Ereck Flowers a no-show at first day of Giants workouts
Giants offensive lineman Ereck Flowers on the bench during NFL Pre-Season football action the Miami Dolphins take on the New York Giants at Met-Life Stadium. Friday August 12, 2016 East Rutherford, NJ Credit: George McNish
While most of the Giants showed up for the first day of the voluntary workouts, there was one auspicious absentee: Ereck Flowers. The former first-round pick, who is moving from left tackle to compete at right tackle in his fourth NFL season, may have had a legitimate reason for not attending the event, but it likely did not endear him to the new coaching staff and front office. Or, perhaps, even his teammates.
“Right now you can kind of come in and coaches can take it slow a little bit and you’re learning,” Eli Manning said. “You ask questions and you can kind of all learn it together, which is good. When guys start missing these meetings and these workouts on the field and stuff, you get behind and then you have to re-teach it, you’ve got to slow things down again for guys to catch up.”
Giant steps
Manning said he had no issue with Odell Beckham Jr. skipping his offseason passing camp at Duke University last week. “It was just a matter of what he’s doing in his rehab to get back healthy and it just wasn’t going to make sense for him to kind of make that trip if you can’t do all the routes and do everything,” Manning said . . . Center Brett Jones signed his restricted free agent tender on Monday, inking a one-year, $2.914-million contract. The Giants also announced the signing of tight end Ryan O’Malley, which was reported late last week . . . When he addressed the team as a whole for the first time on Monday, new coach Pat Shurmur made it clear that the Giants are charting a different course. “We want to grow away from basically what happened a year ago, the 3-13 season,” Shurmur said of the overarching tone of his meeting and the offseason program as a whole. “It just gives us an opportunity to work with the players again and set a new direction heading into 2018.”
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.
