The reign is over. After falling to the Philadelphia Eagles yesterday in the divisional playoffs, the Giants fell to the task of trying to make sense of how the game—and the season—slipped away from them.

Unlike the Jets collapse, the Giants still seem to have earned enough capital with last year's Super Bowl win to keep the local media from calling for the heads of QB Eli Manning or Head Coach Tom Coughlin. That's not to say that either gets away unscathed of course. The News' Gary Myers says that Coughlin was the coach who last season "outsmarted Bill Belichick," but yesterday "was outcoached by Andy Reid...lost his magic touch." Manning is accused pretty much across the board as looking like "the Eli of old," but Howie Long may have been the only one to have called Donovan McNabb's potential to dominate his opponent before it actually happened.

And of course you knew that sports writers were waiting with bated breath to bring up how big of a factor Plaxico Burress may have been yesterday had he not been given a breather by the team following the shooting mess he got himself into midway through the season. The Post's Steve Serby points out that Eli's overthrows wouldn't have been an issue with a 6'6" receiver on the field and says that once Plax was taken out of the equation, "The red zone became a dead zone for them."

And while most of the Giants ducked the Plax factor, the Eagles weren't shy to bring it up in the locker room yesterday. Safety and defensive leader Brian Dawkins told the press, "When he's not there, a huge, huge part of their offense is taken away." Giants GM Jerry Reese said that the door is "absolutely" open for a Plaxico return "if everything goes right."

As for the defense that received the most credit for the team's Super Bowl trophy last year, most couldn't fault a squad that basically shut down Brian Westbrook for most of the day. And yet they were not the force that made last year's MVP Tom Brady look vulnerable for the first time in his otherwise flawless season. Mike Lupica sums it up best, "We wondered how much they would miss Plaxico Burress yesterday and Michael Strahan and Osi Umenyiora. They missed them all, mightily."