Pierce doesn't see the passion

First day of training camp practice. Helmets and shoulder pads. Fresh legs. High energy. Enthusiasm. Hitting. Lots of hitting. Talking. Plenty of talking -- trash or otherwise.

It is one of the greatest days to be a professional football player, Antonio Pierce was explaining the other day, his eyes growing wide with excitement, even if he can no longer be a part of it. This is what you live for, what you play for, beyond the money, beyond the fame. It is the boyhood joy that never really changes.

But this time the former Giants linebacker didn't see enough of it from his ex-teammates. As he stood on the sideline Wednesday for the Giants' first practice in pads, the first time they were free to hit each other after a 4½-month lockout, he was shocked and dismayed by how quiet, how clinical, how unemotional this team was acting.

"I didn't get that training camp energy that I like from when I played and from being around training camps," said Pierce, who was forced into retirement with a neck problem midway through the 2009 season. "I'm talking about the energy of 'let's go out and do this.' Coach Coughlin talked about the steely-eyed focus. I didn't feel that. There was just something missing."

Pierce, an NFL analyst for ESPN, has a strong bond with many of his former teammates and is anxious to see the Giants succeed, especially in the wake of last season's disappointment. The Giants were 10-6 but didn't make the playoffs because of a late-season swoon.

"The first day in pads, there should have been some screaming, guys getting after it," Pierce said. "You've been away from the team for nine months, your season ended in December, you've been sitting around, no OTAs, no minicamps. Guys are fresh. I know it's only one practice, but still . . . "

Making it even worse in Pierce's eyes: the Eagles' aggressive moves in free agency that brought cornerback Nnamdi Asomugha and several other high-profile players to Philadelphia. And worse yet: the Jets' emergence.

Dare he say it, that the Giants are dangerously close to irrelevance?

"You should be [angry] that the Eagles are proclaiming themselves to be the Super Bowl champions," he said. "The Jets are now the baddest team in New York. If I was on that [Giants] team, I would be [angry]. Our hair would be on fire. It would be a different atmosphere. I thought I'd see more smoke coming out of their ears and off the top of their heads."

Pierce, who often played to the emotions of his teammates with his fiery rhetoric on game days and in practice, said his days with the Giants were a marked contrast with what he saw last week.

"You guys [reporters] asked us after the '07 season if we'd be laid-back," he said, referring to the year after the Giants won the Super Bowl. "We were wired and we came out smoking until the incident."

He was referring to the Plaxico Burress self-shooting Nov. 28, a major distraction that led to the Giants' downfall later that season, when they lost a first-round playoff game to the Eagles. The Giants were 10-1 at the time of the shooting.

Pierce isn't sure this year's team has what it takes to make a meaningful run. But he knows there will be no special season without a better attitude.

"I don't think it's the most talented team that's been there the last six or seven years, but they have to make up their minds that this is going to be a successful season," he said. "It starts with the top guys and the head [coach]. He has to make those guys believe and feel like they're going to be winners, because right now, for the first time in a long time, nobody's talking about the Giants. They're not talking about them because they don't think they're going to have an impact on the season. That's why I expected to feel a certain buzz in the air. I didn't really get that."

One person who didn't completely disagree with Pierce: Coughlin.

"Well, that's an observation after just one practice, but I think we'll get it," Coughlin said Monday afternoon. "I think they'll come around. I think we've got pretty good leadership, and I think our leadership will get better."

Coughlin sure hopes so. And perhaps Pierce's message already is starting to get through. Early in Monday night's practice, Coughlin gathered his players around him and yelled about wanting to see more energy, more hitting. Request granted.

But with a team in transition and a city turning more of its attention to the team in green and white, the Giants have plenty of work ahead to convince their doubters.

And that includes one feisty ex-linebacker.