The New York Giants enter a different phase of preseason preparations this week. Rosters have to be trimmed to the regular-season limit of 53 players by Sunday, Aug. 30 at 6 p.m. ET. With the regular season now less than three full weeks away, practices will also take on a different tone.<\/p>\n
There won\u2019t be any 2\u00bd-hour padded practices this week as the Giants look toward their final preseason game. Practices will be two hours in length this week, and head coach John Harbaugh said on Sunday that none will be fully padded.<\/p>\n
Healthy Giants starters played in the Aug. 15 preseason opener against the Minnesota Vikings. Those who the coaching felt needed the work played Saturday, Aug. 22 against the Miami Dolphins.<\/p>\n
The Giants have had a grueling \u2014 by modern NFL standards \u2014 training camp. Edge defender Brian Burns said last week that was part of why the team performed as well as it did in scorching heat during last Thursday\u2019s joint practice with the Dolphins.<\/p>\n
\u201cI ain\u2019t gonna lie, if we didn\u2019t practice as hard as we do, I don\u2019t know if we would have made it through this heat,\u201d Burns said. \u201cAnd the level of competition that we practiced with today. But I feel like us practicing as hard as we do, definitely prepared us for all of this.\u201d<\/p>\n
The last thing the Giants want to do between now and the Sept. 13 season-opener against the Dallas Cowboys is dull that competitive edge.<\/p>\n
I asked Harbaugh on Sunday about whether the idea that players could go three weeks to a month before that game without live competition will factor into the team\u2019s decision-making. We did not directly discuss playing time in Friday\u2019s preseason finale against the New York Jets.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost definitely. Most definitely. You have to factor that in and consider that,\u201d Harbaugh said. \u201cPlaying together in a game, communicating together in a game, those things are valuable things that it\u2019s better to have some experience with before you get into the game that counts, so to speak.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, yeah, that\u2019s part of it, even the way we practice, what we work on, how we set up our practices. We set up our practices for the week this afternoon and what we needed to work on. That\u2019s definitely a big part of that mindset in terms of how we organize the plays and what we work on. So, big yes to what you asked.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harbaugh also acknowledged, in a lengthy answer, how this is a difficult week for players competing for roster spots. In his 19th season as a head coach, he said there is \u201ca human aspect to this whole thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe tell them your best dream is not too big, matter of fact it might not even be big enough,\u201d Harbaugh said. \u201cAnd you have the right to go ahead and feel free to hope for all the things that inside you might not even want to tell anybody because for fear that someone might \u2013 but if they\u2019re not laughing at your dream then it\u2019s not big enough either, so say it, speak it and go for it.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd these guys have really done that. I feel like they\u2019ve really put that out there and they\u2019ve talked to each other, they\u2019ve committed to helping one another achieve each other\u2019s dreams, those kinds of things we talk about in our meetings and I know they talk about amongst themselves as a group of guys.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trimming a roster from 90 players to 53 is never a fun part of the job.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis week, to your point, is a very challenging week because there will be guys that won\u2019t be here after this week. Now, maybe they\u2019ll come back,\u201d Harbaugh said. \u201cWe brought (defensive lineman) Ben (Barten) back, the defensive lineman who just got released by the Jets and came back to us again here this week. And so, I told him, I said, \u201cHey, we had this conversation man, I told you you\u2019d be back here.\u201d And I don\u2019t know why I thought he would, but he is. So, maybe you go back to what (Former Giants owner) Wellington Mara famously said, \u2018Once a Giant, always a Giant.\u2019 I think that holds true as well. So, you become part of the team, part of the organization, part of the fabric of what it means to be a Giant, and I do think that those guys, they treasure it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know I\u2019m getting a little long-winded, but how many of us that played football wouldn\u2019t have loved to have had an opportunity to be in a football camp in the National Football League? To be invited, to get a try out even? All the not-so-good players like me would have loved that, and I tell these guys, \u2018You are the very best. Every single player here in this room is a great football player.\u2019 There is not one football player in an NFL camp who\u2019s not a great football player. You talk about the top .0001 percent of football players, even athletes, in the world that are going to be in a football camp. But then there\u2019s levels to that too, just like there\u2019s levels to anything else, so within that striving to be the best you can be. But I would say everybody, every one of our guys, whether they\u2019re here the next week or they\u2019re not, will look back and say they did their very best, they put their best foot forward, and it\u2019s something that they can look back on really for the rest of their life proudly.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The New York Giants enter a different phase of preseason preparations this week. Rosters have to be trimmed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":329064,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9,112064,11,10],"class_list":["post-329063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-giants-preseason","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=329063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329063\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/329064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}