The Giants Guys (Ep. 039) Interview with Carl Banks

I heard a few people with those similar resumes. Resume, I'm not sure I can put it on one person, but...

Okay, all right, cool.

Yeah, so to answer the first question, like being the third player picked overall and actually the first player drafted on draft day if you think about it because those other guys were pre-drafted, I was over the moon because I was just thrilled to be drafted. I had no idea that I was ranked that high or was projected to go that high. Keep in mind this is pre-internet and so it's all about the magazines, the quarterly magazines. So I wasn't ranked that high and then after the combines I'm sure there were some people on TV talking, but I had no idea that I was going to be drafted that high. And then yeah, everybody knew who Lawrence Taylor was, but the thing is I was a Midwest guy, so I knew Dick Butkus, I knew Jack Lambert, Jack Ham and all of those guys. But yeah, this Lawrence Taylor was just like the Mr. Everything. And plus I knew Brad Van Pelt, who was like our childhood hero. His high school, may he rest in peace, and my high school would play each other every year and he was Mr. Everything in every sport. So I knew him and plus he was a Michigan State great, so I knew he was there at the Giants as well. But I didn't know a lot about Brian Kelly and I knew about Harry Carson, but I just didn't know the tradition of that Giants defense as a whole.

Yeah, that was kind of the most eye-opening moment as a pro I ever got, and that was like my first moment in the building. I'm wide-eyed and really excited to meet these two great players, and Harry's greeting to me was that. So it became a little sobering, like, okay, this is a business. And I'm sure he wasn't happy because two of his guys were gone as a result of me being there.

I wasn't even, you know, I did not feel the pressure and thankfully I was just so naive that I just wanted to go in and be the best that I could be. So I wasn't up on the whole politics of team dynamics and things of that nature. I was a captain of Michigan State and I never participated in all the [__], excuse me, so I was kind of above it. So those guys left, I knew they weren't happy about it, but listen, I didn't get rid of those guys and I didn't draft myself. So my job was just to go in and do the best I could. And then our first practice, Lawrence practiced faster than I ever played a football game ever in life. So I knew that there was another level you had to go to and I went there and just had to show that I was worthy of being the pick. But there were a lot of questions from fans as to why, and as I look back on my career, I hope I answered that question.

You know, I just admired and said hello to him. We really never crossed paths where we just hung out together. But every time I saw him at a Michigan State game if he came back, or through our communities because he was in a community that was like maybe 20 minutes away, but our high schools played each other, I would always say hello to him because he was the guy that everybody looked up to.

Yeah, so it's so interesting, I just had this conversation with someone over at the Giants this morning. So the process was, you go through your orientation, your physicals, your next stop is trainers, this, that, and then equipment. So you just go to the equipment window and Andy Headen's there waiting on me. He's like, 'Oh boy, I know you wore 54 in college, I'll sell it to you for like 30 grand.' And so I just looked at the equipment manager and I said, 'Give me a jersey.' So whatever he pulled out, that was going to be my number. So he pulled out 58, I'm like, 'Okay, this is my number.' I didn't even entertain it. I guess I'm a little different or indifferent because I never really gave that much thought to the number itself.

It's the next guy's number. I did my job in that number and I'm in the Ring of Honor, so I'm done. I'm rooting for the next guy to be as good if not better than me. So nobody owns that number. If your name is Lawrence Taylor, you own 56. If you're Michael Jordan, you own 23. 58, you're Jack Lambert, you're whoever, Antonio Pierce.

58. And he's such a great guy, great player for the Giants, but there's just a smart guy to talk football with too. If you had a conversation with Antonio, it could be a simple question and we could end up an hour later still talking about the dynamics of football or a particular play and how things work. So he was a guy that made me proud that I wore 58.

