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| Driving Mr. Manning |
Written by Dave Diehl For playerpress.com
October 10, 2008 |
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Since I’ve been here, it’s become a custom for me to drive Eli to every home game.
It’s good to be with someone you’re close to before a game. You’re thinking about the game, but you still talk and try to relax, act normal.
But once you’re at the stadium you start getting that feeling. I still get butterflies going out there to play in front of 80,000 screaming fans. Honestly, though, you notice that stuff when you’re warming up and running out there. But once the game starts, you’re so focused you don’t really even think about it.
It’s definitely different when you play on Monday Night Football, like we will this week against the Browns in Cleveland. Everybody is all fired up, there’s all the cameras and the hoopla. You want to go out there and play your best.
Cleveland doesn’t have the kind of record they’d like to have at this point in the season, but they’re all healthy now after a bye week. They had 10 wins last year but didn’t make the playoffs even though they should have, and they’ll be as excited to play on Monday Night Football as we will. They’re also playing at home, so we know they’re going to come out hungry and fired up.
It’s just another weekly challenge in the NFL.
Dave Diehl is the starting left tackle for the Super Bowl champion New York Giants. His blog for playerpress.com runs regularly at www.davediehl66.com. |
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| A Week in My Life |
Written by Dave Diehl For playerpress.com
October 9, 2008 |
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I’m sure fans wonder what goes on with the team in between Sundays. So here are the basics of my work week during the season:
MONDAY
We go to our training facility and lift and run. We have to be done by 11:30 a.m. And the lifting and running are mandatory. We have a special teams meeting at 11:30 and then a full-team meeting at 12:15 where the coach gives out game balls for offense, defense and special teams from Sunday’s game. Everyone gets a grade sheet to tell you how you did in the game. If you got a knockdown, that’s on there.
After that we break down into offense and defense for meetings and go over all the good things we did, all the bad things we did, and as an offense we usually watch the first quarter of the game we just played.
Then we break down into position groups and watch film. After that we go outside and walk through our corrections, because you want to do that while the game is still fresh in your mind. We’re done by about 2:30 or 2:45 p.m.
Usually after practice on a Monday I will get a massage and acupuncture, sit in a cold tub, start getting my body healed up and feeling fresh after mashing all day on Sunday. The day after a game you’re sore, banged up, you just went out there the day before and for 60-plus minutes constantly smashed into people, so you do what you can to work on your body.
I think it’s important to try to have at least one night a week with my wife, and usually it’s Monday because practice is short. Our daughter, Addison, is 22 months old, and as much as we love her you still have to work on your own relationship. When you have a child there’s not all the time in the world to spend together, so Monday night we go out, either with other players and their wives or just the two of us. Eli will come with his wife, or the offensive line will all go out together, or my wife and I will just have a nice bottle of wine and go out for dinner and talk, just the two of us.
TUESDAY
This is the day off all through the NFL. I usually spend as much time as possible with my little girl, in the backyard on the playset. I’m so busy during the week, I don’t get home until about 5 o’clock and she goes to bed at 8:30. That gives me a very limited amount of time to spend with her, so Tuesday I spend as much of it with her as I can.
WEDNESDAY
We get to the facility and the offensive and defensive lines lift at 7 a.m.
At 7:45 there’s a special teams meeting with the kickoff group, kickoff returns and field goal units.
At 8:25 we have a full team meeting where we’re introduced by the coaches to the team we’re going to play on Sunday. Coach Coughlin runs this meeting, he runs down the other team’s personnel and tells us what they do well and what they don’t.
Then we break into offense and defense for meetings. As an offense we go over what fronts they run, the different packages they do. Another coach goes over their blitz packages and we install the plays for our running game and passing game.
Seattle was a 4-3 team, but this week we’re playing Cleveland and they’re a 3-4 team. A lot of the schemes are different, so they’re blocked differently. Plus, you have to show the defense something a little different every week so you don’t show all of the same tendencies.
