Patience is a virtue near and dear to Giants cornerback Terrell Thomas’ heart.
The Giants have shown tremendous patience with a player that hasn’t played since the end of the 2010 season because of a pair of torn ACLs and Thomas wants fans of the team to have patience with the defense in the early weeks of the season. Injuries to Jason Pierre-Paul, Antrel Rolle and Stevie Brown have kept the unit from working together this summer and Thomas believes it may take them some time to gel as a result.
“We’re not worrying about Week 1,” Thomas said, via Ebenezer Samuel of the New York Daily News. “It’s a buildup. Our biggest goal is the Super Bowl. However we get into the playoffs, it doesn’t matter. We’ve always kicked and scratched and got in there, anyway. So we’re not worried about if we win or lose the first week.”
The long wait for the first week of the season can sometimes lead to overreactions about a loss in what is one of 16 games in a league where only one team in history has run the table from Week One through the Super Bowl. Barring a catastrophic injury to Eli Manning, the results of Week One are not likely to have an impact on the big picture for the Giants.
That said, the Giants haven’t “always kicked and scratched and got in there.” They’ve missed the playoffs in three of the last four years because they haven’t been able to master the regular season grind. It doesn’t matter how you get in, but it matters that you do get in and the ability of the Giants defense to come together is going to have a lot to do with whether or not they can pull it off this year.