SO CLOSE, YET SO FAR AWAY
Remote prep is new normal for Giants as NFL Draft draws near
Giants headquarters right now are in Massachusetts, not to mention New Jersey, New York and countless other states where coaches, executives, scouts and staff are working from their respective homes.
For first-year head coach Joe Judge, that means working remotely out of his house in North Attleborough, Mass., where he and his family are still based for the time being, waiting out the coronaviru s pandemic.
This, according to people familiar with how the Giants are operating, is the new normal.
Their Quest Diagnostics Training Center in East Rutherford is shuttered for the foreseeable future with New Jersey’s non-essential businesses ordered closed and confirmed cases and deaths continue to rise.
The Giants’ daily grind is packed with video conferences between staff internally and with college prospects as they prepare for an NFL Draft, an offseason and a 2020 regular season whose evolutions no one can define or predict.
There was still no official word by the end of this past week, in fact, on what the starting point and parameters of the NFL’s remote offseason program for players would look like.
Teams with first-year head coaches like the Giants were originally scheduled to begin their offseason programs with players on Monday, two weeks before the rest of the league. But it’s still unclear when, what and how the NFL will kick off its offseason program.
Not to mention that league wide, no one truly knows if a season is going to happen, or if it does, whether it will start on time.
Though league lawyers recently proclaimed optimism for a status quo 2020 season, NFL chief medical officer Dr. Allen Sills threw some realistic cold water on that Thursday, admitting “the reality is none of us know those facts for certain right now.” He said widespread testing will have to be available before the league can contemplate re-opening.
So all the league’s 32 teams can do is work to be prepared for a best-case scenario while waiting for more information.
Prior to this pandemic, Judge and many of his assistant coaches had been staying temporarily in the same apartment complex in Clifton, N.J., a quick shot up Route 3 from the facility.
With the training center closed until further notice, it didn’t make sense for many coaches to stay local, especially those with families in other parts of the country. So they dispersed and have continued to work remotely.
The league, which is controversially keeping its 2020 NFL Draft on schedule for April 23-25, left the door open on Tuesday to the possibility of teams drafting from their facilities. That’s only if it’s determined that all 32 clubs are legally able to do so in a safe capacity.
If all 32 teams aren’t cleared to use their facilities, then all of them will be forced to draft remotely, a scenario defined by an NFL memo on Thursday as “personal residences, with a clear prohibition on any number of club personnel gathering in one residence.”
The latter scenario, obviously, would seem to be the most likely and prudent. It is difficult to imagine the NFL justifying the opening of the Giants’ and Jets’ facilities while the New York/New Jersey area remains closed for business and increasingly devastated by the virus.
The Giants, therefore, will follow state regulations and NFL rules on whether they can use their facility for the draft. Since that is unlikely, the team already has remote options to handle the draft if that is what is required.
Going by the league’s preliminary guidelines, it’s possible a remote setup could include a limited number of decision-makers in one location, safely distanced from each other, like Sean Payton and some New Orleans Saints brass are doing at Dixie Brewing Company in Louisiana.
But it’s also possible the Giants and other teams end up running their drafts 100% re
motely from their homes, video conferencing the entire draft, to be better safe than sorry.
The Giants obviously are not one of the organizations criticizing the league publicly or anonymously for keeping the draft on schedule, though.
Co-owner John Mara chairs the league committee that kept the draft on schedule and joined commissioner Roger Goodell in threatening “disciplinary action” for any team executives who continued to publicly discuss the league’s plans.
So you won’t hear a peep about that out of East Rutherford, or rather, out of the dozens of residences around the country that now serve as the Giants organization’s collective nerve center.
THE NFL DRAFT: PROSPECTS and IMPEDIMENTS
The biggest issue teams are having at the moment in their draft evaluations, sources have said, are with medicals and an inability to dig deeper on potential risks they’d take by drafting a player with an injury history. Hence projected top-10 Alabama QB Tua Tagovailoa’s highly publicized medical check with an independent physician who consulted with all 32 clubs.
In some cases, the best that players’ agents can do is provide the most updated and complete medical records as possible. Then they’re also having coaches and trainers film players conduct individual versions of pro days, and doing video conferences with teams, since all scouts are off the road, and pro days and team facility visits were cancelled.
But the virtual scouting continues, so here are some players whose names are starting to pop, from the middle rounds to the late rounds: — Illinois running back
Reggie Corbin (5-9, 205 pounds) is drawing serious interest from teams in the NFC West, NFC South and AFC East, and his work during the week of the East-West Shrine Game even caught the Giants’ eyes. He showed off an ability to return on special teams and to run crisp routes as a receiver out of the backfield. He rushed for 2,300-plus yards in college playing for former NFL head coach Lovie Smith. He was third-team All-Big Ten as both a redshirt junior and senior. And one scout said Corbin “has some juice to him.” The Illini also got their pro day in before pro days around the country were cancelled, so scouts saw and spoke with this potential lateround steal in person. At the pro day, Corbin ran what would have been the fastest three-cone time at the NFL Combine for running backs (6.85), benched 20 reps and jumped 38 inches vertically.
— The Giants have checked a couple times on Colgate’s
Abu Daramy-Swaray , a defensive back and punt/kick returner who also ran track. (There’s another player with return ability on their radar). The 5-9, 181-pounder boasts a 4.49 40-yard dash and in four seasons for the Raiders brought back 42 kicks for 874 yards and 70 punts for 650 yards and a touchdown. Big Blue let its top 2019 kick returner, Cody Latimer, sign in Washington. Corey Coleman and others will compete for the job, but the Giants could be the market for more.
— Some teams have an early day three grade on Texas State offensive lineman
Aaron Brewer, a projected center/guard who started all of 2019 at right tackle. Brewer, who played at an undersized 6-3, 270 pounds, has his weight up into the mid-290s and ran a 4.9 40-yard dash, jumped 34 inches in the vertical, and benched 24 reps at an unofficial pro day in Nashville with former Tennessee Titans scout Blake Beddingfield conducting the testing.
— Michigan State O-lineman Tyler Higby, who made 21 starts at left guard, seven at left tackle and two at center for the Spartans, is quietly garnering attention, too. He ran the 40-yard dash in 5.00 flat at 6-foot-5, 305 pounds and benched 30 reps at his own unofficial with Michigan State’s pro day canceled … Marshall LB Omari Cobb (6-4, 230) did get in his official pro day and impressed scouts with a 4.6 40-yard dash, a 37inch vertical and 21 reps on the bench. He’s excellent in coverage, a talent increasingly now not only valued but required at the position.