With all the attention being directed at Shockey and his absence from the Giants' magical postseason run, many forget that others were in the same boat as the volatile TE.
Mathias Kiwanuka suffered a season ending injury when he broke his leg and was forced to watch the playoff run from a distance just like Shockey. Same injury, same feeling of alienation, but certainly a different result for this year.
Kiwanuka was in his first season as linebacker. He went through some growing pains in the early going at his new position. He was visibly out of place on some plays.
Kiwanuka was finally starting to hit his stride when fellow defensive mate Osi Umenyiora rolled over his leg in a heap and that game versus the Lions was the last time he would step foot on the field for the rest of the year.
Kiwanuka is a very talented pass rusher and combined with Strahan, Osi, and Justin Tuck, he helped form one of the most formidable pass rushes in the league.
Mathias slid back onto the defensive line on passing downs and proved to be a versatile weapon on the defensive side of the ball, but all his hard work and preparation came to a screeching halt on one play.
He says he can relate to how Shockey felt, but obviously has taken a different route for this upcoming season with his attitude. He can't wait to get back on the field and contribute to team again.
He doesn't have the bitter taste in his mouth about not being able to play side by side with his teammates during the heat of battle. He now says how much he appreciates the little things in the game thanks to his injury.
"You can start getting down on yourself and thinking, 'Oh, another practice, another this, another that,'" he said of the daily grind in the NFL. "But when it's taken away from you, when you can't go out there and practice and do it, you realize how much you love it and how much you'd give anything just to get another rep, another scout team rep."
He refuses to let what happened to him last year get him down. He can only control his future from here on out and dwelling on the past is just useless at this point.
It is also interesting to note that Derrick Ward also saw his season cut short thanks to a broken leg and he too is more focused than ever about getting back into the swing of things.
It is pretty coincidental that all three Giants players lost in season suffered broken legs and it is also not surprising to see which ones have responded maturely to such a difficult situation heading into this new season.
5 comments Last one added 11 months ago — Leave a Comment
Chris Olley 11 months ago
I'm not sure I'd say Shockey responded "immaturely" though (if that's what you're alluding to). For the most part, he did keep his mouth shut. He seemed very uneasy about returning to the Giants. I expected him to be running his mouth and creating a circus to get out of New York, but all in all he did seem to keep to himself and let things play out. I'm an Eagles fan, so I really dislike Shockey for the most part - I do think he's immature - but I think he handled this one okay, at least by his standards.
Edit Comment Cancel
gregory caldarella 11 months ago
he didn;t handle it very well actually, he had a couple of shouting matches with GM Jerry Reese during mini camp in which Shockey refused to take part in any team activities on the field now of course there are things that go on that us fans do not know about but I feel like the Giants truly wnated to keep their dynamic TE for a t least a couple more years but his attitude just made it impossible
Edit Comment Cancel
Chris Olley 11 months ago
I forgot about the shouting match. Either way, I meant that he didn't seem to drag it into the media, which is what I was expecting. Granted, I watched the whole TO fiasco unfold here, which was a media circus (remember the interview in his driveway while he was doing crunches?), so maybe the J-Shock situation wasn't much to me because I'm desensitized at this point, but I haven't heard him say a bad word about the Giants - he's stated that he wasn't comfortable there anymore and didn't want to report to what he knew would be a circus, but other than that seemed to say all the right things.
It's a shame that it turned out the way it did, because I think Kevin Boss could have learned a lot by playing under Shockey, but now he's going to be thrown right into the fire. I'm not sure that's a good situation for him.
Edit Comment Cancel
Chris Olley 11 months ago
I forgot about the shouting match. Either way, I meant that he didn't seem to drag it into the media, which is what I was expecting. Granted, I watched the whole TO fiasco unfold here, which was a media circus (remember the interview in his driveway while he was doing crunches?), so maybe the J-Shock situation wasn't much to me because I'm desensitized at this point, but I haven't heard him say a bad word about the Giants - he's stated that he wasn't comfortable there anymore and didn't want to report to what he knew would be a circus, but other than that seemed to say all the right things.
It's a shame that it turned out the way it did, because I think Kevin Boss could have learned a lot by playing under Shockey, but now he's going to be thrown right into the fire. I'm not sure that's a good situation for him.
Edit Comment Cancel
gregory caldarella 11 months ago
it was more like Shockey had more of a disliking for the front office as he believed some people in the front office fed into the way he was portrayed by the media but it is a disappointing situation all together because any1 who thinks the Giants are better w/o him just doesn't know football...we will be fine without him but Boss would have really benefited from another year or two learning from him but now he will have to learn on the fly so we will see...should be a great race again in the NFC East
Edit Comment Cancel
Leave a Comment
You must register to post a comment.