You know, it's kind of like, but it's fine. And believe me, I get the fandom. I get the fact that fans are attached to their favorite players, so they have an affinity for a number. The coolest thing that I see every year out of our press box where Bob Papa and I are calling the game, I look down and there are two season ticket holders, one wears a Banks jersey, the other one wears a Bavaro jersey. And it's the coolest thing ever because Mark and I are really good friends and we were tight as teammates because we battled each other every day. So every year I send him that picture and say, 'They still love us.' But it's the coolest thing, that affinity for Mark and I, it has a special meaning when you see Banks and Bavaro together because there are just so many, I mean, you can listen to coaches talk about it more than he and I ever would, but just the battles we would have in practice to make each other better. And Mark, for me, made me as good as I was, and I'm sure he'll say the same thing because it wasn't an offensive practice versus a defensive practice. When it's time to go, Mark wanted me to play him at game speed so that he could really get better. And then when it's a practice, same thing. And then it became the expectation, almost as though all the coaches would stand around and watch us go one-on-one with each other. But it was just like the two of us made each other better. And then Howard Cross was another guy that really kind of worked, we worked together and it was like, 'Carl, I need you to give me everything you got, I need to work on certain things.' And then Mike Pope, the tight ends coach, would come over and say, 'Okay, Banksy, we got a little 907 today, I need you to give Mark everything you got.' And it was just an expectation. And it was [__] hard though, like working against Bavaro and working against Howard Cross was hard. And then Zeke Mowatt for the time he was there, same thing, they were so well coached, but we just made each other so much better. And it was [__] hard, like nobody else had to do a drill like Mark and I. And that's why every time I see that Banks and Bavaro jersey in the stands, I send it to him because it has a special meaning to us.

There you go. They have to go into the Duffy Doherty building, I think they still got my number, my name, my face on the wall there. But for anybody that recognizes what she's wearing, they'll be like, 'Oh, this girl gets it.'

Yeah, the London jacket. I buy a half dozen of them. I mean, those jackets are so nice.

Yeah, it was a commemorative piece we did with the London flag on it and everything.

And so we do them for every team that goes. I think the Jets are going this year, so it'll be a really cool creation. We're looking, you know, I talked to my designer today about creating something special there. So Jeff says I have something fun.

I understand, but I got some other stuff for Giants fans. We got a real cool program coming out this fall. I mean, this one will be epic. It's a dope group, we got a whole capsule collection coming out. It's called a Locker Room Player Exclusive. So everything is authentically locker room quality back to when I played. Every element is pretty special. We're not messing around with cheap quality or newfangled tech quality. We're doing throwback fleece. It's like if you were a kid or you went to high school with somebody that went to college or played in the pros, and every time you came home from the summer, that guy's like, 'Yo, when you gonna give me one of those sweatsuits? I need one of those sweatshirts, I need one of those jackets.' It's that type of quality. It's like George Martin used to live like four miles from me growing up. I used to live in Wanaque and he lived in Ringwood. And I would see him with some, I mean, he had such cool gear. I'd see him maybe like three times a year, maybe at a supermarket or the Brook Mall, and you'd be like, 'Who's that Giant?' Like, 'That's George Martin.' And he's like, 'Man, he looks good in that gear.' Always with the big wide stripes and stuff. So it's this collection, it's a five-piece collection. We call it Locker Room Player Exclusive, but there's a lot of fun stuff that we're gonna be doing with it. Actually, I'm telling you guys, I'm telling anybody, exclusive, yes. We have a whole commercial being shot with some of the players, and that commercial is a remake of the old Starter commercial called 'What Does It Take to Be the Best?' That one featured Emmitt Smith and Karl Malone and Don Shula. We're remaking that and what we're doing is going to be special. This capsule is one I'm super excited about. It's gonna give you that feeling of authenticity. Not only are we getting an exclusive, I'm feeling like we're working on getting a little on the list.

Lance Meadow is the absolute best. He is, Lance is one of our guys, but he is the absolute best broadcast partner or teammate, broadcast teammates. He's incredible. But the funny thing is we always tease him, and this is something like if I had to program a post-game show, the one thing I would get rid of is the reading of stats. Like we used to tease Lance, like, 'When are you gonna get to an actual highlight?' Because he'll go down and read like the entire stat sheet before he gets to a highlight. But that's just the way the post-game shows are programmed, I think, is to buy time so that they could get to the player interviews. And we used to tell our boss, Don Sperling, 'Listen, just let him get into the highlights so we can talk and give the fans something to listen to because they're riding home and sitting in traffic and all Lance is doing is giving the play-by-play down this whole, I mean, it's like the first quarter, it could be like 40 plays and he's just reading everyone.' I'm like, 'Can we get into like actually a highlight?' So, but he's the best.

