Practice makes perfect? Will Harbaugh's intense camp produce better results?

When the Giants opened their preseason with 10 practices in 11 days in West Virginia and then continued on that heavy pace once they returned to New Jersey for the rest of the summer, it was a notable change from the way things used to be run. For Isaiah Likely, the tight end who followed John Harbaugh here from the Ravens, it was business as usual.

“I feel like that’s normal to me,” he said on Thursday. “If I wake up, I’m putting on cleats, that’s just the mantra I have. Hearing how Giants training camp was in the past, that was kind of mind-boggling to me.”

Under Brian Daboll there were certainly shorter practices and more days off. That schedule is gone. Maybe the results will change, too.

“These practices have definitely been probably the longest in duration,” wide receiver Darius Slayton said this week. “They've been the longest in duration, but they've been the most efficient. The way we practice the tempo is high, we're going from period to period. Even though the time is long, it doesn't feel as long as you would think because of the speed at which we practice and the efficiency that we practice at.”

“I feel like the guys embraced it,” Likely said of the tempo. “We had a good time at the Greenbrier and then we got here and I feel like everybody is on the same mantra now. If we are in the building, then it’s all football.”

By Tom Rock

tom.rock@newsday.com@TomRock_Newsday

Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.