Giants expect reluctant Shockey to attend camp
Mike Pope was asked how ready the Giants would be if Jeremy Shockey isn't on the team this fall. The tight ends coach chortled. "I'll have to reach into the fantasy world because I can't even imagine answering that question,"
Pope said.
Fantasy nearly became reality this spring when Shockey was being haggled over as a possible draft day trade. But now that the Saints have all but withdrawn their interest in the tight end, there seems to be little doubt that Shockey will be back with the Giants this season - smiling or otherwise.
Pope said yesterday that he expects his star pupil to be in attendance at the team's mandatory minicamp next month and when training camp begins in Albany in late July. But he acknowledged that there might need to be some smoothing over between the player and the team. It's been reported that Shockey is unhappy with his role in the Giants offense and perhaps felt unwanted when his season-ending injury coincided with the team's Super Bowl run.
"I don't think he's any different than other players,"
Pope said. "Once the team gets back together and they get involved together, those things, whatever they have been, tend to become less of a factor and they eventually disappear. You start playing together, you start winning and the upside of the game is what you're looking at, then things usually run fairly smoothly."
Pope speculated that most of Shockey's frustrations stem from being sidelined during the championship dash. He said he spoke with Shockey during the winter and before the draft and sensed that disappointment. Pope compared the feeling to being ready to marry the girl of your dreams in the wedding of your dreams and having the limo break down 50 miles from the ceremony.
"It's every player's goal to go play in that game and win the game,"
he said of the Super Bowl. "I know he was very upset about not being able to finish what we collectively started. I'm sure there was a lot of disappointment."
Pope also dismissed the idea that Shockey's absence allowed Eli Manning to flourish as "ludicrous."
"I think that's demeaning to both players, to Eli and to Jeremy, to think that one player has to be out of the picture before another player can surface,"
he said. "It wasn't the absence of anybody, it was the ascension of other players. This is not a situation where the vice president becomes president because something bad happened to the president."
Pope, who was on the Giants coaching staff from 1983-91 before returning in 2000, said inflammations such as Shockey's unhappiness are nothing new. He recalled players looking at other opportunities after the 1986 Super Bowl. But he also added that players "have their own ideas about what they want to do in today's world,"
an idea that doesn't mesh with his "old-school"
mentality. "This isn't an isolated incident,"
he said. "It's just what we deal with."