Yeah, so it's two things. Like you have a certain skill set, I'm not trying to sound like Liam Neeson, but very specific, I walk through the door with a skill set. And that skill set was being a sure tackler and the ability to not get blocked. I walked through the door with that. I didn't know how well that skill set would hold up when put under fire to the maximum degree because it wasn't like if a team wanted to run the ball, they would try a little bit at Lawrence and try a little bit at me. It just became, 'We're running to this guy.' And so I had to take their best players, they sent their best players to try to block me. And I just knew that that was going to be the thing that I could do amongst other things, but if there was gonna be one thing that stood out about me within a defense with such talented players, it would be the fact that I was going to be unblockable if you ran at me. Like I could pass rush, I could blitz, and we did a lot of that, but we knew who our best guy was at that. So I could end up with a double-digit sack year and it would still be about Lawrence Taylor and everybody was fine with that. But like, how do you make your mark in a defense that's so talented? It's easy, doing what you're asked to do, doing what they're counting on you to do. It was not about the flash pieces to me. It was like, okay, this is what I'm asked to do, this is what they count on me to do, so I'm gonna do it better than anyone else. And that's when people start, 'Well, you can't run at Banks and he's this and he's the best run defender as a linebacker in this league we've seen a long time.' But it was about just being consistent because that's what our defense counted on me to do. And the thing that made our group so great was the fact that we were all accountable to each other. And the thing was, with Belichick and with Coach Parcells, you hear Belichick says all the time now, 'Just do your job.' And that was our mantra. We just wanted to do it better, we wanted to make the guy in front of us quit while doing our job. And that was my thing. If there was going to be a skill set that I walked through the door with that I knew was gonna be pretty good and it didn't matter who they lined up in front of me, that was gonna be it. Like I'm not gonna miss one tackle or a guy that was better than me on Monday Night, Randall Cunningham, which, you know, Philly fans think it's like something that really drives me crazy. They're like, 'Hey, how about Randall, remember Randy on Monday Night?' I'm like, 'Yeah, he made a hell of a football play.' So it's like, if we look at it, because I don't miss tackles, and so I'm like, '[__], this is just the equivalent of playing great defense on Michael Jordan. I got my hand in his face and he still hit it.' That's basically what it came down to. He was better than I was on that play. And he and I saw each other maybe a year after that game and we both laughed about it. I said, 'Boy, that play really made you famous, huh?' He starts laughing. But it's like, people think it was such a thing to me. It was more about him than it was about me. It wasn't my fault, he was just that good. And nine out of ten quarterbacks are going down.

Big they were, how fast they were. This guy's hit, you know, it's a different game now, I get it. But it was something I always appreciated about that era was just the ability to make an open field tackle.

Yeah, so that was the thing. Gang tackling, and then it still holds true if you look at the best defenses in football, they still do it. And the reason is because again you talk about that sense of pride as a defender when the film cuts on, right? And everybody talk about, yeah, we go hunt, we're gonna hunt, right? And if you got seven guys to the ball and the other four guys are not in the frame, then you're pretty much loafing on the play. And so you need to either be in the frame, which is probably about the size of the screen, or if you're not in the frame, then your teammates are like finding you. You're like, dude, you got to be a part of this. But like for us, it was the more guys to the football, the less likelihood we're gonna give up a hundred yard rusher. Or that a guy, if a guy breaks a tackle, you know, it won't be noticed because we got so many guys to the football.

So, and then you know, Bill even gave us even more incentive. Like, you know, if you got six or seven guys, if the other guys are in the frame, and this is like the beautiful stuff about Bill Belichick in terms of how everything is related in football. So he's like, okay, I got seven guys to the football and Jim Burt just pulled the football out of the player's hand. You four efforts could have been running and you may not have been able to tackle, but if you were in this frame, there's a good likelihood you would have recovered that fumble. So like, he always has a method to the madness. So you know, if you're not close enough to the play, but there could be a tip ball, there could be a, you know, our guys, if we got that many guys to the football, Bill said, if we got this many people to the football, pull it out. And you know, if you guys are running, we're going to end up getting that ball. And so it was just all those different things that he would talk about that made football so practical and easy and functional, you know, because everything had a reason for being within our teams.

