You're listening to the Bleav in Giants podcast with two-time Super Bowl winner Carl Banks and the voice of the Giants, Bob Papa. And we welcome you to a live edition of Bleav in Giants presented by FanDuel. Bob Papa, two-time Super Bowl champion Carl Banks. We're at the beautiful JW Marriott Turnberry in Miami, and it's been a fun little trip for the Giants so far, Carl. And we got some thunderstorms, which always happens when you're in South Florida, but Giants and Dolphins had a spirited practice today, and they'll play that last preseason game on Saturday afternoon.
Yeah. So Bob, you know, kind of you wanted to see where the Giants would be against competition, right? They've had a great camp. They had some things they had to work on in their first preseason game. And so now they line up against another group of guys that is going to test them, and we're going to see how they progress. And from everything that I understand, defense took a step forward.
Defense was very aggressive. Abdul Carter was not blockable today. He had a bunch of sacks at the end of practice. Each team was going to do a two-minute drill, and the Giants got a sack on the very first play—Abdul Carter. Then they ran a blitz, and Dru Phillips had a sack. So they had two sacks on the first three plays. In fact, the Giant defense was so dominant that they had to rerun the drill for Miami's offense so they could get more plays in. Miami wound up kicking a field goal. And then the Giants' first-team offense, they didn't need an extra set of downs. They drove it down the field, and Malachi Fields—you know, we talk about situational football, and John Harbaugh has stressed this. And at the end of the practice, first of all, on a big third down, Theo Johnson has a catch and run. They ruled him touched, but I don't know if he would have been touched; he might have gone the distance. But in any event, they whistle the play dead, and then Malachi Fields catches an in-cut, doesn't try to get any extra steps, immediately gives himself up so that the Giants can kick a field goal with three seconds remaining to get their three points on the board.
Well, here's the thing about being touched or not being touched: you got to be tackled in the NFL, so you got to be close enough. We know that they don't encourage their players to tackle, but to be able to touch a guy is creating a bad habit, right? So if you're in the open field and you can't tackle a guy, you at least got to be on film not saying, "Hey, I touched him," it's, "Hey, I was in position to make a tackle." And if that guy wasn't in position to make that tackle, then that play continues.
Yeah, and it didn't look like he was necessarily in position, cuz Theo had a head of steam. Look, I know that you Giant fans that were following the beat reporters, it was chippy. There was a couple of little skirmishes. You know, I don't want to date myself, but I started doing this when you were playing. I know what training camp brawls look like. I remember the one in Albany between the Giants and Jets early in Coughlin's era. This was nothing like it. It was a little chippy, was on edge. But dude, it's like 100° down here, and everybody was a little—
8:30, 9:30 in the morning.
Yeah, it's hot. As someone who lives four and a half miles north of here, this is even a different kind of heat than you get four and a half miles north. But I think if you're a Giant fan, you got to be pleased by what you've seen so far in this training camp getting ready for a very important second preseason game.
Yeah. I mean, that's the key is to really find out for the staff and the players guys that took the coaching points from the game. And you know, we talked about—and I'm sure the things we spoke on, Bob, is no secret because they probably covered them ad nauseam in their meetings—that 7.2 yards a carry in the first quarter, they were getting gashed. And I'm sure that was something, though they got it under control, but it takes three of those plays to put points on the board in a close game that could be the difference. So the key is to really be ready to play, come out ready to play from the opening snap. You know, one thing that was really cool to see was Najee Harris, who just got here, and they ran a goal-line situation. It was twos against twos, but he got a great block. The interior blocked it really well. And when Najee Harris hit that little hole up the middle, man, I don't think people realize how big a man he is.
Oh yeah, he is a big dude.
You think back to he was just unstoppable in college. But then the dual threat that he is: he catches the ball really well, and that's the one thing that I think we see as a thematic with this Giant backfield—every player can catch.
There's not, "Oh, he can catch it if you throw it to him." These guys are really good receiving running backs, and you mix that element with the physicality that they all run with, it's a really dangerous mix. Because these are the types of things that when you get a back against a blitzing team and you put him out, you know he's going to be hard to tackle one-on-one because now he catches the football. So it's so many different things that having a big, physical run game can do when your backs are receivers as well.
