Paul Schwartz

Paul Schwartz

NFL

Giants’ Rolle: Claim what’s ours

The term “homestand’’ is part of baseball lexicon and rarely is it apropos for football, but what comes next for the Giants qualifies. They have three consecutive home games, uninterrupted by a bye. The last time that happened was 2006.

It’s the Raiders, followed by the Packers and then the Cowboys, with the Giants never budging from MetLife Stadium.

“It’s going to help us as much as we make it help,’’ Antrel Rolle said Tuesday on his weekly WFAN spot. “We have to go out there and claim what’s ours. We have to go out there and make our home-field advantage an actual home-field advantage. Where you play, does it matter? Not exactly. We have to go out there and take advantage of those three games in our stadium.’’

The Giants have backed themselves into a corner where a three-game sweep is virtually essential to plow back into the NFC East race, and history says they won’t do it.

Since 1995, NFL teams have had 145 three-game homestands without a bye, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. The home team won all three games only 27 times. The home team lost all three games 12 times. Most common was going 2-1 (56 times) and going 1-2 (50 times).

****

What gets all twisted with the despicable Dolphins fiasco — an alleged bullying situation involving Richie Incognito tormenting teammate Jonathan Martin — is whatever went down in Miami gets characterized as hazing. What Incognito is accused of doing is cruel and possibly criminal, wholly unlike what the typical rookie or young player NFL experience is like.

“Just fun stuff,’’ said Justin Pugh, the Giants 2013 first-round draft pick, on what rookies normally deal with. “You know you’re going to come in, you know you’re going to buy a dinner, you know you’re going to have to bring a helmet in off the practice field, get the bags. It’s nothing where guys are constantly just attacking one person, so I’m not feeling anything like that.

Pugh came aboard with a four-year contract worth $8.34 million and received a signing bonus of $4.4 million. He was informed he had to take the offensive line out to dinner and they presented him with a bill of $10,000, which was a prank. The meal cost Pugh $1,200.

“I know one dinner Chris [Snee] paid for it, David Diehl took us out to dinner one time,’’ Pugh said. “Everyone does put their money into it. It’s an offensive lineman bonding thing. … One time you have to eat the check and it just so happened, me being a first-round guy I picked it up. It’s something that … I don’t think ours is as extreme as other people have made it out to be.’’