Giants news, 7/31: Who’s at free safety? Well, pretty much everybody

Good morning, New York Giants fans! There is no practice Tuesday as players are off after five straight days of work. Big Blue View, though, is never off. So, let’s get caught up on some of what’s happening with your favorite team.

Free safety rotation

Through the first five practice, the Giants have lined up with a different starting free safety each day. Curtis Riley (twice), Darian Thompson, Andrew Adams and Michael Thomas have all been next to Landon Collins at some point.

“We’re gonna give those guys an opportunity to go out there with the first group and see how they do, and really it’s a rotation,” defensive backs coach Lou Anarumo said on Monday. “As we get deeper into camp, it’ll be more merit-based on, hey, we’re playing in some games and we’re actually tackling people and we’ll see how it goes, but we won’t find out who the best ones are unless we give them a chance, so that’s how we’re doing it.”

Engram, Giants focused on fixing drops

During an otherwise excellent rookie season, drops plagued tight end Evan Engram as he led all tight ends with 11. Engram and new tight ends coach Lunda Wells are focused on fixing that.

“There is always room for improvement and in terms of drops, always circle the wagon and talk about, hey how did you drop the ball and why did you drop it. One of the biggest things we focused on this year is catching the ball with proper technique. I call it catch fundamentals, so you’ll see at times a guy catches the ball and everybody goes crazy like wow he caught the ball, but he might have not utilized the proper technique in terms of catching it,” Wells said. “Sometimes things work without using the right technique, but at times at the most critical moment, they don’t work if you continue to not use the right technique in terms of catching the ball.

“So we emphasized that in terms of proper catch technique and again the only way to emphasize proper catch technique is to catch more balls so pre practice, during practice, post practice is real critical even in the meeting room catch the balls, even do ball drills in the meeting rooms for all the guys. Again, you could never catch enough footballs.”

Ellison: Shurmur “a very flexible guy”

Coach Pat Shurmur has worked under a number of head coaches, and has gleaned pieces of his offensive philosophy from each. Tight end Rhett Ellison, who was with Shurmur in Minnesota fr a year, lauded Shurmur’s flexibility and willingness to take input from players.

“Shurmur is a very flexible guy, he doesn’t like to be rigid with his offense, he likes to be able to do a lot of things with a lot of different types of people,” Ellison said.

The veteran tight end added the offense has the “fingerprints” of the players on it.

“You play the offense and make the calls that are going to be the best for those players, depending on who is on the field at the time,” he said. “That’s what I meant by he’s flexible, he takes what the players are good at and really puts an exclamation point on it.”

Davis Webb: Eli “the best I’ve ever seen”

Davis Webb may one day succeed Eli Manning as the Giants quarterback. For now, the second-year player is still watching and learning.

“He’s the best I’ve ever seen throw it. I mean, he has total command of the offense – attention wise, route wise, teaching everybody on the fly on the field and off the field. He’s ready to rock and roll. We’ll all try to keep up. He sets that tone, and I know he’s going to play his best.

In case you missed it

• Sights and sounds of Giants’ camp: Practice number five
• Giants practice report, 7/30: Plays, and more, that tell us the story of Monday’s practice
• Giants’ Saquon Barkley to be included in Carrie Underwood’s Sunday Night Football opener
• Will Russell Shepard’s “no-brainer” decision to come to Giants pay off for him?