Yeah. I mean, last year he only played in three games and he had the knee injury, but in his first four years when he ran for over a thousand yards every year, I mean on average he averaged 40-some catches a year. His rookie year, I think he had 74 catches. So that's kind of all part of it. The interesting part about when Najee was in Pittsburgh, people kept wanting more, wanting more.
And then you look at the end of the year stats and he's got all these receiving yards to go with these rushing yards, and you see, well, he's more than just the bruiser, right? And so I don't know if there could have been more, but they used him where they thought he could affect their opponent in that AFC North. Let's talk a little bit about this defense, Carl, because stopping the run is imperative. Jack Kelly, the rookie, made a great play against the twos. They tried to run one right up the gut, and he filled the hole and knocked the running back back. They toppled over each other, but the Giants certainly were very aggressive on the defensive side of the ball. And I think that is a very heartening thing to see.
Yeah, it is. And when you see a player like Jack Kelly that is immediately impacting when they put him in the game, that tells you that they didn't draft a developmental guy. They drafted a guy with a high ceiling, but that's a good football player right now. And you don't have to wait on him. You just have to get him ready when it's time for him to play or from week to week, get him ready if he's going to be part of the game plan, as opposed to, let's just say—and I'm just using this as an example—a player like Bobby Jameson Travis, right?
He's not ready. They're working to get him NFL-ready because there are a lot of things he can't do well. With Kelly, he's a ready-made NFL player. It's just a matter of preparation for the game if he has to go in.
I want to talk about this receiving corps a little bit because Malik Nabers didn't do anything today. You're not going to put him out there against an opposing team. He's been working within the Giants' team. But I think there's a real battle on. I mean, Darnell Mooney made a move—now Jaxson Dart didn't see him, but they had the ball at like the 12-yard line. He made a move and popped open in the corner of the end zone that was absolutely spectacular. There was one time Odell got open. There were a couple of really nice layered passes. There was one along the right sideline to Calvin Austin, and Isaiah Likely is going to be a big part of what they do offensively. But you know, this receiving room is very interesting because they have a lot of pieces. They don't have any dominant guys other than Nabers, right? But Malachi Fields, Carl, in the individuals today, he went one-on-one with the DB. It was a deep ball down the right sideline that Dart threw up. I'm not going to say a 50/50 ball, but he goes up, high-points it, gets both feet in, winds up making another big catch later on. Again, contested. It's really interesting because we know Nabers can make the contested catches.
Malachi Fields is bringing that dimension, and then the rest of it—
I think is still very muddied.
Well, muddy and productive is really good, right? You look at most good football teams, there's one alpha wide receiver. Now, Seattle had one and a half, right? But most teams are going to have an alpha and then they're going to have a really, really good crew of wide receivers. So I don't worry about that part. The thing that has me so encouraged is the competition.
Right. It's a competition that has eliminated JuJu Smith-Schuster. It's a competition that a person like Jalin Hyatt can't afford to stay injured because he was in the mix, right? So when this all shakes out, you're going to have a good group of wide receivers. Yes, compared to what they had last year—and they still were able to pass the football around—these are better receivers as a group.
Yeah. I mean, one of the guys that I was watching today was Darius Slayton. Really not much happening there. And Berrios is getting some opportunities. McCaffrey is getting opportunities. Odell's getting open pretty much every time. I mean, when he's running his routes, he's finding the space; he's getting open. Now, the ball's not always getting delivered to him, but I think as he's getting more and more turns with the ones this week—
I wonder if in the game the quarterbacks will be more apt to look for him.
Well, it becomes easy because if there is a Malik Nabers and a Malachi Fields and there's Odell Beckham on the field, who's going to get the short straw? It's going to be the DB that's got to cover Beckham. They can roll coverage, they can do a lot of things to take two guys away, but when you have a guy who's as skilled as Odell Beckham, if he gets open, he's going to get the football in a lot of situations. And that's just not limited to him; that's Mooney as well. But that's the type of receiving staff that will keep defenses honest. There's not a lot you can do because you fear that the quarterback will make the right decision, right? And that's a defensive coordinator's nightmare: What if he makes the right decision? What if we show him this, he knows automatically where to go? Well, it's pretty easy. You're not going to turn Malik Nabers loose. Malachi Fields, you're 50/50 and more, you're probably going to put somebody on him. So now it's either Likely or it's going to be that receiver that's Odell or Mooney or whoever it may be. They're going to get open because they're a mismatch. Odell and Mooney, they're a mismatch versus number two corners.