That was a great draft, first of all. And another thing, that '86 run, Carl, not to toot your horn because you're on, but you would definitely, and I love Lawrence Taylor, you're the best defensive player during that whole run. And I think you had like double digits in tackles in the Super Bowl that year.

Yeah, like 15. Yeah, knuckles or something like that. Yeah, so yeah, it was, that was a great draft for us. You know, we had a guy Elvis Patterson came in with me, Lionel Manuel, Bobby Johnson, all of those guys were in that draft class. So that was, you know, when Bill decided he was turning the roster over and he needed his guys. But like the Super Bowl, right? In that Super Bowl, like if you ask any athlete, you know, what's their idea of a perfect game, right? Whatever the plays that they make, they want that perfect game to be in the biggest game of their career. And I think I had as close to a perfect game as any football player could ever have, and it just happens to be in the Super Bowl. But it was, you know, I was really prepared for the moment. I did so much in preparation of the game. I was actually talking to Bill Polian about, you know, how I even watched film for things I wasn't looking for, so that I just had a feel for the rhythm of the game, not just, you know, plays that we went over in meetings, but just letting the film run and seeing what jumps out, getting a feel for the cadence of an offense or the rhythm of an offense. So that, you know, as the game goes on, I just kind of felt like there was nothing that they could do that I couldn't stop.

We were different teams, you know, obviously. In the '90 Super Bowl, we had a lot of injuries. You know, I missed part of that season. We lost our quarterback, we lost our running back. So we had a lot of guys in and out of the lineup. But we still felt great about how good we were. And the difference was the freaking Buffalo Bills were just incredible. And we just came up with the most ingenious game plan that nobody anticipated. So O.J. Anderson, yep. I mean, dude was diesel.

I think it's, you know, if I have to say, you know, I've been around a lot of guys who try to be like Belichick more so than have learned from Belichick. I think Joe Judge is the guy without trying to be Bill Belichick, he's authentically who he is. But you see a lot of the qualities of a young Bill Belichick. But he has the support of his city and of his team. So the Bill Belichick in Cleveland is the qualities that I see in Joe Judge. Like all about football, no nonsense, no time to [__] with the media. You know, in Cleveland they had just come off of Marty Schottenheimer, who was, you know, very friendly with the press. But Bill Belichick is about football. He's about his players. He's about football. That's Joe Judge. Joe Judge is about, all of this time, do you want me to [__] with the media? I could be working with a guy who needs to get better and teaching a guy what we need them to do and all the little things that are gonna make a difference in a tight game. And that's, you know, and that's not trying to imitate Bill Belichick. It just says that he learned the most important tenets of success and of winning and then building a team. So he subscribes to, you know, the same principles as every successful coach. But he kind of gets it early. And you know, people, you see the same reactions, oh he's gonna fail, he's too hard on his players. His players love him doing this stuff, right? And this is no shade to the new coach in Philadelphia, but how do you let your players negotiate you out of having a mandatory mini camp? Like, not again, this is no shade, they live and they play and they could end up being a good football team. But like, you actually do have to practice. Football is a sport you got to actually practice to be good at.

Yeah, but I don't know his command of the room. But just the fact that to be able to be negotiated out of a mandatory mini camp, where, you know, if they're getting away with that, then I don't know what training camp is going to be like because they're going to be like, yeah, damn coach, you're working us too hard. I mean, you know, so but that is what it is. And it's no shade, but just to contrast the two types of coaches, you know, and what Joe Judge believes in. He'll tell you he wants the more opportunities he gets to work with the guy, the better they both can be and the better the team can be. And that's, you know, that's Bill Belichick-ish, you know, and it's not one-size-fits-all, but it fits for what he's trying to do here in New York.

