Hurricane force

Confident Shockey comes on strong, but so will his career

ALBANY, N.Y. -- Before I sat down with the 2002 NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year, I heard everything. Snot-nosed kid with the media. Fight-picker with the vets. Guy who just wants to compete. Too cocky for his own rookie-season good. Too Miami; too Hurricane-ish. Great player who cares nothing about what anyone thinks of him. (Actually, that last one's a great compliment.) Then I visited the man who picked this kid in the draft last April, the man who is one of the league-leaders in perspective, and he told me how the New York Giants finalized their decision to choose Jeremy Shockey with the 14th pick of the first round last spring.

"The Tuesday before the draft," said general manager Ernie Accorsi, "we knew we wanted him, but I wanted to take one more look at him, have one more conversation with him, just to make sure. I took a private plane into the little town where he lived -- Ada, Okla. I think my plane was the only one that landed in Ada that week. He met me at the airport in his pickup truck. T-shirt, shorts, hat on backwards covering his mop of blond hair. And I think to myself, 'This is how [old Yankee scout] Tom Greenwade felt when he found Mickey Mantle.' I mean, you know a superstar when you see one. He says to me, 'You like barbeque?' He takes me to this truck stop and we eat barbeque. We talk -- about football, about his life, about a lot of things. And when I leave, I'm thinking, 'This is what God had in mind when he thought of making a pure football player.' I thought there was absolutely no way he would get down to our pick."

Hearing rumors three or four teams were hot to trade up to the 14th spot to get Shockey, the Giants moved from 15 to 14, surrendering a fourth-round pick to Tennessee to move one spot ("It was no time to get macho," Accorsi recalled), and the phenom was a Giant.

As I looked into Jeremy Shockey's eyes in the Giants' training camp weight room, I saw an eager kid, a kid who wants it so bad he can taste it, feel it, hold it. Buster Olney, the longtime New York Times' baseball beat man now covering the Giants, told me just before I went to meet Shockey that he reminded him of Larry Bird. Totally confident, and he doesn't care who knows it. That's the Shockey I saw.

He had his hat backward, the way he had it with Accorsi, and he answered questions thoughtfully, enthusiastically. He seemed smarter than a junior college transfer is supposed to be, though he doesn't mind playing the country kid with the twang. And I figured right away that he is going to be very good for the Giants. "We've needed some of that offensive tension he'll bring to us," Accorsi had said.

Shockey told me a story about the 2001 offensive huddle at Miami. This was a great offense, mind you. Two drafted tackles (Bryant McKinnie, Joaquin Gonzalez), the Denver Broncos running back of the future (Clinton Portis), a Heisman candidate at quarterback (Ken Dorsey), the Giants return man at receiver (Daryl Jones), the fullback, maybe, of the Packers' future (Najeh Davenport). And sometimes, when Shockey thought one of them wasn't giving his all, he'd point it out. Like saying to McKinnie when he was dominating but not playing his best: "You're so lazy!" Shockey didn't worry about offending anyone. All he cared about was this finely tuned machine playing like one.

"I'm so glad the Giants drafted me," he said. "We're going to be a really good offense. We're going to be a good team this year, despite what people think. We're going to get the Giants back on top."

Shockey's strength is that teams won't quite know how to play him.

He has already been covered by linebackers and safeties in three preseason games (he missed Saturday night's match against the Jets with a sprained ankle that does not appear to be a serious injury). He cleanly beat a free safety, Keith Lyle, in Atlanta nine days ago for a neat 26-yard gain on simple shake-and-go up the right seam. There's an NFL rule, kid, that says a 265-pound tight end's not supposed to beat a 208-pound free safety. Haven't you heard of this rule?

I told him that I thought once teams saw how effective he was at getting downfield -- and once they saw how much Kerry Collins relied on him to be the Giants' playmaker -- they'd start to mug him in the bump zone within five yards of the line of scrimmage. Disrupt the disruptor, sort of. Shockey smiled.

"They did that every game at Miami," he said with a chuckle. "Bring it on. They can put one, two people on me and try to beat me up. That'll just leave somebody else free to make a play. I take it as a compliment. I'm not worried about making my share of plays."

He shouldn't be. The Giants have dusted off plays they never used with Dan Campbell or Howard Cross or Pete Mitchell as their recent tight ends. Power plays. Plays that should get Shockey downfield. Though Jim Fassel keeps talking about Shockey as a downfield threat, my money's on him to troll the middle of the field and the near sidelines for the short crosses and outs, so Collins can get him the ball and he'll have room to do something with it.

I noticed Shockey, leaning forward on a weight bench, couldn't stop bouncing his right leg. All jittery, waiting for the afternoon practice to start.

"Is there a player you admired more than others growing up?" I asked.

"Walter Payton," he said without hesitating. "He played every game like it was his last. We're fortunate. Everyone in this room is. We're fortunate to be able to play this game in the NFL. I'm going to play the game with respect and play it hard, every Sunday."

Shockey's going to be an adventure. On my way down to the afternoon practice, I ran into tight ends coach Mike Pope and told him I'd spent some time with the phenom. "At the beginning of every practice," Pope said, "Shockey says to me, 'Coach, we going deep to me [on the] first play?'" After five days of practice, he asked offensive coordinator Sean Payton if he'd pleeeeeeease throw it to him deep on the first play of the Hall of Fame game.

"He's got to earn his merit badge before he starts getting treated like that," said Pope. "But, you know, he just might." Earn the badge, Pope meant.

I think he will, too. Soon. As in the opening game of the season, against San Francisco.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Peter King covers the NFL beat for the magazine and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com. Check out his Monday Morning Quarterback column every -- and you should see this coming -- Monday morning.

 

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