Right. The other thing that was evident today in practice: John Michael Schmitz was very feisty today because remember, he didn't play last week because of the concussion.
So I thought the offensive line was firing off the ball a lot better today. There was an intensity throughout the practice, and anytime that Miami tried to ramp up the intensity, the Giants said, "Okay, you'll take it to there, but we're taking it to the next level."
Well, that just tells you also the intentionality of what this team took to the practice field, the purpose. And I say that, Bob, because I wanted to know what the corrections look like the next time after a game.
And the offensive line did some good things in the game, but they were inconsistent. The defense did some good things up front, but they were inconsistent. What did you see today? More consistency, more deliberate, and more intentional aggression, if you will.
Right. Now, listen, we also want to put things in context, right? The Miami Dolphins are not expected to be one of the better teams in the NFL this year.
Well, it's their fault. We don't apologize for that, right? No, no, no. You know, it's so interesting. I cut a guy off because he made a two-day thread of just saying things like, "Oh, Carter better step it up because he only had success against the weak offensive linemen of the league." And I'm like, "Does anybody excuse the Dallas Cowboys for coming in and getting 15 sacks—
Or Daniel Jones against a bad offensive line?"
No, that's the league. If you can't get a better player out there, the league will make you pay. Football will make you pay.
Paulson Adebo had a pick-six today. Holland in the one-on-ones did a really nice job of undercutting a route. Deonte Banks had an interception today. They're really rotating a lot of guys in and out. That's a live competition, isn't it?
Well, it is. That's kind of like the receiver room, but this is a group that has a higher level of alpha talent, if you will, because there's some high draft choices in that group. But it's good to see someone like Paulson Adebo take it up a level, right? I mean, there was some concern. He didn't play in the last game. Now the key for him is, as coach would say, that's one in a row. Let's see if he can start stacking those to convince the defensive coordinator that he is your number one corner.
Right. Because guys like—we've been seeing Deonte Banks, he's coming. The competition just keeps getting more and more intense each week. So we know what Paulson Adebo is capable of, but now it's the consistency. And this is a coaching staff where it's not like, "Yo, we'll take your word for it." They're like, "Okay, show us, because the guy behind you just showed us something, and the guy behind him just showed us something. So if you want to distinguish yourself above those, start stacking them, because right now you're in the mix of the competition. Stack them, and then we know that you're our guy."
What are you looking for on Saturday? We don't know who's playing yet. Coach Harbaugh hasn't made any definitive statements one way or another. Giants are doing their corrections right now in meetings. They'll have a walk-through tomorrow. We'll meet with the coach tomorrow. We have no idea what his game plan is, but what do you expect on Saturday?
Well, I expect to see more second-line rotation players on the defense. I expect to see a heavier dose of run game to see if they can just consistently move players off the football. I don't know if Jaxson's going to play or what the purpose of that is, but I think they want to establish the line of scrimmage, and in doing that, they've got to stop the run and they've got to run the football. And when you look at guys that are going to have to play on defense, Bob, you're going to see a lot of guys that were in there last week in there this week. And a guy like Darius Alexander, they're just going to keep repping him until he gets it down and is as consistent as a run defender as he is a pass defender. And the only way you get that is if he's in there in every situation where he has to transition from run down to pass down, because he's not counted on as a rotation player—he's a starter.
And so your transition goes from first to second to third down. So they want him to now really get consistent at that. It's not that he can't, and it's not that he doesn't want to. He's not the guy where you look at him and say, "Oh, Alexander just wants to be out there in the pass." He wants to be good at it, and they want to see if he's taking what they're teaching him. And then across that defensive line, they are all going to be rotation players. Let's just take the names Shelby Harris and D.J. Reader out for now. 65 games they may play 35, right?
