Quote (xnozx. @ May 12 2012 09:21pm)

Yea she's been a Giants reporter for a few years now... makes the interviews interesting plus she knows her stuff

Quote (asdzx2 @ May 12 2012 09:29pm)

She used to have a radio show here in Baltimore.

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Last season, just as Tom Coughlin was pleading with his players to do the same, Dave Johnson was telling Adrien Robinson to “finish.”

The Cincinnati Bearcats’ tight ends coach was impressed with Robinson’s initial contact against defenders. He just wanted to see more, those next few driving steps needed to complete the block.

On New Year’s Eve, less than a minute into the second quarter of the Liberty Bowl against Vanderbilt, Robinson finished.

He kicked out the defensive end and passed him off to a teammate and then engaged the cornerback with his right hand as the defender tried cutting inside. Robinson shoved the corner to the ground with both hands, taking out another defender like a bowling pin. He then ran stride-for-stride with running back George Winn for about 25 yards before blocking one more Vanderbilt player who tried to submarine him.

“He’s not quitting and understanding we’re going to finish every single play,” Johnson said by phone last week while recalling Robinson’s blocks on the Bearcats’ first touchdown that day. “Catching the ball and running routes, that’s fun for guys. You do that ever since you’re a little kid. But the blocking part of it is the one that takes discipline and want to.

“Once he understood what the blocks were for and the footwork and all of the different things that go along with it, that made him better.”

What the Giants see in Robinson, their fourth-round pick in last month’s NFL Draft, isn’t evident on the stat sheet, where he’s credited with only 12 catches last year and a total of 29 in his four college seasons.

By those standards, he’d be lucky to be one of the tryout players at Giants rookie camp this weekend.

What Robinson could bring to the NFL is more evident in moments such as his handling four Vanderbilt defenders, his wowing scouts at his pre-draft workouts this spring with a 4.51-second 40-yard dash and the glimpses of athletic ability the 6-4, 264-pound Robinson showed Giants coaches in four practices over the past two days.

Such moments prompted Giants general manager Jerry Reese to call Robinson “the JPP (Jason Pierre-Paul) of tight ends.”

An underutilized weapon in a Cincy offense that featured running back Isaiah Pead, he’s a bit of a project with the chance to contribute immediately at a position of need for the Giants.



“Obviously the more a guy’s done something and been asked to be a focal point in the passing game, the further he’s progressed. So I’m sure he’s starting it a little bit further back,” offensive coordinator Kevin Gilbride said. “But he looks like a big guy that can run. You just like to see a guy that has the physical potential to do some things. He looks like he has that.

“Now, how quickly he can assimilate our offense, how quickly he can recognize what defenses are doing and make the appropriate and correct adjustments, that’s a long way off.”

Robinson could surprise in that department, though. He’s already made a couple of impressive catches in practice – one on a short dart above his head he quickly located and snatched (Coughlin called that play “a plus”) and another on the final play of Friday afternoon’s practice when he made the catch with a defender on top of him, even though he broke the wrong way on his route.

Robinson made tough catches in college, too. He had a 72-yarder against Miami (Ohio) last year when he got better position than the defender and outjumped him.

“Creating mismatches against linebackers and high-pointing the ball in the red zone,” Robinson said when asked what he can provide, “because I’m taller and I can jump, so it’s to my advantage.”

Robinson also has very good hands, which he displayed yesterday by catching a ball away from his body as former Florida safety and St. Peter’s Prep grad Will Hill was bearing down on him. In fact, Robinson claimed he didn’t drop a pass last season.
Well, not quite, said Johnson.

“The one in question, we debated it for a while,” Johnson said with a laugh. “It was a low ball behind him. Kind of behind his calf and he was running away from the ball. It would’ve been a tremendous catch, but he’s made those catches.”

