It’s time for the new Giants to drop that label. From here on out, Jason Pierre-Paul said, they’re just Giants.
“I’m pretty sure they’re fitting in well,” Pierre-Paul said Thursday of the offseason additions that were made, mostly on the defensive side. “We walk in there and I’m pretty sure they feel like family now. They’re the Giants family now. They’ll do whatever it takes, I’ll do whatever it takes… We are family and they feel a part of the family now from OTAs, so it shouldn’t be a problem.”
That includes two new players on the defensive line, tackle Damon Harrison and end Olivier Vernon. With them, JPP and Johnathan Hankins, it seems like a pretty formidable group.
But JPP wasn’t biting when asked about how good they can be.
“We don’t know,” he said. “That’s the whole part of playing football and having training camp. Coming in and recognizing how players play. There is a certain way that I play. You just have to have a feel for it. That’s something you have to feel as a football player. I do a great job of it and OV, Snacks and Hank, I mean that’s our front line right there, including me, so we are going to have chemistry together and that’s how we’re going to have to go about it.”
As for himself, Pierre-Paul is more directly optimistic. He had the offseason surgery on his mangled right hand that will allow him to play without the club that he wore on the field last season.
“The club isn’t going to be an issue or anything,” he said. “My right hand feels like my left hand.”
Pierre-Paul is one of the few players left from the Super Bowl XLVI team, and while he doesn’t like to take on a vocal leadership role, he understands that he will be looked to in the locker room.
“I’m a vet now,” he said. “I can look in the locker room and tell and see that the younger guys are looking up to me. They won’t say it, but you know. You can quite feel it. I’ll do whatever it takes.”
To get back to the playoffs, a place he and only a handful of others have been with this team.
“I think everybody’s goal is to make the playoffs this year,” he said of the four-year drought. “Everybody understands that. It’s been a minute, but I am going to do the best I can to make that possible.”
..... - Newsday