Janoris Jenkins Promises Improved Locker Room: 'New York Giant Football Is Back'

The New York Giants finished an abysmal 3-13 last season after making the playoffs the prior year, but defensive back Janoris Jenkins said those struggles won't happen again due to an improved locker room.

"I promise y'all that Jackrabbit says it won't happen this year what happened last year," Jenkins told reporters Tuesday. "There won't be any animosity between players, no disrespecting the coach. There will be none of that. New York Giant football is back."

Jenkins, who spent the first four seasons of his career with the St. Louis Rams, was a significant reason the Giants made the playoffs during his first year in New York as a 2016 Pro Bowler. However, he was limited to nine games in 2017 and finished with three interceptions, two of which he returned for scores.

Tension plagued the Giants, particularly the secondary. Jenkins and fellow cornerbacks Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie and Eli Apple each served one-game team suspensions, and safety Landon Collins went as far as to call Apple a "cancer."

"There's one corner that has to establish [himself] and needs to grow, and we all know who that is," Collins said of Apple on ESPN Radio, via Paul Schwartz of the New York Post. "That would be the only person I would change out of our secondary group. Besides the other two guys—DRC [Rodgers-Cromartie] and Jackrabbit [Jenkins]—I love those two guys. They play hard. They love what they do. But that first pick ... he's a cancer."

However, Collins told reporters this month of his beef with Apple: "We buried the hatchet a while ago. That's my guy. That's my brother."

The team also turned over a new leadership leaf this offseason when it hired former Minnesota Vikings offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur as its head coach.

There is a new leader for the Giants locker room as they prepare for the 2018 season, and Jenkins apparently believes that will lead to a more functional unit and better results on the field.