It's 'go time' for Giants cornerbacks Deonte Banks and Tre Hawkins
37 Tre Hawkins III at New York Giants practice at their practice facility in East Rutherford on Tuesday, August 15, 2023. Credit: Ed Murray
A lot of players look forward to finding a moment of significance from their NFL debuts that they can cling to for the rest of their lives. Maybe it’s the anthem or that first run through the tunnel. It could be their first snap if they can manage to take a quick glance around. Some of them are even lucky enough to briefly marvel at the surreal feeling of going against a veteran player they grew up watching.
Deonte Banks isn’t going to be on the lookout for any such mental memorabilia.
He just won’t have time.
He’ll be too busy starting at cornerback against the Cowboys.
“Once we hit it, it’s over,” he told Newsday. “I don’t really need to soak it in. It’s go time, you feel me? It ain’t time to sit back. It’s time to go.”
For Banks and Tre Hawkins, the two rookie cornerbacks with very different pedigrees who likely will be lining up with the first-team defense on opposite sides of the field in Week 1, it’s been “go time” for a while now.
Their journey from college to this point has felt like a nonstop race, training for the NFL Combine and going through pro days, being selected by the Giants, attending rookie minicamp, carving out their spots at the top of the depth chart in training camp and now this, their initial week leading up to an NFL regular-season game.
“That’s kind of what comes with it,” Hawkins said. “Your rookie season, everything moves fast. You jump from doing thing to thing. But I don’t look at that as a negative. I embrace it. I embrace it.”
It’s sincerity and sentiments such as those that make it hard to figure them for rookies when talking to them at their side-by-side lockers at the Giants’ facility. They share a maturity not many of the cornerbacks the Giants have drafted prominently during the last few years could match.
Consider how difficult it was for the team to get players such as Eli Apple and DeAndre Baker to simply come to work prepared each and every day. These two are nothing like that. In fact, while the team had several days off this holiday weekend and each could have easily scooted off to spend some of their signing bonuses after a grueling summer, both said they would remain in New Jersey hovering around the facility.
“I want to get a head start,” Hawkins said of his preparation for the Cowboys. “I’m trying to stay tunnel-visioned for the season.”
Added Banks: “I’m sticking around. This is my home now.”
Fans may be terrified by the idea of starting two rookies at cornerback.
Don’t be. These guys may not have played in an NFL game yet, but they think and act like wise veterans.
That’s not to say they won’t get beaten and make their share of mistakes. That’s inevitable. Some of them may even show up Sunday.
But talking to them as they approached their prime-time baptisms, it’s hard to believe, with their physical and mental tools, that they will not succeed.
These kids’ll be all right.
Neither played in the preseason finale against the Jets — the starters rested, so they did too despite their relative inexperience — but they didn’t see it as a night off.
“Even though I didn’t play, I still wanted to reflect on the Jets game, see what guys did wrong and right so maybe it won’t happen to me, learn from somebody else’s mistakes,” Hawkins said. “But as soon as that last segment was over, I wanted to focus on Dallas and get a head start on them.”
That’s when they began volleying clips of Cowboys receivers between their phones, pointing out the nuggets they sleuthed on their own.
Look how Bradin Cooks runs this route.
Watch how Michael Gallup tries to get off the line on this play.
Ever since they arrived — Banks a first-round pick from Maryland and Hawkins a sixth-rounder from Old Dominion — they have not given any indication that they will be overwhelmed or overmatched.
They certainly won’t be out-prepared.
Maybe that’s the memento they’ll be able to take from this debut experience. Not the game itself but the build-up to it. The work that goes into getting there.
When they look back on the earliest days of their careers, maybe days like Monday (when they get their first game plan) or Tuesday (when they participate in their first full opponent-specific practice) will be what they cherish, not the glamour and fireworks and hoopla surrounding the kickoff.
It’d make for an appropriate one.
As Banks said last week: “I’m a preparer. You can see already that I’m preparing. I ain’t taking it lightly at all.”
That, he added, is his favorite part of the job.
Yep. They should be fine.
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.
