Before free agency, some believed that the Dolphins would make a run at then-Cowboys defensive end Chris Canty.
Including Canty himself.
“He did draft me,” Canty told Sirius NFL Radio in February regarding Bill Parcells, the former Dallas coach who now runs the show in Miami. “You know, I like Bill, and I’ve always said there’s a part of me that’s always going to be a Parcells’ guy. I’ve played under Al Groh in college and then coming in as a rookie under Bill. What they instill in the brand of football that they play, it’s been with me so that would be a good fit.”
But once the spending-spree began, Canty landed with another one of Parcells’ various former teams: the Giants.
And because of Canty’s connection to Groh and Parcells, and their common use of the 3-4 defense, Canty is learning a new attack for the first time since he arrived in Charlottesville, Virginia.
“When I was drafted by Dallas, I already knew the playbook because it was the same we’d done in college,” Canty tells Ed Thompson of Scout.com. “So it kind of takes me back a few more years than that.”
In New York, Canty is moving from defensive end to defensive tackle (positions that are roughly equivalent in the 3-4 and the 4-3), but like other Giants defensive linemen from the recent past, Canty won’t be staying put.
“Right now, Coach [Mike] Waufle is giving me an opportunity to learn the defensive tackle position, getting a lot of repetitions there,” Canty told Thompson. “But he’s also let me know that I’m going to be moving around the defensive front a little bit and to prepare myself for that.”
Canty also says that Waufle is trying to coax the four-year veteran into getting the most out of his talent.
“One thing that Coach Waufle was clear about when I came to visit as a free agent -- and he constantly reminds me about it -- is to turn up the volume,” Canty said. “Basically, he felt that I was a physically-gifted player, but there would be times where I wouldn’t play hard by his standards and I wasn’t aggressive enough. So he emphasized to me to be very aggressive -- not over-aggressive -- but be very aggressive and just turn up the volume. So I’m making a concentrated effort at doing that with my effort on the field, what I do in the weight room, and what I do in the film-sessions.”
If that works, and if Osi Umenyiora gets back to 100 percent and if Justin Tuck and Mathias Kiwanuka continue to perform well, the Giants might have the same suffocating defensive line that carried the franchise to an unlikely Super Bowl win two seasons ago.