Giants rookies, first-year players report to training camp

Football season is finally here, New York Giants fans.

Today, on Tuesday, July 16, rookies report to the team’s training facility — the Quest Diagnostics Training Center — in East Rutherford, New Jersey with the veterans not due to report until July 23.

Rookies are defined as “players who have never signed an NFL Player Contract with a Club in a prior League Year.” That includes all six of this year’s draft picks and subsequent undrafted free agents plus a score of others who fit that category.

Veteran quarterbacks and “injured players” are eligible to report no earlier than five days before the other vets to get a jump on training camp.

The Giants play their first preseason game at home on Thursday, August 8 against the Detroit Lions. Before the game that week, the Giants and Lions will hold joint practice sessions together at Quest.

Only eight NFL teams currently train away from their year-round facilities as opposed to 22 in 2001. The Giants have been holding training camp at their home facility since 2013.

They last trained away from home in 2012, at SUNY Albany, where they had trained every year since 1996 with the exception of 2011, when they stayed home.

Before Albany, the Giants had held camp at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey (1988-95) and Pace University in Westchester, New York before that from 1975-87.