Judge plays the jersey name game
Who the heck are those guys?
Plenty of them, of course, are easily recognizable by their numbers but none of them have any names on the backs of their blue or white Giants jerseys.
“We know who they are,’’ Joe Judge said Monday without a trace of humor in his voice.
This is a departure from the way the Giants usually go about their business. There have been names on the back of the training camp jerseys ever since Dan Reeves signed off on them in 1994.
There are 80 players in this year’s camp and none of them can be identified by anything other than his assigned number. This is the way Bill Belichick operated with the Patriots and, wouldn’t you know it, Judge spent the past eight years with Belichick in New England. At least Judge is not maniacal about this — Belichick for a few years went through the spring and summer with players running around wearing no names or numbers, until the NFL nixed that in 2016.
“To be honest with you, I’ve been places where we’ve gone an entire offseason without numbers,’’ Judge said. “To me, it’s important to know who the players are on the field across from you by their body type and how they move, more so than having to see a nameplate to identify your teammate. We should know each other as coaches and players by how we move and the way we carry ourselves.
“The numbers and name stuff, we’ll do that on game day. Right now, we have numbers just to meet the rules laid out by the league. But to be honest with you, the identification of who the players are, we should be better than that as coaches and players by knowing our teammates.’’
➤ Kicker Chandler Catanzaro was released because of the imminent signing of Graham Gano as soon as he moves through his COVID-19 testing and passes his physical. Gano missed the entire 2019 season with the Panthers following knee surgery. Catanzaro was with the Giants for 17 days.
“I appreciate what Chandler did for us,’’ Judge said. “I have a lot of respect for him. He’s definitely an NFL kicker. I think he made the right decision coming out of retirement.’’
➤ The arraignment hearing for CB DeAndre Baker will be Sept. 15 in Broward County, Fla. — the day after the Giants open their regular season. Baker is currently on the exempt list.