For two weeks, the New York Giants have seen only familiar faces. The only people they’ve hit have been their teammates and all the concepts are familiar ones.
That changes on Tuesday.
The Giants boarded a team plane on Monday evening and took off for Detroit, where they will conduct back-to-back joint practices with the Lions before their preseason opener on Friday night.
For the players, it’s refreshing. For the coaches, it’s an opportunity to gauge their team and test some new things out.
“You’re going against a different team. You get to see different matchups, you get to see different schemes, you’ve been going against the same players for 10 days or 10 practices. So if you do it the right way, I think it’s a beneficial thing for you,” head coach Brian Daboll said.
It’s not quite a regular season game but joint practices are something different. They break up the monotony of camp and that gets the juices flowing for players.
“I can’t wait. I can’t wait. Just super excited to put what we’ve been working on in practice against another opponent,” wide receiver Parris Campbell said. “Our defense, they’ve kind of got an idea of what we’re doing nine times out of 10. So, sometimes it can be frustrating in practice, but excited to put some film out there and compete with some other talent.”
The anticipation and excitement reaches all corners of the locker room.
“It’s an exciting thing to do. At the end of the day, like I said before, we’re all competitive so going against a new face, a new team, it brings a different level of excitement,” cornerback Darnay Holmes said. “At the point we’re at, we’ll just see where we’re at as a defense and as a team so we’re ready to go up there and do a lot of team bonding and a lot of competing.”
Although Daboll and Lions head coach Dan Campbell will script the entirety of practice beforehand, each player will still go up against the unknown. They’ll get to see where they’re at with their progression and what they need to work on before the games begin to count.
