EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — A day after the Giants had a tough day offensively, things looked a little better for New York, but not anywhere near where Giants fans had been hoping for after the first few weeks of camp.
Daniel Jones and Tyrod Taylor each threw interceptions during team periods on Monday morning, though the offense had a few bright spots as well. Collin Johnson had an impressive catch along the sideline on a throw from Jones and Saquon Barkley had an explosive run as well.
Jones, while still struggling to hit his receivers, had far fewer throwaways than he did on Sunday even with a banged-up offensive line. Offensive lineman Jon Feliciano did not practice on Monday after he got hurt in practice the previous day.
Outside linebackers Jihad Ward and Elerson Smith were both absent from practice as well.
Head coach Brian Daboll tried to take a positive approach from Sunday’s practice, which had raised a lot of offensive questions for the Giants. On the positive end of it for New York, Daboll pointed to the play of the defense and how they were able to disrupt the play so frequently.
“I think it’s good for an offense, too, to have to deal with that. However many plays in a row, it’s still good. It makes you think,” he said.
As for what has been going on with the offense, he indicated that it’s part of the growing pains for a new system.
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“That’s why we practice. We’re all about the process, so if you have a bad day, you regroup, you look at it, you talk about it,” Daboll explained. “Obviously, you want to translate good things in practice to games. We’re evaluating players right now. We’re working through a lot of different schemes.
“That’s not much different than the last twenty-two years I’ve been around. But we want to perform well when it counts the most, which is on gameday.”
Love reacts to Pats’ unhappiness over blitzing
It wasn’t too much of a secret that New England head coach Bill Belichick wasn’t thrilled with the Giants’ blitz-heavy defensive style during last Thursday’s preseason game.
However, safety Julian Love didn’t see anything too outlandish with what the Giants did defensively in the 23-21 New York win. The Patriots faced 21 blitzes from the Giants in the preseason opener.
“I know a lot happens between coaches for preseason games,” Love said after Monday’s practice at Quest Diagnostic Training Center. “You know gentlemen’s agreements or whatever. I thought we were fine. I thought everything we played was very standard of what you’d want to see young guys getting. I’m not sure about all that stuff, but I thought our plan wasn’t anything exotic.
“I thought it was very cut and dry on defense.”
The Giants seemed to feel that they had held back during the team’s first preseason contest of the year. New York will play two more before the regular season begins in a few weeks.
The Giants face the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday at Metlife Stadium and then face the New York Jets in the preseason finale. The gameplan on Thursday, according to Love, was to keep it simple.
“We knew because it was the first preseason that it was going to be vanilla,” he said. “We want to see young executing the calls that we’ve had since the beginning. … That’s what the gameplan was for that.
