They are the newest members of the Giants, sort of.
Sure, they have been chosen for the team, but are not yet allowed to be part of the team. The confounding NFL lockout means many different things to the various characters in this tedious drama. For the rookies, it means limbo. Eight fresh-faced draft picks were selected last month, summarily greeted and then cast away. Hello. Welcome. Goodbye for now. We will be in touch but we don’t know when.
“I feel like I’m on call, like I have a job but I’m on call,” Tyler Sash, a safety from Iowa selected in the sixth round, told The Post.
James Brewer, an offensive tackle from Indiana taken in the fourth round, answered a question with a question when asked what life has been like since April 29 — the day he was drafted: “Being an unemployed professional athlete?”
Yes, these are strange times around the NFL and especially with the 2011 draft class.
At least the first-round pick, cornerback Prince Amukamara, was able to get a small taste of the NFL. He was in Manhattan for the draft and during the brief lockout hiatus was able to make an appearance at the Giants Timex Performance Center facility, get a look around and actually meet his new employers in person.
None of the other seven Giants picks was as fortunate, as the lockout quickly was put back in place and the no-contact rule was back on. Brewer on draft day received a brief call from general manager Jerry Reese and a few-minute follow-up with offensive line coach Pat Flaherty. Since then, he hasn’t heard from anyone associated with the Giants.
How counter-intuitive is all this? Brewer — a starter at Indiana at right tackle — said he “saw an article” in which Reese “was kind of hinting at me possibly playing left tackle,” alluding to comments Reese made immediately after the draft. “So I’ve been doing drills and position work mainly at left tackle,” Brewer said.
Good thing Reese didn’t joke about the 323-pound Brewer playing running back.
In a normal year, none of the Giants draft picks would be signed this early in the offseason but they would have been paid for attending the rookie camp, which was scheduled for May 13-15 before the lockout wiped it out. Rookies also are paid for attending the organized team activity practices, which for now also are on hold.
Brewer graduated in December; in a non-lockout year he would be getting his work done in New Jersey, participating in the “voluntary” (yeah, right) conditioning program at the Giants facility, under the watchful eyes of the Giants training staff. He already would have been immersed in the playbook, watching tapes of how the Giants offensive line operates, getting acclimated to the techniques Flaherty teaches, getting to know his new teammates and learning how the veteran lineman go about their business.
Instead, Brewer works out in Bloomington, Ind., his NFL acclimation seriously delayed.
“With the lockout the main thing that kind of hurts, it’s not necessarily the physical part, working out, staying in shape, because you can do that wherever,” Brewer said. “For me the hardest thing is not being able to get the playbook. Every day that goes by is a day that I was going to learn the plays and another day for me to understand them. If this goes on for another month, then do I report to camp without having seen a play?”
Sash is living back home in Oskaloosa, Iowa, working out down the street at William Penn University.
“It’s been a little weird not being able to contact your
coaches,” Sash said, “because I’m usually a pretty vocal person with my coaches, I like to know what’s going on. It’s been different.”
You do what you can when you’re locked out. Sash got his hands on some TV replays of Giants games and has tried to glean what he can from them.
“Just to see some of the personnel and the things they do, it’s better than nothing,” he said. “You can see guys in certain positions but sometimes you don’t know why they’re doing things. That’s where the film study or the playbook would come in handy.”
Brewer said he’s “seen David Diehl on TV” and shares the same agent (Jared Fox) as second-year guard Mitch Petrus. That’s not much to lean on as far as familiarity with the Giants offensive line.
“Got to get that chemistry
started, get a feel of how things work,” Brewer said. “I don’t want to come in and step on anybody’s toes. I know it’s different being a pro athlete than being a college athlete.”
Eli Manning’s low-key (and not very well attended) passing camp at Hoboken High School won’t suffice if late June turns to early July and there’s no lockout movement. If one of the veterans calls and says to come to Jersey for workouts, Brewer said he’s on the next flight out. Sash is on board as well.
“I would definitely embrace it,” Sash said. “I’m really not at liberty to call, being just a rookie. It’s going to be where somebody is going to give me a phone call or I’m going to see it on the news, it will be, ‘All right, it’s time to go to work,’ and I’ll be excited for that time.”
paul.schwartz@nypost.com