Even though defensive players aren’t as smart as offensive players, they will still eventually catch on if you don’t change anything week-to-week. ;-)
After meetings we go out on the field and have a jog-through of what we’re going to do. Wednesdays we focus hard on first and second downs.
After the jog-through we come back in, get in our gear, put on our helmets and shoulder pads and have a full practice, about two hours or 2:15. After we come back in, hit the showers and eat lunch. We have a great big buffet line with almost anything you could want, cold cuts, chicken, steak, vegetables, lots of healthy foods.
Then there’s another special teams meeting to watch practice on film, and after that we break up into position groups again and watch more practice. It’s important to watch every aspect of practice on film because we have a scout team that runs the defense of the opposing team, stunting and blitzing like they do to give us a good look at what it will be like on Sunday.
THURSDAY
Thursday is a lot like Wednesday, except we focus on third downs. All the meetings are at the same times and we usually practice until about 4:15 p.m.
There’s no full team meeting, we go right into offense-defense meetings and go over third-down packages, called “sub-defenses” because there a lot of substitutions from the basic, or “base” defense, used just for third downs. You also have different packages for third-and-long.
There’s the jog-through, meetings, all the same except you’re always looking at third downs.
FRIDAY
Again, same times as Thursday and Wednesday, but on Friday you focus on short-yardage situations, third-and-1, third-and-2 and goal line. We focus on the “Green Area,” or from the 20-yard line and in. Most teams call it the “Red Zone.” We call it the Red Zone when we’re on defense, but the Green Area when we have the ball. That’s Coach Coughlin’s idea, because he says when our D is in there it means stop and when it’s our offense we need to go.
We don’t have any post-practice meetings on Friday, we try to get off our feet and start resting, get our bodies healed. I get massage and acupuncture again.
SATURDAY
The first thing I do is hop in the cold tub for 10 or 15 minutes to treat my soreness.
Then there’s the special teams meeting and we break down into offense-defense. We talk about how the game is getting closer, how things went in practice, and after that there are positional meetings and we watch practice from Friday.
We go out on the field for a walkthrough for an hour…we practice getting the kickoff team on the field, the kickoff return team off. Any type of situation you could come up with, we run through the script right then, third down, move the field, Green Area. Mayday, no time on the clock, rushing the field goal unit out on the field and the regular team off. We’re usually done by noon.
If it’s a home game, we stay in a hotel the night before the game. I won’t say which hotel, although it’s really not a big secret anymore because there are always like a thousand fans there. We don’t have to be anywhere until 7:30 p.m., which in Coughlin time is 7:25 p.m., for a special teams meeting.
Then we break down into offense and defense, watch the opposing defense some more, we watch tons of film. We talk about different plays, different problems we’ve had and other teams have had.
Then we relax until Sunday.
If we’re on the road, after a walkthrough at about noon we shower, get box lunches and fly out to wherever, where we have the same 7:25 p.m. meeting we would have had at home.
SUNDAY
Game day. If it’s a 1 p.m. game I’m up at 8 a.m. for a stretch, take a shower and meet the team for our pregame meal from 8:45 to 9:45. After that I go right to the stadium. I like getting there early, taking my time setting up my pads. I don’t like to be rushed before a game.
Then I plug into my iPod and turn on a playlist that I call Tunnel Vision. It’s got rock, rap, everything from Jay-Z to Led Zeppelin, The Doors to Metallica. I also listen to songs from “Last of the Mohicans” and “Gladiators” that get me pumped up.
For a 1 p.m. game we’re on the field at 12:10 for about 25-30 minutes, then come back in, meet with our offensive coordinator. There’s a team prayer and Coach Coughlin says a few words and we’re ready to go out there.
