New York Giants head coach Brian Daboll is a stickler for having competition in training camp, especially among the younger, less experienced players.
Daboll doesn’t believe in handing players jobs based on their annual salary or draft position. They’ve got to earn it on the field.
“I think we try to challenge all our players,” he said last week. “We are jumping right in, it’s not like walk into the pool, we are jumping right into the deep end right now. Everybody’s got to compete it out.”
Everybody except one, it seems.
“Not left tackle,” Daboll said with a laugh on Friday.
Left tackle is currently occupied by All-Pro Andrew Thomas, who the franchise recently locked up for essentially the rest of the decade with a five-year, $117.5 million extension last week.
If you add that on top of the existing two years remaining on Thomas’ rookie contract, he’s primed to collect $136.7 million over the next seven years through the 2029 season.
Thomas’ $67 million guaranteed at signing is the most ever for an NFL offensive lineman.
Thomas played the most snaps of any Giants’ offensive player in 2022 (1,050) and Pro Football Focus ranked him their No. 4 overall offensive tackle heading into the 2023 season.
“Again, we’re trying to make it — that’s what’s training camp is for — as competitive as we can,” continued Daboll.
“Some of that is just ‘let’s see this player against this player.’ So, you can’t move everybody around so maybe you move one person one day and you don’t want to see him all the time against one particular player, so you either move a guy on defense or you move a guy on offense and then you put another guy in there to see how he matches up against a guy. Some of that’s one-on-ones but a lot of times we try to do it in team, too, so we can get a good evaluation, not just against one player. So, when we’re out there in one-on-one’s I ask the coaches to make sure they are trying to mix and match guys so we can see how they perform against each other.”
There are probably a couple other positions that also aren’t in play such as quarterback and nose tackle, but you get what Daboll is driving at here.
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