Grant: '09 Seahawks were "lost" coming out of camp
Giants GM Jerry Reese said durability was the primary factor in his decision to sign Seahawks safety Deon Grant. (Nov. 8, 2009) Credit: AP
Here's the compelling story I mentioned in the previous post. It's from veteran safety Deon Grant, who is new to the Giants this year as a free agent. Basically he says that last year's training camp in Seattle was so difficult and demanding that Jim Mora Jr. had lost many of the players by the time the regular season started.
“A lot of guys were fatigued out, a lot of guys were lost mentally," he said.
You can read the whole story here.
Just as interesting is that Grant played in Jacksonville and arrived two years after Coughlin left. That was close enough for him to hear horror stories about what a disciplinarian Coughlin was.
“I heard it was bad, I heard it was terrible,” Grant said of Coughlin's tyranny. “I love the game, but how they talked about how bad it was, whew, I don’t know if I could have experienced that one.”
Obviously Coughlin has changed. And the while he's demanding in terms of attention and detail, he doesn;t have the players crashing into each other twice a day. in fact, even when the Giants are in full pads as they were last week, Coughlin reminds them that they are just playing "thud" and the goal is to remain on your feet.
Grant said it's much better for players that way because the game has changed from the old days in many ways.
“We can still be physical but they have so many fines for you doing this and doing that so the game is not as physical as it used to be,” he said. “You can’t take the supplements that you used to be able to take to recover. So I feel like camp should be (different). If you don’t know how to play football and hit and tackle and all that other stuff when you get to this level, you don’t need to be playing in the NFL.”
