Someone asked Jason Sehorn if he had watched how Jeremy Shockey ran over safety David Gibson.

"The same kid who said he was just another tight end, he wasn't a Tony Gonzalez," Sehorn said with a smile. "Yeah. Eat those words."

You bet Shockey, the wondrous rookie, saw the quotes in yesterday's Indianapolis Star.

"Tiki [Barber] and Kerry [Collins] showed it to me," Shockey said after the Giants 44-27 win over the Colts.

Shockey's violent reply came at the start of the second quarter when he caught a screen pass in the right flat and Bavaro-ed poor Gibson and kept barreling ahead for a 24-yard gain.

"I caught the ball and I just tried to gain yards on it," Shockey said first.

Do you know it was Gibson you ran over?

"Yeah, I saw him."

And?

"He won't be saying nuthin' else about me I don't think."

Shockey was asked if a play like that fires up a team.

"I don't think of it like that," he said. "I think of it, you know, I'm gonna try to score every time I get my hands on the ball. I guess people feed off my emotion and feed off my plays, but I'll do the same things on Tiki's runs, the same thing on [Amani Toomer's] catches, the same thing on Kerry's throws and the same thing on our defense every time they hit somebody hard. I think we all work together pretty well."

Here in the midwest, they remember Mike Ditka more than Mark Bavaro. Shockey was asked about the comparison.

"Heard it once or twice," he said, and smiled.

Someone wanted to know if one of those old Ditka stampeding-elephant runs where he leaves five or six defenders buried in the ground charges him up.

"It's always good when somebody dominates another person like that," Shockey said. "It's a game of domination and whoever's gonna hit who first. It's a physical game so . . . I was just lucky enough I got [Gibson] before he got me."

Shockey (7-116) fumbled deep in Colts territory at the end of a 26-yard gain later in the quarter.

"There's a lot of things I need to get better at," he said. "One, when I make a play like that just go down. But I got one damn touchdown the whole year so fuck, I'm gonna try to get in the end zone every time."

Shockey dissed the Eagles' secondary on radio prior to the first game. When someone jokingly said, "They're your favorite secondary," he didn't take the bait.

"We'll see next week," was all Shockey said. He is two catches from tying Bavaro's club single-season mark 66 for tight ends.

"I didn't even know that," Shockey said. "I guess it's great as long as we keep winning games."

He is all team, and all football.

"I think he's understanding better what we're expecting of him and what we want him to do within the offense," Collins said. "He's running his routes more confidently. He's learning about the game . . . he's ahead of the curve."

And teaching lessons while learning them. "You don't talk about people you never played," Sehorn said.
Dec. 23,02