The New York Giants believe they finally found themselves a center in rookie John Michael Schmitz, who played in his first NFL game last Friday night in Detroit.
The reviews on Schmitz’s debut were mostly positive as he showed good movement, leadership, and communication even though the rest of the line struggled throughout the game.
“It was good,” offensive coordinator Mike Kafka told reporters on Tuesday when asked about his assessment of Schmitz.
“That’s really — training camp, preseason is really for those young players and it’s good for the young players to get in there and get in the mix on how the speed of an NFL game shows up, and it comes on you fast. I thought that those young guys did well, JMS, like you said I thought was one of those guys who — he got in there, he played hard and there’s obviously a bunch of things that we can get better at and that’s where we’re working to improve on.”
Most who saw the game would agree with Kafka on that. Schmitz was likely the only starter who played in the game along with guard Ben Bredeson, who is one of the players in the mix this summer at right guard along with Joshua Ezeudu, Shane Lemieux, Marcus McKethan and others.
Kakfa would not commit to who was where on the depth chart at the moment but believes the competition is close and will settle itself out on the field.
Schmitz should head into the season as the starting center and veteran Mark Glowinski will be the right guard. Andrew Thomas and Evan Neal are the left and right tackles.
It’s just the left guard spot that’s up for grabs right now, and Kafka says the race is a very close one right now.
“I’m seeing a great competition. I’m seeing two or three tough kids — four tough guys that are really going after it in that core so they’re doing a nice job and we’re mixing them around and trying to give them as many different looks,” he said. “In the run game, in the pass game, they’re seeing a bunch of different looks from (Defensive Coordinator Don Martindale) Wink’s defense as far as pressure. So, all of those things and you go all the way back, really to the spring, you evaluate that part of it then you take the whole body of work and now you can get a clear picture of how he fits into your offense.”
