Jason Pierre-Paul took a good, hard look in the mirror this week and didn’t like what he saw staring back at him.
He didn’t see the happy-go-lucky face of the Monster of the Meadowlands, the giant among Giants who was destined to strike fear into the hearts of quarterbacks around the league and arrive in Canton on roller skates. He saw a young man in the prime of his NFL life who was no longer having the fun he so often did his first two seasons in the league.
Someone who has learned the same cruel lessons of NFL life they all learn, unless your name is Lawrence Taylor: You don’t just show up in Superman’s cape and wait for the enemy to swoon at your feet.
Tune in Funday for Giants-Browns and keep your eyes on No. 90.
“I can’t just go out there thinking I’m going to get the job done because I’m Jason Pierre-Paul,” Jason Pierre-Paul said.
Especially not when you are confronted with constant double- and triple-teams.
“I’m going to go out there having fun like I had last year,” Pierre-Paul said. “I haven’t been having fun this year.”
Why not?
“Because I think people have high expectations of me and I got to live up to that,” he said. “But I haven’t been thinking like, ‘Just go out there, just run around like I used to.’
“Starting this week, I’m going to be running around. I just got to go out there and just run around like a little kid, man. Have that energy like I had last year.”
When he recorded 16 ¹/₂ sacks with 86 tackles and wrecked the game for the other team.
“I was just running to the ball no matter what,” Pierre-Paul said. “If the ball was way across the field, I just ran to the ball.”
He has 1 ¹/₂ sacks and 17 tackles this season. The most fun he has had was dunking Prince Amukamara in a cold tub.
“The sacks are going to come,” Pierre-Paul said.
They’re going to come for him and they’re going to come for Justin Tuck, who has zero sacks and is having even less fun.
“We aren’t living up to the way we expect to be around here,” Tuck said. “But it’s a young season. We’ll figure it out.”
Tuck points out that Big Blue’s aggressiveness has been compromised by injuries to the secondary as well as the premium on containing the likes of Cam Newton and Michael Vick.
“Every team is changing the way they play us,” Pierre-Paul said. “We just got to come out there and adjust to it. We just got to be patient and get after them.”
The task against the Browns is to kill the body (Trent Richardson) so the head (Brandon Weeden) dies.
“We’re going to hit him, we’re going to have to hit him,” Pierre-Paul said. “We got to stop the running game first, before we get to the passer.”
The 5-foot-9, 230-pound rookie running back thinks that might be easier said than done.
“I think that if we cover the edges and run hard, not doing all this juking and that, one move and go, I think we can have some success in the running game,” Richardson said.
“To me, he reminds me of Lynch a little bit — a bigger version of Marshawn Lynch,” defensive tackle Linval Joseph said.
“I think that if we cover the edges and run hard, not doing all this juking and that, one move and go, I think we can have some success in the running game,” Richardson said.
Richardson has accounted for 222 of the Browns’ 305 rushing yards with three TDs and is also their leading receiver.
“I think he’s a little bit more powerful than [Maurice] Jones-Drew,” Tuck said. “We’re going to have to do a good job of trying to take him out of the football game.”
The great Jim Brown has turned into a fan.
“He’s a young guy, but the way he plays ball, he plays ball like he’s definitely been here before,” Antrel Rolle said. “It starts there. It starts with shutting Richardson down.”
DT Rocky Bernard (quadriceps) did not practice yesterday. Markus Kuhn and Marvin Austin would replace him. Asked whom Richardson is similar to, Bernard said: “I wouldn’t say an Adrian Peterson, but he kinda runs that way — real strongA lot of guys don’t take him down on the first contact.”
Defensive coordinator Perry Fewell may have the solution for Pierre-Paul and his Big Blue Brethren to enjoy Funday at 1.
“Sometimes,” Fewell said, “you just have to whip somebody’s [butt] and go make a play.”