Giants' Joe Looney on running laps: 'I loved it'
New York Giants center Joe Looney runs a lap around the field during training camp on Monday, Aug 2, 2021. Credit: Brad Penner
Joe Looney still has plenty to learn about his new team, from the playbook to the players. But the veteran offensive lineman picked up an important piece of information in his first full practice with the Giants on Monday.
It didn’t take long for his first mistake (he snapped the ball early in a drill) and his first penalty lap.
"That’s something I ain’t done since Little League," he said of trotting around the perimeter of the field while the rest of the team continued on with the workout. "But you know what? I loved it. It’s another way to hold us accountable as professionals. If you make a mistake, you’re going to have to run a lap for it. You know, I’m all about it. It holds us accountable at the end of the day."
He wasn’t alone on Monday. He and Daniel Jones ran the first lap of the day together after their botched snap. Tight end Nakia Griffen-Stewart ran one shortly after. Nick Gates went for a lap, which is usually at a jogging pace, but had to sprint at the end of it because his absence was holding up the drill; the Giants were split onto two fields at the time and Gates was the only center working with his group.
At one point the entire defense had to take a lap, coaches included, because of a sloppy substitution in a special teams drill. And by the end of practice, Looney was running a second lap.
None of this is new. Coach Joe Judge had a similar policy regarding on-field mistakes last summer in training camp.
For Looney, the 10-year NFL veteran who spent the past five seasons with the Cowboys, it was fairly novel. In fact, he thought he was being pranked as the new guy when his first miscue was met with the demand.
"I haven’t heard ‘take a lap’ since I was 10 years old," he said.
Now he knows to do everything he can in practice to make sure he doesn’t hear it again.
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.
