Hazing glare gives Giants feel for how the other team lives
Giants veteran tackle looking forward to opportunity to play
FOR a day, for a news cycle, the Giants got a taste of how the other half lives — which is to say, on the record, on the edge, on the back page, on the Internet, on Twitter, on Facebook, on call. For a day, for a news cycle, blue was green, East Rutherford was Florham Park, hard work was “Hard Knocks,” speaking softly was replaced by the big stick.
“That isn’t us,” Eli Manning said.
“We live in a whole new world,” Justin Tuck said, “and it takes some getting used to.”
It’s funny, for the first few weeks of football camps, the Giants practically had to trip people by tying their sneakers together to get anyone to talk to them. The world, it seemed, had moved the capital of New York — certainly football New York — from Albany to Cortland. It seemed as if every Jet had two reporters and a blogger surgically attached to him.
The Giants? Sure, they had a fresh Lombardi Trophy to show off. But since when is it news to win a world championship? They give a trophy out every year, don’t they?
Heck, a postagestamp town like Green Bay, Wis., can win a world championship. That’s easy. Getting every syllable Antonio Cromartie utters properly recorded for posterity? That’s the big ticket.
And sure, the Giants being the Giants, they laughed about the attention the Jets were getting coming off an 88 slopfest of a season. They seemed happy as clams allowing bad dormitory beds to serve as the entrancing news nugget of their lives. Ignore us now, they intimated, because you’ll need to conserve your strength for when we’re still playing in January.
Still, as Jets Week approached, as the blood lust for the Snoopy Cup began to boil, you could sense ever so slightly the Giants, as a whole, were more than puzzled, if less than peeved, at the reality that the Jets always seem to set the regional football conversation — even as they mugged the Jets 263, treating them the way placeholder Lucy Van Pelt treated placekicker Charlie Brown (who, contrary to rumor, is not the third man in the fight in the Nick Folk/ Josh Brown bootoff).
And then a funny thing happened.
“We got a taste,” Tuck said, “of what it’s like when you’re not careful.”
“Careful” has different meanings to different people. The Giants spent a day, spent a news cycle, talking about new images that surfaced of Jason PierrePaul dunking Prince Amukamara in an ice tub and older ones involving rookie Rueben Randle. All the attendant sociological issues came tumbling forth — hazing, bullying, stuff Tuck says “everyone in this room understands as a serious issue and wouldn’t tolerate if we thought that was happening here.”
“The guys,” Tom Coughlin said yesterday, “understand how they’re supposed to behave.”
There are two things that are especially funny about all of this. First, of course, is the whole brouhaha started thanks to punter Steve Weatherford posting video of the incident on Twitter; need we mention where Weatherford used to hang his helmet before he played with the Giants?
Second, how much spicier would an “icetub incident” have to be in Jets camp for it to be noticed among all the other daily carnival acts? Here’s a guess: A rookie would have to have his head shaved, have his cheeks taped together like Larry Lester in “The Breakfast Club,” be forced to scream into the camera “Bleep you, Belichick!” all while wearing a Tebow jersey … and
then be dunked in the tub. And that might not even be enough, frankly.
No, all it took was one day, one news cycle, for the Giants to remember what they so admire about being Giants, about the difference between Bergen County and Morris County, between the opera and the circus. Maybe it gets a little dull going to work, doing your work, keeping your mouth shut, going home. Maybe a slew of Jets would suffer from hives if they tried doing it that way.
But it isn’t a bad way to be. Steering clear of TMZ can actually be AOK.
Sean Locklear has been here before, where he bounces from side to side on the offensive line in hopes of finding a permanent home. The summer comes and goes, and when the leaves turn and the NFL season starts, he has switched again.
This goaround with the Giants, where Locklear has played left tackle on the first unit for the past two days replacing Will Beatty (back), he hopes guarding Eli Manning’s vulnerable blind side can be his place of residency.
“I just look at it as an opportunity to get in there and play,” Locklear said yesterday after practice in preparation for Friday’s home preseason game against the Bears. “Learn the system, learn the offense and play ball, which they signed me to do.”
Entering his 10th season, the 6foot4, 310pound North Carolina State product was signed by the Giants this offseason to a oneyear, $890,000 contract. After being taken by the Seahawks in the third round of the 2004 draft, the 31yearold Locklear spent all of his first professional training camp at left tackle while Pro Bowl lineman Walter Jones held out for a larger contract. When the season started and Jones agreed to his franchisetag deal, Locklear moved back to his natural right side, where he played throughout college.
“My main purpose is to learn the system,” Locklear said. “I played most of my career on the right, I’ve done it every camp, almost, playing left then switching to right, so I’m comfortable at whatever they put me at.”
Coach Tom Coughlin wasn’t optimistic about the progress of Beatty’s recovery when asked about it on Monday, saying he is “still struggling.” Last season David Diehl took most of the snaps at left tackle, but he is back to his preferred right side — at least for the time being, while the coaching staff continues to evaluate Locklear.
“There’s going to have to be flexibility,” said Coughlin, who has had to juggle his offensive line throughout the past couple seasons because of injuries. “We obviously expect and live in expectation that Beatty will come back to the practice field unless something would happen otherwise. … And of course, it’s kind of close. We’re getting close and those five guys need to play a lot together.”