Giants DL coach Sean Spencer so amped up, he can be at loss for words
Dexter Lawrence at Giants training camp on Aug. 14, 2020. Credit: Giants.com/Matthew Swensen
It’s hard to find anyone more excited to be at Giants training camp than defensive line coach Sean Spencer. Whether it is racing his players to the quarterback in the middle of drills or hollering his enthusiasm while they bang away on teammates, Spencer gives every rep of every practice his all.
“When I leave the practice field, I have to be completely sweaty or I didn’t do a good job,” he said.
That kind of energy does come with some perils. Second-year defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence said on Tuesday that there are times when Spencer is so worked up that he becomes almost unintelligible.
“Sometimes I don’t know what he’s saying,” Lawrence said, imitating Spencer’s instructions as something of a cross between a yapping sea lion and Charlie Brown’s teacher. “We had a little language barrier at first, but it’s all good. I enjoy him a lot.”
Spencer’s excitability shouldn’t come as a surprise to the players. During his career at Penn State he was known as “Coach Chaos” and head coach James Franklin once described him as “a psychopath in a positive way.” Still, after the team’s first practice on the field last week, Spencer felt the need to brace the players that things are only going to crazier and crazier.
“I told them that wasn’t a one-time thing and that it’s going to be like that every day,” Spencer said. “I wanted them to understand this is not something I’m just going to do on occasion, this is how they are going to get coached. That’s kind of all I was letting them know, that it wasn’t going to be a day off. I want them to match my energy every day.”
Even if they can’t quite understand every word he says.
NOTES & QUOTES: Lawrence, who is known for his immense size, also said he spent the offseason working on slimming down a bit. “I got a personal trainer, we focused on eating, portion control, I got a chef,” Lawrence said on Tuesday. “I didn’t really like my build last year. This year I tried to focus on losing a little bit of weight just so I can be better on the field. I’m out there running a lot better than I did last year.” Lawrence, listed at 342 pounds, wouldn’t divulge the exact numbers of his diminished dimensions, but he did say that he believes it will help him and his conditioning during the season. “They needed me in the fourth quarter,” he said, “and it’s for me to have a little more wind and feel better going into the fourth quarter or overtime” . . . Corey Ballentine injured his right shoulder during a one-on-one live tackling drill when he collided with ball-carrier Austin Mack . . . QB Colt McCoy was a late arrival at practice.
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.
