Pat Shurmur does color coordinates for jerseys
Giants head coach Pat Shurmur walks off the field during the final day of voluntary mini-camp at Quest Diagnostics Training Center on Thursday, April 26, 2018. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
One of the first great mysteries of the Pat Shurmur era with the Giants has been solved.
When the Giants took the field for their voluntary minicamp this past week, the most striking difference was in the color of their jerseys. After decades of having offensive players in white and defensive players in blue, Shurmur switched them up. Turns out he’ll switch them up again at some point. And then again.
“We’re going to switch them up a lot,” Shurmur told Newsday. “The offense will wear the blue for a while and then the defense will wear the blue for a while. And then what we’ll do is during the season, whatever jersey we’re wearing that week will be the color that the offense practices in.”
It’s designed, he said, to get the players used to seeing colors, whether it’s a quarterback looking down the field for open blue shirts or a safety focusing in on white shirts coming out of the backfield.
“My experience with that is the shade or the color of the target moving around the field, it helps the quarterback to practice in those colors,” he said.
And during the offseason program and the preseason, the players will get a dose of both.
Practices with Lions?
Shurmur confirmed to Newsday that the Giants are in talks with the Lions to participate in joint practices in Michigan in August before the two teams meet for the second preseason game on Aug. 17.
Nothing has been finalized, but the planning of those training camp sessions is expected to ramp up now that the teams are done with the draft.
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.
