Good morning, New York Giants fans! A rather different collection of notes for you this morning.
Players get reduction to offseason work, training camp hitting
One key concession made by the owners will effectively eliminate two-a-day practices during training camp as a health and safety issue that players termed critical to an agreement, the sources said. Teams will be allowed to have some helmetless and padless non-contact walk-through practices in lieu of a second training camp practice on the same day.
According to sources, teams will also reduce offseason workouts from 14 on-field organized team activities (practices) to nine. Six of those nine practices must be helmetless. Players also will not be subject to reporting for offseason work with coaches until May 1, although one source said that date could be in mid-April. Previously, players could work with coaches beginning in March. March 15 was the designated date in 2011 before the lockout went into effect March 13.
Here is what I wonder about with that. How do you prepare for a violent, contact sport without doing any real hitting? I don't mind the offseason changes -- to be honest I think the offseason work starts way too early for teams, anyway. I do worry about how softening training camps will impact quality of play. I do know that it will make camp much, much more boring from the aspect of reporting about it.
Do what you will with this information, but if you are checking out the newly-released Google + the New York Giants have set up a page. I don't know about anyone else who has checked out Google +, but I'm not finding much difference between that and Facebook. Except that right now hardly anyone is on Google +.
Support your starving blogger (Me!!!!)
If you are looking for Giants merchandise -- or that of any other favorite sports team you have, don't forget about the Giants store right here on Big Blue View. Yours truly gets a small portion of the profits when you purchase anything through the store, so check it out if you haven't done so previously.
Vacation Time
I am headed to Maine for the week as of Monday morning. Our man Mike Farley will carry you through the week, and we hope Mike Fiammetta will be contributing as well. If you see news that hasn't been reported, feel free to Fanpost it. I will be checking in -- I can't really help myself. But, I won't be writing regularly for a week or so. Have a great week and, hopefully, when I get back free agency will be getting cranked up and we will have real news to discuss.