ONE DAY AT A TIME
Rook Lauletta setting attainable goals for 1st season with Giants
Like most young football players, Kyle Lauletta had NFL dreams. Unlike most, however, he rarely talked about those. He set more modest goals for himself.
“As a little kid, he didn’t say I want to be an NFL quarterback,” his mom, Kim, said in a phone interview. “He would say I’m going to be a starter in middle school. I’m going to be a starter in high school, a starter in college. He set little attainable goals.”
He had good examples to go by. His father, Joe, was a quarterback at Navy, and older brother Trey played the position at Bucknell. They never let him get a big head.
Lauletta’s approaching his first year in the NFL with the same mindset that led him to being a fourth-round pick of the Giants in the NFL draft. He will be battling second-year quarterback Davis Webb to be Eli Manning’s backup. But that’s not even on his mind. His goals are even simpler.
“Where I am on the depth chart really isn’t under my control, so I just want to progress and learn,” he said this weekend during the Giants’ rookie minicamp. “I heard from a coach [former Richmond offensive coordinator John Garrett] one time, ‘If you can get 1 percent better each day, and do that every day, you’ll be in a really good spot by the time the season gets here.’
“The season’s a long time away, and I’ve been in this position before where I’ve had to learn an offense, so just looking forward to kind of climbing that ladder and getting to be as good as I can.”
He grew up 45 minutes outside of Philadelphia in Exton, Pa., so the 6-foot-3 signal caller was an Eagles fan. The entire family was. But that’s in the past now.
“I have to tell you, I just cleaned out the closet, and there is no Eagles green to be found anywhere,” Kim said. “It’s all taken and boxed up.”
The one knock on Lauletta is his arm. But he said he doesn’t believe it’s an issue. Those questions light a fire in him.
“People like to say that for whatever reason, but I think I have enough, Coach [Pat] Shurmur thinks I have enough, so it doesn’t really matter,” Lauletta said. “I’m here, and I’m gonna prove that I have enough arm, and hopefully everybody’ll see that someday.”
While all eyes on the Giants’ draft class will be on the first-round pick, former Penn State star Saquon Barkley, Lauletta is important to watch, too. New general manager Dave Gettleman opened himself to criticism by not picking one of the highly rated quarterbacks available in the draft. Manning is 37, and most likely has just a few years left. There will eventually be an opportunity for Lauletta to prove himself.
But pressure, so far in his young career, doesn’t get to him. Kim said she remembers one game in partic- ular. It was a high school playoff game and the clock was winding down. His coach was screaming at him to hurry, but Lauletta was the picture of calm. He scored the winning touchdown.
“That kid has ice water in his veins,” the coach told his mother.
It’s what enabled him to buck the odds, to reach the NFL despite going unnoticed by major Division I football programs. He wound up at Football College Subdivision Richmond, where he was the CAA Offensive Player of the Year as a senior, throwing for 3,737 yards, 28 touchdowns and 12 interceptions, and was just the fourth player in CAA history to throw for more than 10,000 yards.
He had to work harder to get noticed by NFL scouts, and took advantage of his opportunity by shining in the Senior Bowl. Now he has to start all over again with the Giants. But don’t expect him too think too big too soon. That’s not his way. He has a long way to go to become a starter in the NFL, a journey he is relishing.
“I’ll be working my butt off to get there, and we’ll see what happens,” Lauletta said.