Dave Diehl is the starting left tackle for the Super Bowl champion New York Giants. His blog for playerpress.com runs regularly at www.davediehl66.com. |
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| Seahawks, Byes and the Royal Rumble |
Written by Dave Diehl For playerpress.com
October 2, 2008 |
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The NFC East is the best division in football this year, so it’s good to have a bye week to get everybody healed and recuperated, take care of all the nicks and scratches because we know every time we play a team in our division it’s going to be a royal rumble out there.
With two weeks off there’s a real learning process, the coaches breaking down plays ands schemes, going over what we did well in the first three games, what we didn’t do so well and figuring out what direction we’re going to go in. We evaluate every phase of the game, do whatever we have to do to make corrections.
This week is a great challenge for us playing against the Seahawks, they’re a great team with a great defense, they play extremely well together and do a good job of playing sound football. Their defensive line does a good job of tying up O linemen and freeing things up for the linebackers. Those linebackers fly around and make plays.
It’s exciting to play the Seahawks again because we lost to them in ’05 and ’06, and those five-hour trips on the way back with a loss leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
This time we can really do something to make up for it. We’re at home this time, so we want to get off to a fast start and do all we can to use our home-field advantage. We’ve got to play with energy, get a big play or a big hit early, get the crowd into it and let the Seahawks know they’re playing in Giants Stadium.
I’ll be going up against defensive end Lawrence Jackson, he’s a rookie, a first-round pick out of USC. He’s very young but he plays with a lot of confidence and has a lot of speed off the edge. He’s about 271 pounds and uses his long arms to his advantage, to keep the offensive tackle off him with leverage. He tries to create a short corner where he can knock down your hands, turn his shoulder and flip his hips and try to skin himself around the edge. He makes himself small so there’s not a lot of surface area to hit and uses his inside arm to cut the edge.
He doesn’t look like a rookie out there, he’s not lost. He knows what he’s doing and he has a plan, he plays very well in their schemes. As a veteran there are certain things I’m going to try to change up from last week. He’ll be watching me on film all week, so I’ll try to do little things differently to change them up and give him a different look. Part of being a veteran is that you have experience and remember things, and he doesn’t have that experience yet. It’s not a huge advantage, but I’ll try to change things up and try to confuse him.
Our goal, as an offensive line, is the same every week. We have to control the line of scrimmage so we can run the ball early, set a physical standard, go after them and play hard, play physical. Our thing is to play physical, get after them from the snap to the whistle, not allow the defense to get momentum, get hyped up. As a line that’s what we pride ourselves on. That opens up the play-action pass and allows us to take big shots downfield.
We also want to control time of possession and convert on third downs, do what we can to keep our defense fresh by keeping them off the field. Then they’re able to attack, and we understand what it means to have the defense fresh and constantly attacking. We know our defense is going to attack the QB, apply pressure and make hits.
We’ve had two weeks to prepare for this game and our coaches do a great job of preparing us and giving us a good game plan. Obviously, any team would in the NFL would rather have it later in the season, but whether your bye week is Week 4, Week 8 or 10, we’re professionals, and as a team we’re not going to complain about it and we’re going to prepare ourselves for battle each and every Sunday from here on out.
Dave Diehl is the starting left tackle for the Super Bowl champion New York Giants. His blog for playerpress.com runs regularly at www.davediehl66.com. |
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| We’re Ready |
Written by Dave Diehl For playerpress.com
September 3, 2008 |
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There’s nothing like the feeling of getting ready for a new season and for your opening game.
And we are definitely ready. We had a great camp, we worked extremely hard and a lot of guys have stepped up and filled key roles. Coming off winning the Super Bowl we still have a lot to prove this season, so we just have to go out there and play each and every game as hard as we can, give it our all, lay it on the line each week. We’ve got a target on our back this season, everybody’s gunning for us, but we’re going to be ready for every shot that’s taken at us.
Lots of people talk about a “Super Bowl hangover,” but I don’t think that’s going to happen. Once you get that feeling of holding that trophy, you just want to do it again. No one here is complacent, no one is happy. The only time you can be satisfied is when you retire. Right now every team is 0-0 with a fresh new start.
