Pat: I expect Giants will do right thing

THERE APPEARS to be a Giant difference between Big Blue and Gang Green.

While Jets CEO Christopher Johnson said he won’t pass along any NFL fines to his players if they continue to protest racial injustice and police brutality by kneeling for the national anthem, Giants co-owner John Mara previously said he hopes all his players stand during the anthem and then coach Pat Shurmur told reporters Tuesday he wants his team to follow the new policy.

“I certainly trust that our players are going to do the right thing,” Shurmur said at OTAs. “I think we just let it settle for a minute. At some point, we’ll sit and discuss it, but we just haven’t done it yet.”

“I know certainly for me it’s very easy. I’m gonna face the flag and take my cap off, listen to the anthem and be thankful that my famiily and I live in the greatest country in the world and be able to kind of reflect on and be thankful for all the sacrifice that a lot of people have gone through to help protect and secure our freedom. That’s what it means to me. And again I think at some point, we’ll talk about it as a team and I trust that our team will do the right thing.”

The Giants have had players protest in the past, like defensive end Olivier Vernon who decided to take a knee last season after Donald Trump’s derogatory comments about players (“sons of a bitches”) who chose to do so, while the majority of the team linked arms.

“I’ve been raised the right way,” Vernon had said. “I know what’s right and I know what’s wrong. Ain’t nobody ever going to scare me. I don’t care if you the president or not, you ain’t my president.”

The NFL announced a new national anthem policy last week that requires players to stand or remain in the locker room or the team will be fined. Then the teams are allowed to punish individual violators.

The players union said it wasn’t consulted regarding the change, and the NFL admitted there wasn’t a formal owners’ vote on the policy.

Johnson made it clear that the new policy wasn’t going to change much for his team.

—Amara Grautski