Where have you gone, Jeremy Shockey?
The Jets and Giants got together for their first joint practice in 17 years on Thursday and it was uneventful. There were no punches thrown, no face masks grabbed, not even a little pushing and shoving.
“I know you guys all came looking for a fight,” Jets head coach Robert Saleh said jokingly to the media following the end of the 90-minute practice in East Rutherford, N.J.
Both Saleh and Giants head coach Brian Daboll stressed to their teams that they needed to show respect for the other team and not let this devolve into a brawl, the way some joint practices have around the league this summer. Before the team periods started, the coaches gathered both teams together and gave them the message again.
“It was just a lot of respect for those guys,” Saleh said. “Treat each other like you do your own teammates. Compete snap to whistle, nothing cheap. We don’t need any fighting or anything. … I have a lot of respect for Daboll and we want to make a habit out of this, not just because we’re playing each other in the preseason. We’d like to break up camp. We’re too close for it not to work. If we as a team can make it work, then we can both help each other a lot.”
Saleh and Daboll both said they would like to make this an annual thing. The Jets and Giants last took part in a joint practice in 2005, when the Jets were coached by Herm Edwards and the Giants by Tom Coughlin. That practice, in Albany, ended with a series of fights, including one including Shockey, then the Giants’ tight end.
After that day, the Jets and Giants stayed away from practicing together. It has usually been more of a rivalry on the ownership level, with the teams sharing buildings at the Meadowlands since 1984. It occasionally has bubbled up between the teams, such as in 2011 when Rex Ryan talked trash before the Jets’ Christmas Eve loss to the Giants. That was a Jets home game, and Giants players tore down curtains that covered their championship murals in the MetLife Stadium tunnel.
Saleh and Daboll made it clear Thursday that they were not interested in playing up the rivalry.
“It’s good to have a team right here across the way to compete against,” said Daboll, who was once a Jets assistant coach. “But again, you got to do things the right way, I think. Show respect for each other, work hard together to improve and play football.
“Not interested in going to see a UFC or boxing matches or anything like that, although I love both of those,” he added with a laugh “Just good, competitive football.”
For the Jets, the most valuable part of the experience was their offense facing the defense of Giants coordinator Wink Martindale. The Jets’ offense has faced Saleh’s defense for most of the summer and Martindale’s defense features many more looks and blitzes.
“We weren’t game-planning anything. It was more just run our stuff,” Saleh said. “We’re not game-planning the Giants. We’re still in camp mode. For the most part, I thought they did a good job. They’ve got an exotic pressure system. It wasn’t really much about protection as much as it was the route running, just the precision of what we’re trying to get done.”
Jets quarterback Joe Flacco had some good moments and some shaky ones against the Giants’ defense. He threw two touchdown passes and was intercepted once in the red zone.
“It’s good because it puts you in a little bit of a different mindset,” Flacco said of facing a different defense. “It teaches you, you know, to just go play football. Like today, they like to walk up and walk around a lot and you have to ID everybody. If they get you to slow down a little bit and start thinking and not playing football, then they have a little victory right there. You just learn a little bit about yourself and how to attack that kind of stuff. It’s a good reminder that we’re just playing football. We don’t have to be rocket scientists out there and be perfect with everything.”
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