SWITCH IT UP
Flowers makes progress at right tackle
Ereck Flowers insists he’s fine with being shunted over to right tackle, and Giants offensive line coach Hal Hunter says Flowers’ attitude shows as much. But there’s clearly a lot of work to make the underachieving former Top 10 pick comfortable.
“I’m getting better at it every day, just trying to get comfortable,” said Flowers. “We haven’t played any games together yet, but it’s going well. I think we’ll get better with each game.
“When you move over you have to switch everything, your muscle memory, a lot of different things. It’s going pretty well, though. I’ve gotten a lot better at it since I first started.” He’d better. Big Blue flipped Flowers to the right side after he disappointed on the left. He has allowed an NFL-worst 169 quarterback pressures since the Giants drafted him ninth overall in 2015.
Pro Football Focus graded Flowers a 51.5 last season, just 53rd in the NFL, a league with just 64 starting tackles. It was a big enough problem to force the Giants to splurge on pricey free agent Nate Solder, and move Flowers from the premium left tackle position over to the right.
Flowers initially admitted disappointment, and skipped the first voluntary minicamp. He says he’s fine with the move, but it’s a big adjustment.
“There’s a lot of technical things to work on in the run and pass, and everything is completely opposite at the right tackle position than the left,” said Hunter, who has been grilling Flowers during film sessions.
“A little bit of the old So- cratic method in there. … I’ll fire a question to this guy, fire a question to that guy, just to see who’s paying attention. Fired two questions at [Flowers] and he had the answers 1-2. [He’s] engaged in the meeting: That shows a lot. The No. 1 thing I’ve been pleased with is his attitude.”
When Flowers was asked what has been the single most difficult part of his transition, he couldn’t pick out just one.
“A little bit of everything, its different footwork, it’s different everything. There’s different ways of looking at silent counts, everything is a little bit different,” said Flowers, who struggled over the first week of training camp.
Hunter — the former Indianapolis offensive line coach who said the Colts had wanted to draft Flowers in 2015 — praised the tackle’s competitiveness, attitude and weight loss. He’s listed at 6-foot-6, 334 pounds.
But the proof is in the pudding in Thursday’s preseason opener against the Browns.
“We’ll have our first run this Thursday and we’ll see where it goes from there,” Flower said. “We’ll try to build each week. … I haven’t played a game there. As you get more reps you get more of clearer picture.”