The biggest thing to me, when I watched Givens in camp, he looks defeated. There were times when they would rotate guys in, and Coach Sherman would yell at him to get in there, or they would call out a personnel grouping, and he just didn't seem interested in joining the fray. Or he would look around like "are you talking to me?" before getting his helmet and going into the huddle.
There were a couple of days, about the second week of camp, where he actually looked like he wanted to be there, and had a few really good practices. But then, he would end up back taking reps with the 3's, and he just didn't look thrilled. For all the heat Pead takes on here for his attitude, what I watched from Givens is far worse.
Then, if you just want to talk about the football aspect, he doesn't show the desire to fight for contested balls. His route tree is limited to about 4 routes. (none of which consist of going over the middle), and he hasn't run by anyone. His targets have been few and far between. Last year at this time, he was "the guy" being targeted I'd say 3 out of 5 passes thrown. This year, it's barely 1 out of 5.
And for all the talk about him coming out early for practice to get the extra "work", it is very non-descript, and mostly walk thru stuff. But I never see him working on the jugs machine, before OR after practice. But yet, Quick, Cook, Harkey, Moe, Reynolds are fixtures EVERY DAY on that machine.
But, from what I hear, he didn't do himself any favors by publicly admitted he didn't work as hard as he needed to coming off his rookie year. It didn't sit well with the powers that be. I know he was trying to say he had "rededicated" himself for this year, but it was not necessarily received that way.
And like I said, this isn't new. This has gone back to the OTA's and carried over to training camp. That being said, I still don't think he will be cut.