New York Giants left tackle Andrew Thomas enters his third year in the NFL in a different place than in years past. He is finally healthy and firmly entrenched as the team’s premier lineman.
Last week, the Giants rushed for 177 yards against the New England Patriots in their 23-21 preseason victory up in Foxborough. The offensive line was huge reason for that success.
“For the first time, a new unit being together, not terrible, but a lot of things we’ve got to clean up,” Thomas told reporters this past weekend at training camp. “We didn’t have that big of a sample size, so we have to be really efficient in the plays that you get. Just going back, working on the technique, and making sure we get it like coach wants it.”
The goal is to gel and become a cohesive unit. That may take more time now that injuries to guard Shane Lemieux and others have disrupted things. Thomas was pleased with the success but knows improvement is still needed.
“We want to be dominant in the run game and that definitely opens up the passing game. But like I said it’s still some things on film that we want to clean up technique-wise, but the effort and energy was high,” Thomas said.
In practice, Thomas got to face off against his old Georgia teammate, outside linebacker Azeez Ojulari, who was returning to action after sitting out the first three weeks of camp with a hamstring injury.
“Azeez first has freak athleticism, good get-off on the ball, and he has pretty good length and then his power at the point of attack. He’s a good rusher, he mixes it up, so it makes it hard on tackles to figure out what he’s doing,” he said.
Ojulari will be joined this year by rookie Kayvon Thibodeaux. Thomas was asked his early impression of the Giants’ upgraded pass rush.
“Definitely explosive, and not just those two. We’ve got a pretty good outside linebacker group right now. I’m excited to see what they do. It’s still early in training camp, but we definitely have some guys who can make some plays,” he said.
