GIANT HOPES
Landon Collins is not backing down from his goal of Defensive Player Of the Year
New Giants defensive coordinator James Bettcher told the Daily News this spring that Landon Collins was one of the big reasons Bettcher came to New York.
Bettcher doesn’t marry his defense to any specific scheme. He is focused on identifying and featuring his playmakers. It is a shape-shifting, 3-4, blitz-heavy alignment, but at heart, Bettcher is looking to unleash his stars (see Chandler Jones’ 17 sacks for last year’s Cardinals in 2017).
Or as Collins said of advice from former Cardinals Tyrann Mathieu and Tony Jefferson: “They told me guys of my caliber, (Bettcher) tends to move around. So we’ll see.”
Collins’ caliber, he still believes, is as a future Defensive Player of the Year. He told the Daily News last summer that it was his goal to win the award in 2017, after being one of five finalists in 2016.
And now Collins is calling it his goal again in 2018.
“That’s always gonna be my goal, each and every year,” Collins told the News on Friday. “I want to be that consistently. If I could get back-toback, I’d definitely try my best.”
Back-to-back DPOY Awards is a bold goal, but Collins’ bravado is part of what makes him so menacing. So is his toughness. Collins took a lot of heat last season about not playing up to his 2016 All-Pro level. The right arm fracture that required two offseason surgeries — he’s “100 percent” now — didn’t happen until that Christmas Eve loss to Bettcher’s Cardinals.
But it’s easy to forget that Collins played in Week 6 in Denver on a brutally painful high ankle sprain, yet he still intercepted Trevor Siemian and helped a desperate 0-5 Giants team earn its first win.
“In Denver, I was in excruciating pain, pain to where I didn’t want to tackle anybody, didn’t want to get rolled up on, didn’t want nobody to touch me,” Collins said Wednesday. “Denver was the worst, right after the Chargers game when I hurt it.
“Even when I caught the interception one of my guys tried to celebrate, that’s why you saw on the video I did this (waves hand) because I’m like I can’t do it,” Collins continstep ued. “And I went down because when I got hit on the ankle, I took one more and said, ‘Oh I can’t go.’”
So why did Collins even play in the game?
“Because I love the game,” Collins said. “I’ve played through an ankle sprain. I’ve played through multiple. But the worst pain was when I bruised my ribs (playing at Alabama). I bruised my ribs against LSU and I played through that for four weeks.”
One week after the Denver win, in Week 7 against Seattle even, Collins almost single-handedly keyed a Giant comeback on the ginger ankle. But officials called his early fourth-quarter interception in the end zone a touchdown catch by Paul Richardson as both players were touching the ball, so Collins’ near-heroics were forgotten.
“I was hurt, and at the end of the day you go back to the top safeties last season, I was maybe five plays behind them, five plays of getting in backfield, making a sack, or getting an INT,” Collins said. “They could have been my plays, but I couldn’t make those cuts on my ankle. I could not do it.”
Of course, Collins also made some off-field headlines that contributed to the season’s drama, publicly calling out teammate Eli Apple. And this offseason he earned a rebuke from new coach Pat Shurmur for sharing the business of teammate Ereck Flowers, who did not show up for early offseason workouts.
Collins is not about detrimental distraction, though. And as proof, though he is entering the fourth and final year of his rookie contract as a former second-round pick, Collins said he had no interest in any holdout or statement or involvement in negotiations. He’ll let his agent handle all that.
“I just want to play ball; I’m not too stuck on the contract,” he said. “If I weigh on it it will cause me to push for plays and plays will go over my head. Bad stuff will happen. So I just go out there and play ball and that’s what I have been doing. It’s gotten me this far and I’m not going to change it.”
When that contract gets done, however, Collins said he hopes it helps him achieve his goal of spending his whole career as a Giant.
“I would like to, I definitely would like to,” he said. “My biggest thing was when I came into the league and whatever school I went to coming from high school is where I wanted to finish, that’s my kind of my motto.”
Like his aim for defensive player of the year then, a lofty goal, but not impossible.