If you thought the New York Giants would do some self-reflection after putting up a penalty-filled stinker of a practice on Monday and follow it up with a more focused and intentional practice on Tuesday, I'm afraid you'd be terribly wrong.
One day after committing an astonishing 14 penalties (most of them pre-snap), Big Blue turned around and committed six more -- another five coming before the snap. It's just unacceptable. At least it was a torrential downpour the other day; you'd have a tough time convincing anyone that the 80-degree, sunny weather made conditions tough on the guys today.
This is exactly why New York hired John Harbaugh.
Harbs has built his reputation by demanding discipline and accountability from every player in the building. A messy showing at training camp isn’t exactly what anyone expected from one of the NFL’s most respected disciplinarians.
The Giants are already testing John Harbaugh’s patience
Harbs was brought in to be a change of pace... a breath of fresh air... to be the guy who finally exorcises the G-Men of their undisciplined demons. Instead, they’ve piled up 20 penalties in two days, and the sloppiness isn’t stopping there.
The pre-snap mistakes have been bad enough, but Tuesday’s practice also featured another completely avoidable lapse in judgement.
After struggling to do much of anything this summer, the 23-year-old was able to run a score in from three yards out, prompting him to celebrate by throwing the football at cornerback Greg Newsome’s head.
His extracurriculars unsurprisingly caused a scuffle, and Harbaugh threw a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct flag on the play because that kind of behavior is just silly and unnecessary.
The 63-year-old coach was asked if he spoke to Dart about his boneheaded decision, to which he replied:
"Do you think I need to say anything in that case? It's pretty clear-cut."
That's just no way for the starting quarterback to act, especially after getting dogged all afternoon while completing just 6-of-14 passes. He knows it. His coach knows it. The fans know it. But get it all out now, I guess?
The silver lining here is that at least all of this ugliness is happening during training camp and not the regular season. Giants fans have been through the wringer watching this team get penalty after penalty called against them. Years down the road, they'll have to do studies on why a large percentage of the Tri-State Area is afraid of laundry, and we'll have to tell the shrinks it's because we grew up seeing yellow.
Just last season, they finished with the fourth-most penalties (128) and penalty yards (1,075). They led the league with 54 pre-snap penalties to boot.
I'm not saying it's time to freak out, but even with Harbaugh running things, it's the same erratic and self-serving behavior that's plagued this team for years. This should be easy stuff.
Harbs was supposed to be the cure for this infuriating, team-wide disease, but right now, the habits of old are winning out. Training camp is where you want to see these mistakes getting ironed out. If this team keeps refusing to look in the mirror, all of us are going to spend another long, exhausting season trapped in the exact same yellow-tinted nightmare.
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