Abdul Carter 'can't wait' to turn it up a notch at Giants camp
Giants linebacker Abdul Carter during training camp in East Rutherford, N.J., on Sunday. Credit: Ed Murray
There has been one nagging caveat to the nearly universal praise rookie linebacker Abdul Carter has received through his first week of training camp. One “yeah, but” that prevents the Giants from fully fawning over their third overall pick each time he spins around a would-be blocker, dips to get around a corner on an edge rush or blows up any of the dozen or so offensive snaps that he has devoured this summer.
It’s a tiny hedge that teammates have noted, coach Brian Daboll has reiterated several times and defensive coaches mentioned in the spring.
Of course, they mutter so as not to be heard too loudly, the pads aren’t on yet.
Well, that changes Monday.
That’s when the first fully equipped, full-contact workout of the season will be held and when the rookie phenom will have his first opportunity to truly turn this run-up to the regular season into Camp Carter.
For Carter, though, nothing changes.
“I keep my intensity the same,” he said. “The pads just [mean] we get to be more physical and play some real football now, so I can’t wait.”
Up until now, you see, the focus of the Giants’ workouts has been slanted heavily toward passing, catching and coverages. That’s the usual evolution for NFL teams in the spring and first few days of camps, based on the restrictions of the collective bargaining agreement. It has meant that the majority of the outside attention on the newest young Giants has gone to the other first-round pick, quarterback Jaxson Dart. It’s simply easier to chart his throws and analyze his opportunities because his performance of them translates pretty easily whether he is wearing shorts and a T-shirt or a suit of armor.
But Dart’s evolution is a long-term narrative. He could wind up spending the entire season on the bench watching and learning from Russell Wilson and Jameis Winston. Carter? He’s the first-round pick who actually will be playing. A lot.
When it was mentioned that Carter figures to have a significant on-field role for the Giants this season, Daboll couldn’t hold back his sarcasm.
“Ya think?” he asked.
Now it’s Carter’s turn to start showing what he is truly capable of. In all his equipment, in all his glory. And the Giants — well, at least the Giants on the defensive side — can’t wait to see it.
Some already have an idea of what they are about to witness. Tight end Theo Johnson was a teammate of Carter’s at Penn State. Then again, Johnson knew Carter only as an off-the-ball linebacker (a position Carter started dabbling in with the starting defense late last week). It wasn’t until last season with the Nittany Lions that Carter switched to mostly edge rusher. He’s taken to it like Noah Wylie to emergency room scrubs.
There have been changes off the field, too, that Johnson has noticed.
“Honestly, he’s matured a ton,” Johnson said of Carter. “I think he’s going to be a great player for us. Super-proud of what he’s done so far, and I think he’s going to be really electric for us.”
In another part of New Jersey, another former Penn State teammate, Jets second-year offensive tackle Olu Fashanu, knows what it’s like to have to go against Carter in practices.
“I would face him sparsely during my senior year because he was still an off-the-ball linebacker, but during one-on-ones, he would come down occasionally and get reps against the tackles,” Fashanu said. “It’s a different type of speed coming off the edge, you know? Someone that is almost as fast as the DB coming off the edge, and as a tackle, that’s probably like the number one concern you have before the play even starts. He has a really good change of direction. He knows how to manipulate a lineman to get him to keep on kicking outside so he can go inside . . . He’s very special.”
Carter hasn’t needed pads to stand out, and his catalog of butterfly flits — from pre-practice backflips to during-practice acrobatics — has caught the attention of just about everyone who has watched even a few snaps of practice.
On Sunday, he spent much of the practice with the starting group (linebacker Brian Burns took a day off to recover from an on-field collision on Friday) zipping around, under and past right tackle Jermaine Eluemunor. Russell Wilson led a long semi-live drive down the field that ended with a touchdown, but only because two of the plays on which Carter probably would have recorded a sack were allowed to continue.
“He’s a dominant player,” middle linebacker Bobby Okereke said. “He’s got quickness, elusiveness, power, speed. He fits the bill of a dominant first-round pass rusher.”
The eye gravitates to him the way it did when Odell Beckham Jr. practiced and clearly was the most talented athlete on the field, or when Saquon Barkley would cut, leap, stop and accelerate up and down these same fields. It’s almost impossible to look away from Carter when he is playing for fear of missing something truly spectacular.
His innate ability to improvise within the scheme makes him dangerous.
“Very, very good instincts as a football player,” Daboll said. “Some players do exactly what’s on the paper. And then you have other players that are very instinctive players . . . He’s a little bit of a see-ball, get-ball kind of guy. He’s done a nice job with what we’ve asked him to do and we’ll see how it grows.”
He handles the routine duties well, too. Linebacker Micah McFadden was impressed by the way Carter took on two blockers in a practice last week.
“He’s a talent for sure, really twitchy, and he’s physical at the same time,” McFadden said. “He took on the puller and the second guy. A lot of times in the run scheme, you’ve got to make up the math because they might have more numbers than we have. When you have a player that can do that, it helps everybody out.”
Starting Monday, he’ll be able to keep doing that.
The pads are coming on. Carter is coming out.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