The standard is the standard. The guys who are coming behind them, they've got a job to do. No different if Arvell Reese or Tremaine Edmunds are out—Jack Kelly, Micah McFadden, your job is to do exactly at a level that's acceptable. You may not be as good as those guys, but I guarantee you they have a number defensively where they want to average. They want a team to have no more than this per carry or no more than this per pass. They play to the number no matter who's going to be in there. Some players are going to create negative plays like the Reese's and Tremaine Edmunds, Abdul Carter—they'll create negative plays, they'll help your average. But when you're in the game, you're playing to a number. Whatever that number is, if it's 4.1, if it's league average or below, you can't be in there and getting blown off the ball and letting that number go up because that just takes away. And again, the other team gets paid too. So if they see you're out of the game, the thing that they wouldn't dare try if Reader and Shelby Harris were in, or Arvell Reese or Tremaine Edmunds, they're willing to try when they're out.
Right. You have a job to do. It's just like the most alarming thing to me—and I haven't had a chance to see Kayvon Thibodeaux—but on that first play of the game, that play never came back.
Right. They did it to him every week down the stretch last year. Now, he didn't play last year, he was out, but every game they would try one of those outside runs and never got back to it.
Right. Because they wanted to catch you unprepared. Now, if the ball is at midfield and that's your first play and you get 27 yards on that, well, you pretty much gave up points, right? And so I would say to those guys, when you take the field, come ready to play. You can't ease into it because every yard, every big play counts, and they know if they can catch you sleeping on one play, they don't have to come back to it. Mission accomplished, because that's the one that they wanted to get. They knew you were a slow starter. Okay, we got 25 yards on that. We got the formation, we pinned the corner, we hooked the outside linebacker, and away we go. And the safety can't defend three guys blocking. So come ready to play. And that's the thing that this defense has to get to. Also the intensity level is once you break that huddle, you've got to be ready to play and expect them to try you.
You know, one of the other things that I found interesting today, because we know about Coach Harbaugh and his intensity when it comes to what he believes in as far as special teams are concerned, so I was watching each team working on punt return, punt coverage. There were numerous times where they're doubling the gunner and they got the guy on the ground. Elijah Campbell and I think it was Corey Black a couple times, they wiped their guy out. If you're going to consistently win at that kind of stuff, Calvin Austin's going to take some punts back or he's going to get you big returns. I was really impressed with that. And the other thing that was impressive today, Carl, just watching it—and you can speak to this because you played with a guy who should be in the Hall of Fame, and hopefully the Hall of Fame voters out there, if you're watching, you can open your eyes and ears: there should not only be one punter in the history of the sport in the Hall of Fame. Sean Landeta punted in four different decades. He was an All-Pro, he was a Pro Bowler, he had all these records, he was a part of your defense.
And watching Stout punt today: first of all, he's got a lot of different deliveries. He can knock one and let it hang really high and deep, then he's got these various toppling punts and stuff like that. If the Giants win in special teams and the gunners win with the kind of punting that this guy—I mean, he was a Pro Bowler last year—that's going to be another weapon, hidden yardage that you guys thrived on.
Well, it's the hidden yardage to the outside observer, but to the insider in those locker rooms, that's counted on, right?
Special teams are part of your game plan.
Like when you have a guy like Reyna Thompson on your team—
And you can ask the Patriots with Slater. He's part of the game plan.
Like you got a kicker, you know you're going to get a big play somewhere, so you count on that. And that's why Coach Harbaugh's teams have always been in the top five of the league, and he'll say we've been one for the last nine years. But that's why special teams are part of your game plan. It's your advantage having a great kicker. And we've had a front-row seat to watching Dallas play to that part of a game when they're in a tight game and they know, "Hey, we don't have to score here. We just got to get our guy in range. Let's play to that or defend to this so that we can get our kicker back on the field."
Yeah. And I don't want to shortchange our guy Jeff Feagles because he was a big part of the '07 team, and Weatherford was fantastic with the '11 team. But when I was watching Stout today, I was thinking, man, he's going to factor into the game plan because what was Parcells' line? Punting is not a bad play.
It's not bad if you got a good defense.
Listen, they say if you can end every series with a kick, you're pretty much going to win. Exactly. Lindsay, our great producer, Lindsay Gugler, lives down here in South Florida, so she was nice enough to come to the hotel, set up this stream for us. Lindsay, is there any way for us to take comments if there's comments?
All right. I'm not reading any comments here. I don't know where to find them.