This is a Giants team that if it gets knocked down is going to get back up even stronger.
Everyone is nervous for the first game, everyone is excited, but this is a great way to start the season, at home, a Thursday night game against the Redskins. They’re a division rival, a team we play twice a year in a tradition that’s been going on since before any of us started playing for the New York Giants. It’s going to be a fun game, a physical, smashmouth game where the last man standing will win.
Once you get that first hit out of the way, you remember what it’s like and you’re ready to roll.
One of the tough things about the year after you win a Super Bowl championship is the quick turnaround. We won the Super Bowl on Feb. 3 and we started our off-season training on March 21. But this is a team with a tough mental attitude, willing to work hard to get back to that pinnacle again. It’s hard to win games in the NFL, you’re not going to win every game, so the key is when you lose, you get knocked down, you have to learn something and move forward. You can’t let a loss linger, and the good thing about this team and the character of all of these guys, there are a lot of leaders who can step up and rally the team, pull it together and get things going in the right direction.
We have lost some players, Michael Strahan to retirement and Osi Umenyiora to injury. It’s always tough losing great players like that. But I can tell you that our defensive line is in good hands with Justin Tuck and Mathias Kiwanuka. Mathias moved back to the position he was drafted at, and he’s a hard-working guy, he’s tough, and even more important, he’s a team player. He will play any position you put him at and he’s going to go out there and give it all he’s got. Knowing the type of athlete and player he is, we all believe in him.
The same goes for Tuck replacing Strahan. Justin had a great season last year, but still had people telling him he wasn’t an every-down player. So he’s going out there with a chip on his shoulder. He’s replacing a Hall of Famer and he wants to go out there and prove the critics wrong.
Seeing the way Justin and Mathias do the little things, work hard during practice, work on technique and spend time in the weight room and in meetings watching tape, I know they’re going to do a great job.
This first game is real important. This is when you set the standard of what the season is going to be like. You want to start on a high note, get yourself rolling early in the season. Plus, we’re going against a division rival, a team we’re going to see again, a team we’ll have to beat to win the division.
We started out 0-2 last year and we all know how that season turned out, but that’s not how you want to start. You want to start fast.
Dave Diehl is the starting left tackle for the Super Bowl champion New York Giants, who open their season Thursday, Sept. 4 at home against the Washington Redskins. Dave’s blog for playerpress.com runs regularly at www.davediehl66.com. |
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| Me vs. Andre Carter and Jason Taylor |
Written by Dave Diehl For playerpress.com
September 2, 2008 |
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In our opener against the Redskins on Thursday I’m going to be going head-to-head with Andre Carter, and on some downs they’ve been going with Jason Taylor. He’s been hurt, but he practiced yesterday and as far as we’re concerned he’s playing. He’s a veteran, it’s the season opener for his new team, he’ll do whatever he can to get out there and play.
Carter is a real good player, he’s a veteran who’s been a starter since his rookie year in the league and he had 11 sacks last season. He’s got real long arms that he uses to his advantage, he can leverage you with those arms and he’s real good at keeping your hands away from his body. He is capable of shedding blockers. He’s good at forcing running plays inside to the linebackers. What better way to test yourself than against a great veteran who will challenge you every play?
Everyone knows about Taylor, all the Pro Bowl seasons he’s had and his Defensive MVP award. He uses his speed, he’s real athletic. He twists his hips and turns his shoulders, uses his outside speed to beat you around the edge and spin moves to change it up. He can get your balance and weight going outside, then come underneath and cut back inside.
All the Giants offensive linemen are excited for this challenge. The way it is, either you are going to get your job done or the guy on defense is, so I go out there and scratch and claw every play, just making sure the guys I’m blocking don’t disrupt our offense.