Robinson should get the chance to catch passes up the middle of the field, as Jeremy Shockey, Kevin Boss and Jake Ballard have done in recent years. But those players first had to show Giants tight ends coach Mike Pope they could block well enough to earn the starting job. Robinson is trying to do just that, and Pope was already tinkering with his form this past weekend by telling him to get his hips more into the initial contact.

Robinson has no problem proving himself as a blocker before getting passes thrown his way. After all, that’s what he did in college.

“It’s just part of football and being a team player,” he said.

Johnson, a former assistant at Georgia, once told future NFL tight ends Leonard Pope and Ben Watson they’d have to become better blockers to succeed in the NFL. He gave Robinson the same advice, and his pupil heeded it.

Such dedication combined with untapped athleticism is why Johnson believes Robinson has a bright future.

“Football’s a game of movement, and Adrien can move. His size and the ability to get vertical make him very attractive,” Johnson said. “His ball skills are very good. And his desire to block is developing. I don’t think he’s reached his potential in that area at all.

“So he has a lot of potential and, if he continues to work hard and carry over the things how we finished the season, he’ll be very successful.”

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Ryan Perrilloux admits it got a little “confusing” at times when the Giants kept cutting him and bringing him back onto the practice squad last season.

But Perrilloux said what kept him from being a nervous and frustrated wreck was knowing that the Giants had him in their future plans

“Sometimes it gets a little confusing but they gave me stability by letting me know that I would be back this year and that I wasn’t doing anything wrong,” Perrilloux said. “So I kept a positive attitude and tried to get better.”

The third-string quarterback was released and brought back to the practice squad so many times that it was dizzying. In fact, he was waived and then either signed to the practice squad or had his practice squad contract terminated a grand total of 22 times last season, including the initial move of waiving him from the final roster at the start of the season.

But Perrilloux showed glimpses in this weekend’s rookie camp of why the Giants kept him around. The 6-3 quarterback has a cannon arm and connected on a bomb to Rueben Randle on the first day of camp.

“The difference is I have been here a year and I understand the system,” he said. “You have to over-learn it and this year I feel more comfortable with the play calls and my reads I just feel more comfortable as a player overall.”

Comfort is not exactly something a player would likely feel after being waived or having his practice squad contract terminated a total of 11 times. But Perrilloux felt at ease knowing the Giants wanted to keep him around and had to make the transactions due to injuries. And the fact that they signed him back 11 times makes him feel wanted.

“Perrilloux, we like you a whole lot,” the quarterback said of what the Giants explained to him about all the moves. “There is nothing you are doing wrong out there but there are things going on and we have to move guys around a little bit but we definitely want you here and we definitely want you to be a Giant.”

Perrilloux admits that all the transactions did throw his rhythm off a bit and kept him from getting more valuable on-the-field work with the practice squad and extra scout team reps.

“I practiced about six weeks last year and I guess the other 12 weeks I was in and out continuing to work out and continue to grow in the film room,” he said.

Offensive lineman Selvish Capers was often the player signed to the practice squad whenever Perrilloux was let go. So it was a bit of a rare sight to see both players together in rookie camp this weekend.

“We practiced the bye week last year and leading up to the St. Louis game,” Perrilloux recalled of the times they were together in practice. “But it is definitely good to be out there with him. It has been a long time.”

Perrilloux hopes he will be around long enough this season to show the Giants what he is capable of.

“That let me know they were confident in my ability and that they knew I was going to grow into an NFL quarterback,” Perrilloux said of the Giants repeatedly bringing him back. “And they knew I was going to continue to work hard and continue to prove to everybody that I can play this position at a high level.”

Quote (ferocity18 @ May 13 2012 06:14pm)

Any of my giants fans playing Diablo 3 in 33 hours???

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Before u dismiss this because its Bleacher report he is a paid writer for them. I converse with him on Twitter about the Draft all the time he is definitively credible.

Whether U agree with the piece or not it is a compliment that JPP is good enough in his 2nd year for someone to write something like this

Quote (ferocity18 @ May 13 2012 06:14pm)

Any of my giants fans playing Diablo 3 in 33 hours???