A look at the center for the man under cente. Photo Courtesy of Todd Bauers Photography.

By Michael Eisen
July 31, 2016

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. – Jerry Reese is bullish on Eli Manning, Victor Cruz and Jason Pierre-Paul – and especially the 2016 Giants.

“I think we have a really good football team,” Reese said today. “We added some players, obviously, in the offseason, and we think we helped our defense a little bit more than we have been able to in the past. Actually, we had a significant amount of money to spend this time, so we were players in the free agent market. We feel like we had some quality top end players coming out of that market (including Olivier Vernon, Damon Harrison and Janoris Jenkins). Really, guys still in their prime, so we feel good about our team. Defensively, we think we will be better. Offensively, we should be able to score points, and our special teams should be solid. Our special teams unit doesn’t get a lot of credit from last year, but we had a really solid special teams unit last year.”

Reese, entering his 10th season as the Giants’ general manager, covered a lot of ground in his annual training camp news conference. Declaring himself “an optimist by nature,” Reese made it clear he is pleased with the team’s offseason personnel moves, the promotion of Ben McAdoo from offensive coordinator to head coach, and changes made to the offseason conditioning program and training camp practice structure. He doesn’t mind at all that McAdoo has said publicly that the team’s goal is to “put a fifth (Lombardi) trophy in that case.”

“Every year we have optimism going into the new season and that never changes,” Reese said. “I think people have been giving Ben a little grief for the whole Super Bowl talk, but that is everybody’s goal. What do you want the coach to say? We don’t want to win the Super Bowl? We do want to win, but we know what it takes. It starts one practice at a time, one game at a time, one play at a time, and you ramp up to that. But we are very optimistic about our football team. We think we have upgraded, we like our coaching staff, we like the direction that Ben is taking us right now and we are excited about it.”

What follows are some of the key subjects Reese discussed in his 17-minute news conference

*On Manning, who is entering his 13th season as the starting quarterback:

“Eli is a pro’s pro and we haven’t had our (annual) talk yet,” Reese said. “We talk right before the season starts. After the last preseason game, we will sit down and have a nice conversation, and I will talk to him about what I expect from him this time. But he is a self-starter. He is one of those guys who is self-motivated, and our talk is just a talk in general. I tell him how I feel about things and what we expect from him. We expect big things out of him. He is still a really good football player in this league and we are on his back. I think he is up to the challenge.”

*On whether Cruz – the wide receiver who played just six total games the last two years, none last season – must clear a hurdle before Reese is optimistic about him:

“He has to get some game snaps,” Reese said. “He has to go out there and turn it loose. In practice, you don’t turn it loose like you do in games. So I am anxious to see him get out there in the preseason and turn it loose, and I am pulling for him. Hopefully, he will be able to do that, get across that mental hurdle. I think physically he is fine, but it is a mental hurdle that you have to get past, and hopefully he will be able to go out there, pass that mental hurdle, really turn it loose and we can see some glimpses of the old Victor Cruz.

“He hasn’t played in a couple years, so we are hoping for the best and I believe he will make it, I really do. I believe he will make it and be a contributor.”

*On his expectations for Pierre-Paul, who was limited to eight games last year after badly wounding his hand in a fireworks accident:

“Jason looks like a beast out here,” Reese said. “His motor is running hot. You are talking about a guy that looks like he is on a mission. He looks like he is on a mission to me. Actually, I was talking to Coach McAdoo last night and he was like, ‘Man, I have to tone Jason down a little bit because he is going so hard out there.’ He is a man on a mission and he looks like the old JPP.

“Back in the spring during OTAs, I looked at him a couple of times and saw how he was moving and how he was running and I was like, ‘Wow. I haven’t seen that guy for a little while now.’ He just looked big and fast and explosive, and I was just happy to see that. I am happy for him, so obviously his hand situation is something that has healed with more time and he learned how to use it better and I expect him to be a load.”

*On if he has seen a more mature Odell Beckham Jr. this year:

“Odell, it is going to be his third season, so he is really kind of a veteran now on this football team, especially in the receiver room,” Reese said. “So these guys are looking up to him. The thing that he has, that players of his caliber have, is anything they say gets sensationalized more than others, probably, so obviously he has to be careful about what he says because he can say, ‘Wow, the grass is green out here,’ and you will say, ‘Wow, did you hear Odell? He said the grass is green.’ So he has to be careful about what he says, because people will make a story out of anything he says. I think he has matured in that way, but on the field he is definitely maturing and being a leader out there.”

Asked if he has talked to Beckham about this subject, Reese said, “We have had several conversations about it, yeah. He is still a very young guy.”

*On his confidence in right tackle Marshall Newhouse.

“Newhouse has played a lot of football,” Reese said. “He is a seven, eight-year guy. He has played a lot of football. He is in a battle with (second-year pro) Bobby Hart and some more guys out there. Don’t count him out. You don’t just play seven years in this league and start for the most part, so we have confidence in our offensive line. We will always try to upgrade every position as we go along, but we think we have a very competent offensive line that can get the job done.

“I look at offensive lines all around the league. I always try to look at who the offensive lines that played in the Super Bowl and I say, ‘That isn’t a big difference from the offensive line we have, or to whatever the degree that may be.’ It would be great to have five Pro Bowlers up front, but I don’t think anyone has that.”

*On what the Giants have done to reduce the number of player injuries, which led the NFL the last three seasons.

“This is just a different approach that we wanted,” Reese said. “We tried a couple of things in the past two or three years and it hasn’t worked, so we want to try a different approach and this is one of the approaches that we wanted to try. It all started with the offseason program. The new weight room, the new philosophy in the weight room, so hopefully we can get past that injury bug and be a strong, physical football team. I think Ben talked about this a little bit as well. You can’t be too soft, because then you develop a soft football team. You have to have calluses coming out. That is why the whole thing that happened today with guys getting tripped up is just part of it. You have to come out of training camp with some calluses on you and that is what training camp is about.”