updated 1:36 p.m. ET Sept. 25, 2006

SEATTLE - Flat doesn’t begin to describe the New York Giants’ start to their supposed showdown with Seattle.

Flattened is more like it.

Seahawks quarterback Matt Hasselbeck threw five touchdown passes — four in a first half in which Eli Manning had three interceptions. New York trailed 42-3 before rallying in the fourth quarter to a 42-30 loss Sunday.

“I don’t know what it is. But it’s not flat,” Giants coach Tom Coughlin said after his team followed a 17-point fourth-quarter deficit at Philadelphia last week with a 35-0 flop in the first half against the soaring Seahawks.

“A team that does nothing but preach and talk about turnovers, we turn it over like nothing matters, nothing counts,” Coughlin said. “It cost us the game.”

It all left New York’s Jeremy Shockey irate — at his coach.

“We got outplayed, and outcoached. Write that down,” the volatile tight end said after he was told of Coughlin’s frustrated outburst.

Shockey had four catches for 58, inconsequential yards.

When asked what he meant by “outcoached” Shockey said, “You saw the game.”

“They were in different defenses than we thought they were going to be in. They did different things that we haven’t seen,” he said. “You can make adjustments all you want, but when they do new things and they switch things up, you really can’t do anything.”

It was reminiscent of comments made by running back Tiki Barber after the Giants’ wild-card game loss to Carolina last season. Barber said after the game that the Giants were outcoached by Carolina’s John Fox, a former Giants defensive coordinator.

The Seahawks (3-0) won their 12th consecutive regular-season home game and finally felt good about their previously sputtering offense, thanks to Deion Branch’s debut.

The former Patriot and Super Bowl MVP caught two passes for 23 yards and ran a reverse 8 yards. He was part of the Seahawks’ new, four-wide receiver scheme, an offensive makeover during the game’s relatively few important parts.

“There was no way for them to prepare for that ... we were running routes we’d never shown,” Hasselbeck said.

Whatever, Coughlin huffed.

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“Our pass coverage was practically nonexistent ... Turn the ball over like that and not be able to stop them, not to get anything done until the second half,” he said. “Makes no sense to me.”

Made history, though.

New York (1-2) wanted to take Seattle’s roaring, allegedly enhanced crowd out of the game early. The Giants did that by free-falling into the deepest first-half hole in their 82-year history.

“We just handed it to them,” Coughlin said.

Manning was 2-of-7 for minus-1 yards and the two interceptions in a nightmare first quarter, when Seattle led 21-0. He was 20-for-26 for 238 yards after that.

“Yeah, it was hard to believe,” Manning said of the start.

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