Big Blue View
Giants know they have to be “ready to go” from the beginning
Week 1, 2023 — Dallas Cowboys 40, New York Giants 0.
After that embarrassment the Giants went 2-8 en route to a 6-11 season.
Week 1, 2024 — Minnesota Vikings 28, Giants 6.
The Giants won just once in their first four starts and sank as low as 2-13 en route to a 3-14 season.
Head coach Brian Daboll doesn’t need to be reminded how the last two seasons, which ended up with the team going a combined 9-25, started for the Giants.
During Wednesday’s season-opening press conference before the first practice of training camp, I reminded him of those two awful starts, anyway, and before I had finished my question he said “yeah.”
What I wanted to know from the embattled fourth-year coach is whether he would do anything noticeably different during this training camp to try and change those awful early-season results.
There is, of course, no magic formula that produces the start — and the overall results — a team wants.
“We’ve changed on a yearly basis and we think we have a process set in place with the players that we have right now to be ready to go,” Daboll said. “We’re going to have to be, but it’s the first day, as Joe [Schoen] just mentioned, we have a long 30 days or whatever it is. We play a preseason game in 15 days, I think.
“But our focus is going to be on us and the improvements that we need to make and like I said, I like the additions that we’ve added to our football team. Personalities, competitiveness of these players, some of which played in the league at a high level and the young players that we’ve added. So again, it takes time to build the team here. This is the time to do it in training camp, learn from mistakes, grow each day and continue to improve all the way up until the start of the season.”
Some of that is coach-speak gobbledygook, but Daboll clearly understands the assignment. The first four games are at the Washington Commanders, at the Dallas Cowboys, against the Kansas City Chiefs and against the Los Angeles Chargers. Three of those teams made the playoffs and the Cowboys, who went 7-10, beat Daboll’s Giants twice. Six of the Giants first eight games are against 2024 playoffs teams, including two against the defending champion Philadelphia Eagles.
Daboll addressed the importance of a fast start, and the importance of players also understanding the assignment, during mandatory minicamp last month.
“We have to hit the ground running,” Daboll said at the time. “When training camp hits, I don’t have much tolerance for mistakes during training camp. The season is getting close, so we have to be prepared mentally, and we have to be prepared physically.”
There is, of course, no magic formula. No one-size-fits-all perfect way to prepare a team for a season, or to make them...
