GIANT NOTES
He did not actually see it, but he certainly heard about it and, given the circumstances and the parties involved, believes it did happen.
Mike Pope, the Giants’ tight ends coach, spent the three previous seasons with the Redskins, which means he was on hand for the ownership transfer from the Jack Kent Cooke family to a young communications tycoon named Daniel Snyder. Near the end of last season, the Redskins’ defense was struggling and Mike Nolan, the defensive coordinator, found himself under intense scrutiny and pressure from Snyder.
One of the harshest criticisms of Nolan was that his schemes were too basic, too vanilla. Well, the way the story goes, one day, when Nolan arrived at his office, there was a tremendous package there to greet him. It was filled with ice cream, vanilla ice cream, supposedly sent by Snyder.
Message received. Nolan was fired following the season.
“I didn’t personally see it but I think it probably was [true],” Pope said. “I guess people reach for ways to motivate, some of them probably a little unique.”
Pope recalled it was a stark change when Snyder purchased the team.
“With the Cooke family owning the team, there was a little bit of a country club atmosphere, not by design but because they had won doing that,” Pope said. “They were not active every day participants, they didn’t come and ask a lot of questions, often times you wouldn’t even see them at the games. That changed very obviously when [Snyder] became the owner.”
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Less-hyped but probably more important to the Giants than the geriatric Lomas Brown-Bruce Smith clash will be how RT Luke Petitgout does against DE Marco Coleman, who has 4.5 sacks. “When I look at the film their D-line looks great,” Giants LG Glenn Parker said. “Very disruptive in every game they’ve played this year. This will be the toughest defense we’ve faced, by far.”
The Giants have 1,191 total yards in three games. The last time they’ve gained that many in the first three games of a season was 1985 … Want to know a startling difference between Jim Fassel and Norv Turner? Fassel is 17-8-1 against the NFL East, while Turner is only 19-30-1.