Yeah, I mean, that's, they both understand it. And you know, both guys, and Patrick and I are relatively close. I've known Patrick since he was basically an intern with the Patriots and just learning it. And we spent a lot of time together talking football. And he's never, you know, he's never satisfied with anything that goes good or bad. Like, he's always looking to improve. How can a player improve? How can he be better as a coach? And you know, just relating to his players too. Like, there are conversations he and I would have just on, you know, how do you think is the best way to relate to a player like this? You know, because think about coming in as a staff and all you heard is like, oh well Leonard Williams can't be coached, or you know, Leonard Williams is gonna go because he just doesn't have this or that. And somehow that staff connected with Leonard Williams and he had his best year. Right? So those are the types of things that make coaches better when they can have great relationships with their players and their players produce. And so, and it's not like, you know, Patrick said, you know, Carl is this [__] guy, an [__], what am I gonna have to do with him? He's like, he says, you know what Carl, one of my big challenges is to make sure that we can connect with Leonard Williams because he's so talented that we just want to make sure that he could be a Richard Seymour type of guy and he's more athletic. You know, he talks in those types of terms. Like, I just want to make sure I can connect and we have a great relationship because I think he could be one of the best players in football.

So the thing that you hear Joe just talk about all the time is players with diverse skill sets, guys that can be multiple things. Because he wants to cross-train them. And there's a reason why he wants to cross-train them. Not that there are going to be a problem for a team, the game plan, that's kind of the added benefit or the side effects of cross-training. Sure. But because injuries can decimate a roster, once you have the ability to cross-train a guy and you can put a safety to play corner, or corner to play safety, or a linebacker that can play up or down in space or blitz, then your roster due to injury is not a big hole. Yeah, you're not sure, right? So the more talent you have and the more you can cross-train those guys, the added benefit of that is, hey, Washington, figure out who's coming where. And now there's been a lot of, even when Patrick was in Miami, it would be like, who the hell is coming from where? Right? And then if you say, okay, well he's coming from here, here's our mismatch, and you find out that it's not a mismatch because just because you didn't see this guy do this thing, don't think that he didn't practice it. They've been waiting to run this and this guy can actually cover or this guy can actually blitz. So they're really good at that. And the fact that they have stacked themselves at corner and safety and even to a large degree at linebacker, or let's just say pass rushers, it's going to be a lot of fun to watch this defense because they're going to be so interchangeable.

Part of the reason is because you have a guy that's a Packer fan that just used to post videos and if the videos just basically didn't have context, he was just pushing a narrative and hoping that, you know, people... and so I went and looked at his videos and I'm like, you [__] idiot. Now, and forgive my French, what are you talking about how Blake couldn't keep up with a guy running across the country, right? I'm like, it's his own defense, he passed it off, stupid. You know, just stuff. But like, you know, and I always tell young fans, watch your diet. You know, because if you ingest the wrong narratives, it just ruins your view of how you should see this game because you're ingesting stuff from somebody who doesn't even know the game. They just talk like they know a lot and they have no idea. Yeah, you know, and so but Blake is in my opinion one of the top five middle linebackers in this league today. He's smart, he's a tackler, great instincts, and he does what they ask him to do. So if somebody says, well he can't do this, my return would be, name two that can. Yep. No, he's not good at coverage. Are they asking him to do it? Whatever they're asking him to do, he does it better.

Um, he's loved here in New York. Yeah, yeah, that's all that matters, you know. It won't be the first time a Giants player didn't get love. Yeah, I sent him a note when he got signed. I didn't expect anything back. I said, welcome to the land of the linebackers, good luck. And he tweeted it back. He said, thank you, looking forward to it. I thought it was pretty cool.

