New York Giants: What Happens During 2020’s Rookie Minicamp?

New York Giants, Joe Judge
Jan 9, 2020; East Rutherford, New Jersey, USA; Introductory press conference of New York Giants new head coach Joe Judge at MetLife Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Danielle Parhizkaran-USA TODAY Sports

The New York Giants have made it past the 2020 NFL Draft, but taking the next step isn’t going to be easy. Normally, rookie minicamp would be the next event that fans have their eyes on, but the coronavirus pandemic this year has disrupted a number of things, this included. The Draft was held virtually, but doing the same thing for minicamp is significantly harder. After all, it would normally be the team’s first chance to work out their new players in a team setting.

According to the New York Post, the Giants have already had a remote program running for their veteran players – but rookies haven’t yet been involved in this.

The Giants for several weeks have engaged in a remote offseason program with their veteran players. The playbooks were shipped electronically and video conferencing is ongoing within position groups, the entire offense, defense and special teams units. At least these players know what it is like to participate in person in these programs. This is all new to the rookies.

That raises the question, of course, of how the Giants intend to get their rookies introduced to the systems they’ll soon play in. It seems that the answer is similar to what strategy has already been taken for the team’s veterans, who have already begun.

“The league has allowed us to have a version of rookie minicamp,” said head coach Joe Judge. “They have given us a couple weekends where we are going to get our guys in. We can meet with them and get them started on the process. It will be very similar to what our vets have gone through.”

The Giants will be negatively affected by their facilities shut down, but there is some silver lining – with the entire league shut down like this at the moment, all teams are going through the same problem and it doesn’t look like the Giants will lose much more valuable time with rookies than any other team would.