You want to control the line of scrimmage and time of possession, and you do that by keeping out of third-and-long situations, converting third-and-shorts. More importantly, when you’re near the goal line you have to put TDs on the board.
The Redskins have a great defense; they bring a lot of pressure and can do a lot of different things. That will be a real challenge for us on the O line, because if we do a good job of picking up blitzes it gives our offense a great chance to score.
The ’Skins have a veteran middle linebacker in London Fletcher who has played a ton of football. He does a great job of lining up the entire defense, you can tell he’s a smart, savvy veteran just by watching film of him putting himself in the right positions and reading formations. That’s having knowledge of the game.
They also have Sam linebacker Marcus Washington. He likes to blitz off the edge and create mismatches with tight ends and running backs. He applies constant pressure.
The Redskins are a team sound in their defense and in their defensive schemes, they don’t have a lot of guys who make mistakes.
One big advantage we have is that our entire offensive line (Me, Kareem McKenzie, Shawn O’Hara, Chris Snee and Rich Seubert) have been together since the start of last season. It’s great to have that continuity, coming back all at the same positions allows you to do more things as a unit. Blocking-wise and scheme-wise, there’s a comfort factor in knowing the guys next to you.
There are times on the road when it’s so loud you can’t hear the snap count, you have to play non-verbally. On the road during the playoffs we were tested and we did a great job. When a line is well prepared and each guy is comfortable with the guy next to him, you can become extremely successful.
We’re excited and want to prove that we’re one of the best groups in the NFL.
The way it is with offensive linemen is you always hear about the quarterbacks and running backs, not us. But that’s okay with us, we’re just a blue-collar group of guys. When the quarterback or running back has a great day, that’s enough for us.
Dave Diehl is the starting left tackle for the Super Bowl champion New York Giants, who open their season Thursday, Sept. 4 at home against the Washington Redskins. Dave’s blog for playerpress.com runs regularly at www.davediehl66.com. |
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| We’re Still Underdogs |
Written by Dave Diehl For playerpress.com
July 29, 2008 |
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I think as a team we’ve kind of gotten used to people doubting us, and this year they’re still doubting us. With Dallas loaded and Washington and Philadelphia getting better, we’re not even favored to win our division.
We’re the defending Super Bowl champions, but as training camp gets under way we’ve got a chip on our shoulder. Plus, we know we’ve got a bull’s-eye on our back and every team is going to try to knock us out. But that’s good, as a player and competitor in this league you wouldn’t want it any other way.
We set the standard for ourselves, and we all remember what the feeling was like of holding that Super Bowl trophy up over our heads. We want to get back there. We want to establish our own tradition for the Giants, and the only way to do that is to stick together through adversity, move forward and get better as a team.
Let the people say what they’re going to say, that’s fine with us. They said the same things last year. What matters are the people in our huddle, on our sidelines and in our locker room.
Lots of guys on this team got rewarded with big new contracts, and as one of those guys I can tell you that players want to prove what they’re worth. Anyway, the only thing guaranteed on your contract is the signing bonus, so you have to go out there and earn it. No one wants to be known as a bust, have people say that now that they’ve signed a big contract they’re lazy. That’s something about the mentality of a football player, week-in and week-out you want to go out there and prove that you’re the best, you have to go out there and earn respect.
For me, I go out there every practice and work on getting better. Last year was my first at left tackle, so I know that I have room to improve and I have to work even harder than last year to be a better football player.
After Michael Strahan retired, a lot of the media said we would have trouble replacing him as a leader. Michael was a tremendous leader on this team, he had a tremendous career and was a Hall of Fame player who was vocal and talkative. But on the defensive side of the ball Antonio Pierce has always been a guy who was a leader, he’s always been vocal and in training camp so far he’s stepped up his leadership role, just like he did last year.
It’s tough losing a guy like Michael Strahan, but Antonio leads by example and guys respect that and respect him. They know what he stands for.
