Giants strive to get one-percent better every day

Jul 28, 2017 - 9:56 PM EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- It's a new year in East Rutherford, N.J., home of the New York Giants, but the ultimate goal remains the same: to win a Super Bowl.

Unlike in years past, when the Giants struggled to finish at or above .500, this is a team that is coming off an 11-5 season and its first postseason berth last year since 2011, the last time they won a Super Bowl. That surprising ascension now has many NFL analysts and prognosticators very bullish on the Giants' chance of representing the NFC this winter in Minneapolis, site of Super Bowl LII.

No pressure, right?

"We don't come here just to be subpar, we come here to perform at our highest level," said defensive tackle Damon Harrison, who wore the team-issued T-shirt emblazoned with the team's mantra about getting better one percent each day.

That mantra is a reminder to the Giants that if they want to get to the big stage in February, they should take baby steps before they can run.

"One percent a day, man, get better one percent a day. That's why I wore this shirt," Harrison said. "I had on my 'Snacks' shirt but I came in here with this shirt because that's our theme for this year. We can't do anything about the end of the year. We can't get to January unless we take care of this week first."

Offensive lineman Justin Pugh, who is currently the fifth-longest tenured member of the team, experienced his first taste of the postseason last year and is looking for more.

"Going into my fifth camp, I think this is the best team we've had on paper. But, at the end of the day if you have a team on paper that's not going out there and winning games on Sunday (it's meaningless). We have to go out there and put in the work and go out there and produce," he said.

"I'm excited with the type of guys we have, the character we have in the room, the coaches that we have. I think top to bottom this is an exciting team and once you've been to the playoffs and know what it's like and get that taste and know how good those teams are. We've beaten the teams that have been in the playoffs, so I think that's where we get this confidence."

Of course, the same could probably said of the other 31 NFL teams opening training camps this week. For the Giants, though, that they strung together 11 wins and a wild-card berth despite an anemic offense that has since been upgraded, has them thinking that with a few lucky bounces and breaks along the way, they can go even further in 2017 than they did last year.

"I'm an optimistic kind of guy," said vice president and general manager Jerry Reese. "I always feel like our team, if we get some breaks to go our way, and we think that we have good coaches, we think that we have good players, we get a couple balls to bounce our way, a lot of good things can happen."

Still, Reese admitted it won't be easy. The Giants play five teams coming out of their bye weeks and have four road trips west of the Mississippi, none of which are back-to-back to deal with.

"This league is a tough league, it doesn't matter what your schedule is, it doesn't matter if you're playing on Monday, it doesn't matter if you're playing on Sunday. It doesn't matter if you're playing at 1 o'clock or 8 o'clock. You have to get out there and play, you have to be prepared to play, coaches have to get ready to play, the players have to put in the work to play and our personnel people have to give the coaches the players to play," he said.

"And you put all those things together and hope it all meshes, and that you can put a good squad out there that our fans can be proud of."



ROOKIE TO WATCH

--TE Evan Engram. The Giants are hoping that first-round pick Engram not only helps to soften the middle of the field for them, a problem in the past, but allows them to gain the competitive advantage with better matchups. Engram, who in the spring lined up for the Giants in-line, in the slot, split wide and in the backfield, is being counted on to be one of the solutions in breaking up the Cover-2 the Giants saw so often last year. To his credit, the rookie spent the entire downtime before camp working with teammate and fellow rookie, quarterback Davis Webb, to build up timing, run different pass routes and watch film in hopes of getting a jump start on slowing things down in time for the team's Sept. 10 season opener at the Cowboys.