So she's telling me to go to the comments to the right or a little check box. I don't know. I'm going to have Lindsay come over. Lindsay, why don't you walk around and just take a look at this? If there's people that are in there—
There you go, Carl. Hey, listen, we're doing this live. We're doing this a little bit differently than we normally do. All right. "My bad. Is special agent Jack Kelly reporting for duty?"
Had a really good practice today.
Yeah. Greg wants to know about that. Greg's got a very interesting little handle name there. Man, I'll tell you what, it's a lot of fun looking at all this stuff. But I think it's going to be exciting with what this team is going to be able to do.
Yeah, look, they have talent, and that's the most encouraging part when we're having conversations about competition of really good players that may not even make the team. That was not a discussion last year. Those guys would be on the team. If JuJu Smith-Schuster was added to this roster, you would pretty much write him in as a receiver last year. But the competition is so great that guys who are on the roster feeling pressure. Guys like Darius Slayton knows he has to bring it every week. A guy like Jalin Hyatt, who he knew going in that he was out of power-ups and so he had to start from—
scratch and really get it, and he just answered the bell. But you couldn't imagine that being the case last year. You'd be like, "Okay, we just hope he steps it up, or we hope this guy steps it up." Now, and this is, again, no disrespect to Darius Muasau, but he is literally looking to make the team now as a special teams player.
You know, where he was a guy that they were developing as a linebacker, but the standards went up when the talent went up. And again, if he makes it as a special teams player, he's still got to learn to be a linebacker as well.
Martin talks sports sent this question: OBJ for me, I'm praying he makes the team. Look, we're all kind of rooting for him. He's more of a mature person than he was in the first go-round. I think he's very humble. He's hardworking. And I think the thing that's been impressive, and you know, knock on wood, right?
What got JuJu Smith-Schuster—
released, not available. Odell has been available. And I'm telling you, when you watch him run his routes and you watch him compete out there—
You know, again, I said this during the telecast. I say this to my kids, all played wide receiver, my youngest son plays wide receiver. I'm like, look, it's the most dependent position in the sport. The snap has to be good, the blocking has to be good, the protection, the blitz pickup, everything has to be good before you even get a chance. Then you need a good throw—
and you need the quarterback to read it the right way. So, I think as long as he keeps getting open, that's all you can ask for at this point.
Yeah. I mean, the one thing that guarantees you won't catch a ball is if you're not getting open—
and you're not available. So he's showing up on tape, and that's a good thing. And listen—
We're not overhyping this, right? I pounded the drum to get him here cuz I felt that he would be doing exactly what he's doing now, is earning the opportunity to be on the roster.
The Big Moo: Who's on the bubble, guys? I don't think we're at bubble time yet.
Yeah, per se, because you still have to get through this game. Knock on wood, you get through this game without injuries or anything significant, and then you have another week of practice and you have a final preseason game. The question is, are you going to keep 10 offensive linemen or you going to only keep nine? Are you keeping six wide receivers? Are you only going to keep five? Now, with Najee Harris here, do they carry four running backs? If you look at John Harbaugh's history in Baltimore, traditionally he keeps two quarterbacks unless there's injury and they'll have someone on the practice squad. But those are things that are going to determine kind of who's on the bubble. And I think Joshua Ezeudu, during practice today, Tyre Phillips left practice. I don't know, he might have had a stinger or something like that, nothing serious. Joshua Ezeudu got first turn with the ones as his backup. So I think that was a positive sign. I know Stinnie tends to play more left guard when Runyan comes out.
And Evan Neal got a lot of reps with Faalele getting traded.
That opens up the door. The coaches have talked about they've liked what they've seen out of Evan Neal as far as at the point of attack when it comes to run blocking.
But see, that's the thing. When they signed Faalele this offseason thinking, "Well, we've seen enough of Evan, we don't know, but we'll give him a shot," right? Evan knows the assignment. So he's making the best of it. And in doing so, the guy they signed that was basically the depth piece to replace him has now been traded and Evan is still standing. And that's the key for a guy like him with his skill set. He's just got to keep pounding, keep chopping wood, keep doing the things that they're asking him to do, and keep showing up and not falling on the ground.
Tom13: "I love how I can hear sincere excitement in both of your voices. I'm very excited." Well, I think the reason for all this is, again, I've said this on the podcast times before, you don't win 62% of your games counting the postseason, 193 games in the NFL over 18 years, unless you know what you're doing.
