Recently, I was listening to Sirius XM NFL Radio while driving to New York Giants practice. The host of the show (I see you, Bob Papa) was basically doing play-by-play of the fights breaking out during a joint practice between the New York Jets and Tampa Bay Buccaneers.<\/p>\n
I relay that story because fights seem to be commonplace during these joint practices, and the Giants are participating in one with the Miami Dolphins on Thursday in Miami.<\/p>\n
Joint practices, of course, are not the controlled situations teams can create for their players during normal practices.<\/p>\n
With that in mind, I asked Giants head coach John Harbaugh, a veteran of many of these situations, if there was a way a head coach could try to keep his players safe during a situation where he isn\u2019t in charge of every player on the field.<\/p>\n
Welcome to the \u2018Rules of Engagement\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll have rules of engagement, we\u2019ll call it,\u201d Harbaugh said. \u201cTalked to Coach Hafley. He talks to his team. We talk to our team. We have the same rules of engagement.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harbaugh said those rules will include, and probably emphasize, that defenders getting anywhere the opposing quarterback is strictly verboten.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019ll be the same that we use in our practice. It\u2019ll be probably more to the quarterback,\u201d Harbaugh said. \u201cWe\u2019ll emphasize protecting each other\u2019s quarterbacks even more, because as soon as somebody gets close, and the other team\u2019s going to talk about getting close, and we can\u2019t have that, nobody can get close to the quarterback. That\u2019s going to be a major point of emphasis.\u201d<\/p>\n
There will be other rules of engagement.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to stay off the ground, and we\u2019re going to be looking for no blindside shots of any kind. We\u2019re not looking for that,\u201d Harbaugh said.\u201c It\u2019s a front-up tackle. That\u2019s kind of a front-up type of thud, wrap you can do, but it won\u2019t be side shots and things like that. That\u2019s the goal.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, we want to protect them as much as we protect our own players, and we want them to protect our players as much as they would protect their own players.\u201d<\/p>\n
What the Giants aim to accomplish<\/p>\n
This will be a single practice in advance of Saturday\u2019s preseason game. What is Harbaugh\u2019s goal?<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m looking to get a good practice against a different team,\u201d Harbaugh said. \u201cYou get an opportunity to go against different players, different schemes, and evaluate your guys along those lines. It\u2019s good. It\u2019s just nice to see a different format, different plays, different players.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd it\u2019s fun. It\u2019s more interesting. It\u2019s not another practice day for the guys. They\u2019re going against a new team.\u201d<\/p>\n
Malik Nabers won\u2019t participate<\/p>\n
Nabers, on the comeback trail from a pair of surgeries to repair a torn ACL, just began participating in a handful of team drills this week. He has been wearing a red, non-contact jersey.<\/p>\n
Nabers will travel with the Giants to Miami, but won\u2019t take part in team drills on Thursday or play in Saturday\u2019s preseason game.<\/p>\n
The Giants want to get Nabers involved in some degree of physicality in a controlled practice setting before exposing him to defenders on other teams.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe won\u2019t go through the rest of the summer in a red jersey,\u201d Harbaugh said. \u201cNo, he\u2019ll be out of a red jersey before he plays in a game. He\u2019s going to have to get bumped around and hit and fronted up so he knows how to, you just have to feel that and know how to deal with it to protect yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n
That just isn\u2019t going to happen in Miami.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Recently, I was listening to Sirius XM NFL Radio while driving to New York Giants practice. The host…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":375891,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[123,125,124,151453],"class_list":["post-375890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news","tag-new-york-giants-preseason"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=375890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375890\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/375891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}