Giants' play-making sharpens during practice with Lions

ALLEN PARK, Mich. — Beginning Tuesday, continuing Wednesday and leading into the first preseason game for both teams, the Giants and Lions will see a lot of each other this week. 

And that’s the point. The week will culminate in the teams playing their first preseason games against each other Friday night at Detroit’s Ford Field. 

“I think it’s kind of the next step for training camp when you practice against another team,” Giants coach Brian Daboll said Tuesday. “I think there is competitive juices, the coaches have it, the players have it, but we are going to try to practice the right way against a really good team.” 

Daboll trusts in his longtime friendship with Dan Campbell — they were on the Miami staff together in 2011 — that the practices would not turn into donnybrooks. Tuesday’s certainly did not. 

For the Giants on Tuesday, their offense was not as crisp as it has been in training camp. Daniel Jones missed receivers, and receivers didn’t always make the catch. 

That isn’t wholly surprising. The Giants have had a relatively quiet training camp, with plenty of first-year Giants in the mix. There are kinks to work out.

As Jones said: “I thought it was good. Certainly, some things that we can sharpen up and clean up execution wise but overall, I thought we made some plays here and there. [We’ve] just got to be more consistent and take advantage of some of those opportunities we had.” 

Players seem to have relished the competition. 

“It’s really competitive,” tight end Darren Waller said. “It doesn’t get more competitive than this. It’ll be competitive [in the game] on Friday, for sure, but you know this is the first taste each of us has had of a new opponent and you want to put your best out there. You want to have confidence and some swagger when you do it, so you’ve got to love football.” 

Told he did not seem to be “running as freely” against the Lions, Waller agreed. 

“Yeah, I mean it’s a lot more physical out here,” he said. “A lot more things to take into count, somebody is going to come and put a forearm in your ribs when you run over the middle of the field even though it’s just a 7-on-7. Just getting more acclimated to game-like situations and knowing that it’s a physical game at the end of the day. It’s not always going to be 7-on-7 and people tagging off on you. It’s a good acclimation.” 

For Waller and some of his teammates, including veteran receiver Parris Campbell and rookie Jalin Hyatt, all of this still has a newness to it. 

"This is our first day for the three [of us] in a new offense against an opponent who does things differently than our defense has done all training camp,” Waller said. “So, there's always going to be a learning process, including throughout the whole season. We’re not going to be masters at the system. We just continue to grow, continue to gain reps and over time, it starts to sink in and become more second nature. You start to do things without thinking. So yeah, we're definitely learning right now but I feel like there’s a lot of progress that’s been made, too.” 

After their one-day joint practice last year with the Jets, the Giants later signed safety Jason Pinnock and tight end Lawrence Cager when they were released . . . Right tackle Evan Neal (concussion protocol) and defensive tackle Rakeem Nunez-Roches (groin strain) did not practice . . . Offensive lineman Marcus McKethan and defensive lineman A’Shawn Robinson, both activated Monday from the physically unable to perform list, are working on a limited basis. There was only on mini-skirmish Tuesday between Giants receiver Jaydon Mickens and Detroit safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson. They were quickly separated. 

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.