Adding to all the newness of the New York Giants offseason is the fact that they notably have scores of new players and a new coaching staff, as well as a new strength and conditioning staff.
Aaron Wellman left as the Giants’ strength and conditioning coach after four seasons in March and a new staff was brought in — Craig Fitzgerald, Thomas Stallworth and Sam Coad, an Australian native, who like Wellman received his PhD from Bond University in Queensland, Australia.
Coad came to the States in 2014 as a performance manager at the University of Michigan working with Wellman. When Wellman headed to he Giants a year later, Coad headed south to the University of Oklahoma and a new job as performance manager in the football program.
Coad, like every coach and instructor in this country at the moment, is operating under the constraints of the COVID-19 lockdowns. He has yet to meet the Giants’ players in person and has had to conduct business virtually.
“It really now comes down to the individuals and trying to communicate and work with them to say ‘is there something going on here, are you struggling with something, what do you need in your situation?'” Coad told AFI.
“When you’re dealing with high-performing athletes worth millions to a club, and they’re saying they can’t do X, you’ve gotta have a plan to get them on track. The psychological side of things is more complex than what you get from a textbook.”
The Giants hope to unite the players with the coaching staff sometime this summer in the hopes the NFL can return to some semblance of normalcy.
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