Q: You are working with a whole new cast of characters.
A: Yeah.
Q: What’s that like?
A: I told them today that not only do they not know what they are doing, but I don’t know what they are doing. I don’t know what I’m doing. This is a crash course for guys that haven’t had the opportunities that we have had in past years where we could meet with these guys. These new guidelines that we are working under really, really do make it difficult for us to transport the knowledge to these guys. And the fact that we are, by design, having to move along very rapidly, it is beginning to all run together for them. We are in our third day today and today was just not very characteristic of Giants football. We have to be much better than that as we move forward. And it is the mass of information that we are giving them – it is just beginning to become a mix for them. So it is hard to tell exactly whether they are capable of playing because they are not sure exactly what they are doing. And with just helmets on, you can’t get very much technique work done. So it needs to be assignment work, but today our assignments were not very good. So we have many miles before we sleep.
Q: I know your draft choice, Adrien Robinson, is not here. But do you have high expectations for the JPP of tight ends?
A: To be honest, I don’t know enough about him yet. Because I didn’t scout him and evaluate him as he was a player in college except on video tape. But I do think he is very, very talented. I think that part of the evaluation is…. But he is raw, as a lot of these young guys are, coming from not very much of a football background. So talent wise I think that we are right on with him. So I’m kind of encouraged going forward. I wish he was here now, because this is valuable time that he is missing. And these are almost irreplaceable. Jake Ballard went through the same thing when he first arrived here because Ohio State is on this same graduation system. And so he was set back. So we do have some prior experience with this – how difficult it is even for very young guys to come forward and to catch up with missing all of these practices.
Q: Do you communicate at all with him?
A: Oh yes, yes. We talk almost on a daily basis. We try to provide as much information before he left as we legally could. But these are new rules and guidelines that we are operating under. So I can’t go out there and work with him. If I could, I probably would have tried to have done that over the past weekend. Because in order for us to see if he is going to be able to help us this year coming up, he needs to catch up very rapidly. Because training camp will be here before we know it. We would like to think that is about the third revolution of them hearing these same things. For him it is going to be only the second – at best.
Q: Can he be here for the minicamp?
A: He will be here for the vet minicamp, yes. I think he is free the eighth of June. I believe that is the last day of his class at Cincinnati.
Q: How is Martellus coming along?
A: Other than the hamstring injury, he is making progress. He catches on. He is not a rookie player. He understands the transference of language from his former team to this team is always going to be a little difficult. But he is beginning to make those adjustments. He weighed in at 291 pounds last week. So I think that is probably a little too big for his legs to carry. We run a lot more than he might have been accustomed to. Plus we are in the middle of a weight program and the combination of those two things has caused him, especially, to have some problems with his hamstrings. He can’t afford to miss time, either. Because he needs every possible rep he can take.