Giants revamping locker room with veteran leadership
Pat Shurmur is introduced as the Giants' new head coach during a press conference on Jan. 26. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
ORLANDO, Fla. — The Giants are revamping their roster. But they are also revamping their locker room.
It became a toxic place toward the end of last season thanks to mounting losses, lack of effort in some cases, and what appeared to be a vacuum of leadership. That’s one of the things general manager Dave Gettleman has spoken about since taking over: Changing the culture.
So enter Nate Solder, Alec Ogletree, Jonathan Stewart and Michael Thomas.
“What’s important is you add more really good guys to the locker room that we know how they’re going to handle things,” head coach Pat Shurmur said at the NFL league meeting on Tuesday. “And then you inspire some of the guys who are in there, re-encourage the guys who were there a year ago, to do the right thing more times. Then it all comes together. . . . I think if you bring in the right personalities that sort of happens organically.”
And just in case it doesn’t, Shurmur said he will encourage his coaches to spend time in the locker room overseeing things, encouraging good team citizenship, and putting out potential brushfires.
“The physical space of the locker room, it’s the New York Giants’ locker room so I encourage our coaches to go through there,” Shurmur said. “The players, that’s where their lockers are and that’s where they spend their time, but it needs to be a healthy place where everybody can be themselves.”
Shurmur said he has an idea who will emerge as the leaders of the 2018 Giants, but can’t yet be certain because he doesn’t yet know all of them well enough.
“Anybody who is willing to do and has the courage to do the right thing all the time can lead,” he said. “That’s no different in the locker room than it is on the playing field. If a guy sees something going on in there that he doesn’t approve of, and he’s strong enough to exert himself, that’s where the leadership comes.”
It may even come from unexpected places, players who have been on the Giants but have not stepped into that role in the past.
“New players, new relationships, clean slates, new coaches, new systems — there is a lot of new running parallel,” Shurmur said. “So guys can change, guys can improve, guys can act in different ways. Players want to be in a winning situation. The Giants have won Super Bowls before, it’s in our DNA, so we’re trying to put the right combination of players and coaches together and I think we have a lot of guys, at least what I’ve heard, who are eager to get that going.”
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.
