How will Brian Daboll approach Giants' joint practices, preseason matchup with Lions?

For the Giants, this week will be the most intriguing of training camp to this point.

After Monday’s practice at their facility, they will board a plane bound for Detroit for joint practices with the Lions.

The teams will be on the practice field together on Tuesday and Wednesday.

They’ll be able to hit an opponent not wearing the same uniform, and they will play in front of what figures to be a particularly energized preseason crowd Friday night.

The Lions have announced that their season-ticket allotment has sold out for the first time in Ford Field history.

Asked by the Lions’ media how that makes him feel, coach Dan Campbell said: “No, I don’t feel weight [to deliver]. I feel wind underneath my fricking wings, man. That’s how I feel.”

That’s Campbell.

Once a Giants tight end, he may bring some zest to the proceedings in a week in which the goal for both teams is to improve. The week will culminate with the teams’ first preseason game.

Giants coach Brian Daboll and Campbell were on the same staff in Miami for a season. In 2011, Daboll was the Dolphins’ offensive coordinator and interviewed Campbell before hiring him as the tight ends coach.

Asked Saturday how he will structure playing time Friday night, Daboll said: “Who plays, how long, I’m not there yet. We’re not there yet.”

The coaches surely will learn about their teams throughout the week.

One of the most intriguing players for the Giants this season remains their longest-tenured one: Sterling Shepard.

Shepard is coming off back-to-back season-ending injuries, a torn Achilles and a torn ACL. He was activated off the PUP list on July 31 and has had rest days sprinkled in at training camp. The buildup has been intentional, and o

n Saturday, he appeared to have had his biggest workload to date in this camp.

For Shepard, the waiting has been the hardest part, even if it was (and it certainly was) prudent.

At Saturday’s practice, he looked particularly spry, perhaps the best he has looked this summer. He is popular within the coaching staff, including with Daboll, because he works hard and has mostly smiled through the pain of injuries and disappointments.

In the locker room last season, Shepard was relentlessly upbeat. He and Saquon Barkley are the closest of friends. He also is a relentless supporter of Daniel Jones.

None of that, of course, will earn Shepard a spot on the Giants’ final roster. He knows that.

Shepard, who has been upbeat and confident in camp, has indicated to Newsday that he does believe he will win a spot on the initial 2023 regular-season roster.

There are 14 receivers currently in camp, including Cole Beasley and Jamison Crowder, whom general manager Joe Schoen brought in this summer and who usually play in the slot.

Daboll, not surprisingly, believes “competition is good for everybody.” And while Shepard is an inspiring story and a good teammate, he’ll have to earn his spot.

It will be interesting to see how Daboll decides to employ Shepard against the Lions.

“It feels great just to be back out there with the guys and actually going against somebody,” he said recently. “I’ve been sitting over there for months, running routes by myself and just trying to visualize somebody there. To actually have somebody, it honestly was 10 times better.

“I wasn’t even thinking about my planting or anything like that. I felt great. It was good to be back out there with the guys.”

By Kimberly Jones

kimberly.jones@newsday.comkimjonessports

Kimberly Jones covers the Giants for Newsday, a beat she first worked in the early 2000s before joining the YES Network to cover the Yankees. She worked for the NFL Network for more than a decade and has been heard semi-regularly on WFAN.