offense, at times bungling on special teams, and are now in a standings quagmire.

The loss, their second in a row, dropped the Giants into a tie with the Dallas Cowboys atop the National Football Conference East. Lagging far behind the 9-1 Chicago Bears, five conference teams share a 6-4 record; another three are 5-5. Six teams make the playoffs, meaning the Giants, who play at Tennessee next weekend, are walking a thin line between championship contender and postseason witness.

“We knew we would have to stop the run and we weren’t able to do that at all,” said Coughlin, who coached the Jaguars from 1995-2002. “We didn’t execute on offense at all, we didn’t have any balance.”

Coughlin added, “There are an awful lot of plays being left on the field.”

They have a short week to reverse their most damaging trends. Quarterback Eli Manning, looking less steady as the season goes, completed only 19 of 41 passes for 230 yards and 2 interceptions. The running game was abandoned early, as Tiki Barber, the league’s leading rusher entering the weekend, had 27 yards, his lowest rushing total since 2003.

The offense did not muster a first down until their fifth possession, late in the second quarter. “It was a pretty pitiful performance all the way around,” Barber said.

The defense, missing four regular starters, was put on the field too often and too quickly by the Giants’ ineffective offense, and was unable to find its own way back to the bench. The Jaguars (6-4) converted 9 of 18 third downs; the Giants’ offense had only 4 conversions in 13 attempts.

Most of the game did not seem as close as the score insisted it was, but the Jaguars continued to hand the Giants life preservers, as if intent on keeping the prime-time national-television audience focused on the party being thrown at their stadium.

The Jaguars fumbled at the doorstep of one touchdown in the second quarter, and they had a defensive score in the third quarter undone by a penalty far from the play. After the touchdown was called back, a moribund Giants offense and a seemingly rattled Manning were resuscitated, resulting in a 14-point swing that threw the rest of the game in doubt.

With the Giants trailing, 13-3, Manning fumbled under pressure, and Jacksonville defensive end Paul Spicer returned the ball for an apparent touchdown. But cornerback Rashean Mathis, caught shoving receiver Plaxico Burress in the face at the snap, was called for illegal use of hands, and the play was wiped out.

The Giants then moved crisply for the first time and scored from 25 yards away with six and a half minutes to play in the third quarter. Manning threw quickly to Burress, who slipped inside past one defender, then faked another.

The Jaguars added a field goal for a precarious 6-point lead with a little more than a quarter to play. On the next Giants possession, Manning threw deep down the middle to Burress, who reached to tip the ball to himself and appeared to haul in a 53-yard gain. But the Jaguars challenged the play, and the referee Ron Winter ruled that the ball hit the ground as Burress fell.

The Jaguars, like a cat toying with a fragile foe, needed only four plays to score again, taking a 23-10 lead on Maurice Jones-Drew’s 3-yard run.

The Giants had not scored more than 20 points in their previous three games after averaging 27 a game. Much of the focus turned toward Manning, who had completed only 50.4 percent of his passes in the four previous games, after being successful on 65.3 percent in the first five.

After a loss to the Bears last week, he insisted during the week that his confidence was not shaken. But he completed only one of his first six passes against the Jaguars. With the Giants trailing by 10-3 late in the second quarter, Manning drifted to the right and saw Burress beyond the last defender. Manning lobbed the ball well short, however, and it was intercepted by safety Deon Grant.

The Giants scored first, on a 40-yard field goal by Jay Feely, but it foreshadowed more frustration. The Giants took possession at the Jacksonville 29-yard line, drew an offside penalty on the Jaguars and still could not earn a first down.

Jacksonville matched the points with more panache. The strong-armed quarterback David Garrard completed a pair of long passes on the way to a 39-yard field goal by Josh Scobee.

Mixing a bevy of medium-range passes with the cut-back ability of running back Fred Taylor, the Jaguars found their rhythm.

Garrard completed four passes of 10 yards or more on a second-quarter drive that ended with a 10-yard touchdown run up the middle by Taylor, giving the Jaguars a 10-3 lead.

The Giants not only struggled to keep up on offense, but they struggled to move at all. The Jaguars seemed to have the game in hand just before halftime, leading by 10-3 and starting a drive at the Giants’ 30-yard line after Manning’s interception. On first down at the 14, immediately after the two-minute warning, Garrard shoved a short pass to Taylor, whose romp to the end zone ended abruptly when Gibril Wilson knocked the ball from his hands at the 4. Giants linebacker Antonio Pierce fell on the ball in the end zone for a touchback.

The result leaves Coughlin to rebuild, on the fly, a staggering team. It is a much different assignment than he had when he was hired by the Jaguars as the coach and personnel director 18 months before the expansion franchise’s first game in 1995.

Coughlin, fired by the Jaguars in 2002, did his best last week to play down his return as a storyline, but it did not prevent the game from being viewed in northern Florida as a chance to debate the tenures of Coughlin and Jack Del Rio, the man who replaced him.

Now the men and their teams share the same record. But the home team left feeling much better. Coughlin surely remembers the feeling.

Extra Points

The start of the Giants game against Dallas on Dec. 3 has been moved to 4:15 p.m. from 1 p.m.