John Harbaugh isn’t promising a throwback camp in the old Vince Lombardi mold, but he’s not pretending the Giants’ summer will be easy, either.
When asked during mandatory minicamp how demanding this year’s training camp will be, the New York Giants coach turned the question back on the room.
“Is there a rating scale for that? Give me the rating scale.
What is the scale?” Harbaugh asked.
“Vince Lombardi being 10 and whatever, it won’t be that. It won’t be Lombardi-esque or anything like that.”
Pressed on where it might land if a Lombardi camp is a 10, Harbaugh didn’t duck the number.
“I guess it will be 8,” Harbaugh said.
That answer fits the way Harbaugh has handled the spring. The rules in the Collective Bargaining Agreement won’t allow the kind of marathon practices he experienced early in his coaching career, but he’s made it clear he plans to squeeze every usable minute out of the time he gets.
“In the old days, you used to be able to say we’re going to have a great practice no matter how long it takes. There’s a certain motivation to that,” Harbaugh said recently in an exclusive interview with Big Blue View. “I mean, you could be out there three hours, three and a half hours, and at times we were in Philadelphia with Andy Reid.
“I mean, we practiced a long time. That was Andy.
That was Mike Holmgren. That was Bill Walsh.
I mean, these are the great coaches in the NFL. Historically, they’ve had that.”
The 2011 CBA changed that landscape, and Harbaugh said the current setup still leaves room to get real work done.
”The rules are good because the time limit that they put on it is about right,” Harbaugh said. “You can definitely get it done in that amount of time.
“You’ve got to be smart about it. But you’ve got to definitely pack the minutes.
You’ve got to make the most of the time. When we’re not on the field, like what we tell the guys, is we spend probably more time in practice preparation and more time in practice recovery than any team in the league.
There’s no way another team does as much as we do. So if they do, I’d like to see their schedule.”
That approach showed up immediately in the spring. Draft picks were worked into team periods during rookie minicamp, something that had not happened under Brian Daboll. During OTAs and mandatory minicamp, first- and second-team players handled most of the reps in team drills instead of watching from the side while lower-string players did the bulk of the work.
The sessions also ran right up against the CBA limits. During minicamp, the Giants spent the maximum 2½ hours on the field for the first two days.
Harbaugh said that’s by design.
“The way the practices are organized, they’re organized to be about, if everything goes perfectly well, you’re looking at, and I’m talking about the long practices, they’re organized to be whatever, like if it’s a two-and-a-half-hour practice, they’re really about 2:10, 2:15 as far as if everything went well,” Harbaugh told Big Blue View. “So there’s a little built-in time for repeated reps, or for extending something out to get it right.
“So the idea is it takes a certain amount of time to get it right. We’re not in a hurry to get off the field. We’re in a hurry to get things right.”
That mindset tracks with the message Harbaugh has been selling since his introductory press conference, when he talked about bringing “enthusiasm unknown to mankind.” For him, the point is simple: if the work matters, then the work should be done with urgency and purpose.
“To me, it’s like if it’s worth, if we’re all going to be here, we’re doing something that we feel like is meaningful and important,” Harbaugh said. “Then, to me, that goes through eternity.
If you want to look at life that way, which is how I look at it, then let’s go, man. Let’s give it everything we got.
Let’s be over the top for that.
“We’re not trying to be too cool, too cool for school, or act like this is just another day, or this is like old hat. Nothing is old hat.
Everything is new. Everything is a new day, a new opportunity, just to be your best.
Talk to them all the time. I mean, being your best is really hard to do.
Doing your best is really hard to do. It takes a lot.
You got to really be intentional about that.”
The calendar suggests the Giants are in for a grind. Their 10 practices at The Greenbrier include four early sessions, a day off, then six straight days on the field before the team returns to East Rutherford, N.J. That six-day run is the longest stretch allowed under the CBA.
And there’s more work coming after that. The preseason allows 16 padded practices, and the expectation is the Giants will use all of them. The rules permit padded practices on three straight days, followed by a three-day break, and Harbaugh is unlikely to leave any of those opportunities sitting there.
So while the league may no longer permit the old-school camp of endless two-a-days and endless hours on the field, the Giants are still headed for a demanding summer.
West Virginia, as it turns out, won’t feel like a getaway.
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