How do you purge a 40-0 loss to a division rival in the season opener at home from your psyche and system?
This is what the Giants face this week as they try to turn the humiliating blowout home loss to the Cowboys Sunday at MetLife Stadium into a speck in their rearview mirror.
“We’ve got to have a short memory,’’ receiver Sterling Shepard told The Post on Wednesday. “We can either let this affect us negatively or we can turn it into something positive. I think everybody understands that and everybody has moved on. We all believe in each other. We believe we have the talent.’’
The Giants returned to the field Wednesday for the first time since the loss to begin preparation for their Week 2 game against the Cardinals Sunday in Arizona.
The players, whose nerves are still raw from how the loss to Dallas went down, took the field after head coach Brian Daboll stood before them in his weekly team meeting and delivered specific instructions on how to handle the week.
“What I loved about [Daboll] was how he approached the team meeting,” Giants receiver Parris Campbell told The Post. “He just said, ‘We’re moving on. Let’s flip the switch and get back to work. Let’s lock in. Let’s focus. Last week, we can’t go back and change that. So, let’s move on. Because if you dwell too much on the past, it’s going to leak over into the future. We’ve got to be present in the moment, lock in, dial in and prepare for Arizona.’
“I think we’ve got a good plan, I really do. It’s going to be about us. We’ve got to do what we know we can do.”
Shepard, the longest-tenured Giant, liked what he saw at practice Wednesday.
“Everybody’s got a little edge to them,” Shepard said. “That’s what you want to see after a loss like that. I’ve seen it go both ways, and the way everybody attacked today’s practice is the way that we should. We understand that we’ve got some stuff that we have to correct and correct fast and I feel like everyone is doing that.”
Receiver Darius Slayton welcomed being back on the field Wednesday to focus on something other than the carnage that occurred last Sunday.
“Once you get to Wednesday in the NFL it’s time to hit the grass and go to work and move on to the next opponent, and that’s sometimes the most therapeutic thing for you,” Slayton said.
“It was a good day for us energy-wise,” safety and team captain Xavier McKinney said. “I thought the focus and intensity was good. We’ve got a bad taste in our mouths right now. Coming off a loss like that, you don’t ever want to feel like that again. So, we do have that intensity, that edge to us for sure.”
Cornerback Adoree’ Jackson said he “saw what you need to see after a loss like that” in practice.
“That embarrassment that we felt … let’s use that to keep getting better every day,” Jackson said.
“Last week motivated us to come out and be better,” Campbell said. “We don’t want to ever, ever put something like that out there again. You know adversity is going to hit at some point in the season. Our adversity hit at the beginning of the season, and I’m sure it’s not going to be the last time we hit adversity.”
Daboll’s even-keel, no-panic approach seems to be the perfect elixir in times like this. After Sunday night’s loss, he was calm, measured and accountable, taking blame for the loss on multiple occasions. He shows no sign of wavering.
“We believe in what we do and how we do it,” Daboll said Wednesday.
When asked if that’s a message he’s hammering home to his players this week because of the nature of the hellacious loss to avoid any of them questioning themselves or the process, Daboll said, “You don’t talk about it the day after [a bad loss] happens. You start talking about it in April, in May, in training camp.
“You’re going to go through stuff. The results were terrible, but you’ve got to move on quick in this business and get ready to play the next game. That’s the one that counts.
The Giants are on to Arizona.