Um, you know, they're an asset to a large degree, um, and for a new generation of players who think it's the best thing since sliced bread. Um, but you know, analytics are, they're a tool. They're not a solution. And I think we see it in baseball a lot where managers now try to manage strictly on analytics and it ruins games, it costs you games. Because, you know, the numbers don't have a heartbeat. Players do, right? If you look out and you say, okay, our power 38 is our bread and butter and it's second and six and we can run this and we're guaranteed four yards and it's a third and two, right? And you run it and you get it. But if your left tackle just got hurt and his backup ain't worth the [__], the numbers don't say that. Right? So you line up, ask Kansas City. That's Kansas City, they kept trying the same things and getting the same result. Right? So, oh your left tackle's out, but the numbers say this is our bread and butter play. Well, wait a minute, it's second and six, let's run this, we'll be in third and two. Oh, loss of four. Oh, awesome. Wait, oh, offsides, you know, illegal procedure. You know, so the numbers are great when there's a static variable. When the variables start to change, those numbers don't hold up. And so that's where, you know, coaching is still important. Having a feel for the game is still important. Like, you can't run the same plays with different people. You know, you got to have all the variables have to be the same in order for whatever the numbers say, that is. Yeah, those variables have to be the same. So, um, but you know, they do a good job of being a big assist to coaching and scouting. But it's not the end all and be all. And I'm not anti-analytics because, you know, what Chris has done with it is just taking it to a whole nother level. Like, analytics has been around since he and I played. You know, and he's older than I am. And, you know, I give you a classic case, and I was talking to Bill Polian about this, of a classic case of analytics was our defensive game plan versus the Buffalo Bills and how we arrived at it. And it was, you know, when Bill was explaining we were gonna go with this two-man front and we had to allow Thurman Thomas to run the football. He said, listen, normally in this league we go back four games to find the tendency. I went back eight games and it's a trend. So there's a difference between a tendency and a trend. Their biggest run play was a swing pass to Thurman Thomas. And he said they had gotten rid of their entire run game. It was a draw or a swing pass to Thurman and that's how they ran the football. But he looked at the numbers. He said, look, they don't run the football other than these two plays and it's a trend. It's been trending since the middle of the season. They're not gonna change it for this game. If it were four games, you would probably have to prepare for something different. But if you're doing it for eight games, it's a journey. Yeah, you're gonna keep doing it. Yeah, so I mean, so I'm not anti... I mean, some of the stats are meaningless unless, you know, obviously it feeds into the fantasy football community a lot, which, you know, it benefits them. It also, like, you know, Chris's timing is probably as good as you could get in terms of data analytics as it relates to sports or especially football because you have the increased exposure to the gambling community and the ability to... is so interesting. Like, prop bets, right, on football games now. What was it like three years ago? You couldn't even make a prop bet. Now you can make a prop bet during the course of the game.

So yeah, we see the prop bets, you know, they've gotten so popular. Yeah, like two years ago it didn't exist. But now you get that on, you know, whether or not they're gonna throw up all the, Alvin Kamara when, the quarterback for New Orleans, Taysom Hill, yeah, Taysom Hill comes in the game, the primary target's gonna be on this play, Alvin Kamara. You know, just they have so much of that stuff. But like, it doesn't make a lot of sense. They give you all this information that you can look at and bet on. Well, it's now gotten to the point when they do the, when they announce the lineups, the starting lineups, they have their rank per PFF. They have their rank as soon as they announce their name. That's part of the network. Jeff, I'm sure you saw today, best cornerbacks in the league, they show, they roll out six of the best cornerbacks in the league, Bradberry's not in there. How is it even possible that they have an algorithm that comes up with leaving Bradberry out of the best six corners in the league? It's like not possible.

So like, Daniel has a really good skill set. I think he's proven that over all the guys that were drafted in his class, quarterbacks, and then even those that were compared the year before. He's held up pretty good statistically and performance-wise. I think, you know, he's got to protect the football, that's a given. But just from a skill set, a guy who can run, as big as he is, he throws a beautiful football, a very catchable ball, great ball placement. And now he's got tools around him and he's a second year within an offense. So I just think he's going to blossom into a great quarterback. I do. And I use the word great. He's going to be a great quarterback in this league. Just based on his skill set, and he's a big guy. I mean, he's 6'5, he can run, right? He's got a big arm. And so there's not a lot that an offensive coordinator can't do with him. But then when you give him a diverse set of wide receivers from Gallaudet to Kadarius Toney to a blazer, Shepard, no, Shep is there, but Slayton, a blazer. So he's got so much going on. And then a back or two backs that can catch the football and one who's an exceptional runner. That skill, that toolbox, you know, will make a quarterback exceptional. And he just has to do his job.

Tells you they feel pretty good with the way they're headed, you know. Because sometimes you add a guy and he's just a stop gap guy. And I'm sure they sit in that meeting room and they say, okay, how much better is he than Hernandez? Well, what's the upside for Hernandez? And a scout or an assistant coach may say, well, Hernandez will probably be even with him by the fourth week of the season and better than him afterwards. So they're like, let's save our money. You know, let's just keep coaching the guys that we have. So, and I think we saw that this offensive line got better each and every week. So I just think that they'll be okay. And the fact that they can run the ball even makes them a better offensive line because they don't have to worry about being predictable.