We’ve got a lot of guys who have played a lot of football, veterans who have done a great job rallying around each other and getting the team ready to play.
Eli is one of those guys. We believed in him from the get-go, he works tremendously hard, he’s a guy who’s never satisfied. I see him going out after practice to throw more balls, making sure he gets it right every time. We know he’ll do whatever it takes to help this team win.
It’s crazy how people talk about Eli. When things are going great, everybody says how cool and collected he is. When things go bad, everybody says he doesn’t have enough fire, no “it” factor. But he’s always the same guy, no matter what.
And whatever people say, Eli really stepped up into a leadership role. He’s not a big rah-rah guy. You can’t fake that, because these guys will know right away that it’s phony. With Eli, he’s the leader of this offense, and when he says something everybody listens because they know it comes from the heart.
To wrap it up, nobody is satisfied after winning the Super Bowl last year. We’re in the best division in football with the Cowboys, Eagles and Redskins. Each game is a rivalry game, it’s huge and the tradition goes back way before we were born. It’s always a dogfight against those teams, you throw the records away and slug it out, last man standing wins.
Those are the best games in football.
Here in training camp we know you either get better or worse, you never stay the same, so we’re working hard to get better. Last year was a great year, but nobody is satisfied.
There’s a lot of tradition when you wear a New York Giants helmet.
Dave Diehl is the starting left tackle for the Super Bowl champion New York Giants.
His blog runs regularly at playerpress.com. |
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| I’ll Miss Shockey |
Written by Dave Diehl For playerpress.com
July 28, 2008 |
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It’s always tough to lose a guy like Jeremy Shockey, he’s a tremendous player and a hard worker. He’s a guy I hung out with an awful lot since I first got here, and it’s kind of hard to deal with that he’s gone.
I wish we still had him but unfortunately these things happen, the NFL is a business and the team tries to keep the core guys together, but whether through trades or free agency guys come and go and you just have to adjust on the run.
I think it was a combination of things that caused this situation. First, unfortunately he got hurt. A football player never wants to be on the sidelines, you want to be out there contributing. Especially someone like Jeremy who has the mental attitude that he always wants to be on the field, always wants the ball in his hands. He’s a tremendous competitor and I think us winning the Super Bowl without him played a part in it. It was tough on him.
I think the media played a major role in him being disappointed after the Super Bowl. The media reported that people were saying that the Giants won without him so we’re better without him, we should trade him. All those things really upset him, and it got to the point where I think he was unhappy with the situation and just wanted to be somewhere else.
Just for the record, I never once thought we would be better off without Jeremy and I wish he were still here. There are no hard feelings among any of the players. I hope for the best for him, and I know he’s going to go to New Orleans and bring a fireball to that offense.
The media in this town can be hard to deal with. This is New York City, the media capital of the world, and Jeremy is an emotional guy and I feel like a lot of the criticism of him just built up. That’s something that as a player you try not to let happen, you try to move forward, but it’s hard sometimes.
That said, I think Kevin Boss will step up as our tight end. He works extremely hard and he stepped in last year when Jeremy was hurt and did a great job. He’s dedicated, a blue collar guy who wants to be a good player and help our football team win games, and it’s exciting to see that from a young guy. He and Jeremy are very different guys, Boss is more quiet, he just goes out there and does his work.
Kevin is really excited about his opportunity, he’s a big guy who can catch the football and I think he can learn to block like Jeremy. Most tight ends can either catch or block but not both, but with Kevin he has worked tremendously hard to improve on his blocking in the running game.
As for Jeremy in New Orleans, personally I hope for the best for him. He’s a friend and I spent a lot of time with him, so it’s weird not having him here at training camp. I feel like my relationship with him has not changed, and when I run into him I know it will be just like it was when he was here.
Dave Diehl is the starting left tackle for the Super Bowl champion New York Giants.
His blog runs regularly at playerpress.com. |
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Dave's Video
