Terrell Thomas digging the new "player-friendly" defense

Giants cornerback Terrell Thomas likes what he’s hearing so far.

From the early meetings and classroom sessions that he’s been involved with under new defensive coordinator Perry Fewell, he believes the Giants’ new scheme will be “a player-friendly defense” that will “allow our true talent to be showcased.”

What does player-friendly mean?

“Not too much thinking,” Thomas said this afternoon while participating in an NFL Play 60 event in Central Park. “It’s going to be really simple. Not too many checks. Coach Spags’ and Coach Sheridan’s defense was very complex. If everything ran on key and everyone made the right checks then it was a perfect defense. But one check missed or one stunt not on or one cornerback not getting a signal messed up the whole defense. This one is going to be very easy.

“I think we’re going to be more of a single-high, cover-2 team and switch it up a little with pressing and a whole lot of other techniques,” he added. “I think it will allow more scheme into it and really just let our d line be the focus point of our defense and go from there.”

So far, most of the work has been on language and terminology, but the Giants have been getting more and more of an idea of what Fewell has in store for them.

“We’ve been going over just the basics of the defense, the terminology, the scheme, what direction we’re going to go in, the techniques we’re going to be playing,” Thomas said. “Some of the terminology is the same, some of it is different. We have to meet him half way. That’s pretty much what we’re trying to do is get the terminology going right now so that when OTAs and minicamps start and when training camp starts in August, we’ll be able to go full blast.”