Tom Coughlin to Giants: See you soon

The Giants may be on vacation for the next 31 days, but Tom Coughlin made it clear to players that they are still Giants.

“The ‘NY’ never comes off,” he told his players as they departed with the close of minicamp on Thursday.

“We always talk about being smart,” Coughlin said, explaining his message. “Be responsible. Don’t let someone who has nothing invested in your future make decisions for you on who you are going to be with, where you are going, how you conduct yourself.”

The minicamp was only three days long, but an important step in building toward the 2014 season, especially with so much that is so new, from coaches to players to the offensive system.

“We had a lot of goals, a lot of things that were objectives in this camp,” Coughlin said. “The integration of new people whether it be draft choices or the free-agent veterans that we brought in. I thought the veterans did a nice job of trying to integrate everyone into a team idea and I thought we made some progress there. That was certainly one of [the goals] and then of course the offense and the offensive terminology, that type of stuff. We’ve been hard at work with that. We’ve made progress. We’re not there, but we’re making progress.”

While it makes for a short summer, Coughlin said he is embracing the idea of returning to training camp a little early due to the Giants’ participation in the Hall of Fame Game against the Buffalo Bills on Aug. 3. They could have reported as early as July 19, but Coughlin gave them an extra weekend off. They will report on July 21.

That’s still a relatively brief hiatus.

“They have one month,” Coughlin said. “It’s not like a six-week break or whatever ... Like I told the coaches, just leave everything like it is on your desk because we’ll be right back here.”