New York Giants head coach Brian Daboll has been getting, and deflecting, questions about possible changes to his usual practice and preseason routines since training camp began a couple of weeks ago.
There is a simple reason for those questions.
68-6.
In case you have forgotten, and I wouldn’t blame you if you are a Giants fan and have tried, that is the combined score of the Giants’ Week 1 losses to the Dallas Cowboys and Minnesota Vikings over the past two seasons.
To refresh your memory, the Giants lost 40-0 to Dallas in Week 1 of the 2023 season. They lost 28-6 to the Minnesota Vikings in last season’s opener. Both of those were at MetLife Stadium.
Minnesota head coach Kevin O’Connell even threw shade at the Giants’ lack of preparation after last season’s win by the Vikings.
O’Connell said the Vikings “looked more prepared … looked better conditioned … looked better able to execute.”
Ouch!
That’s pretty damning for one head coach to highlight another team’s lack of preparedness in such a direct way.
It is actually worse than 68-6. Go back to 2022 when the Giants upset the Tennessee Titans in Week 1 and in three season openers the Giants have managed a total of three first-half points.
Thus, Daboll has been getting questions since Day 1 of training camp when I asked him about potential changes to his training camp process.
“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,” is all Daboll would say at the time. “We’re going to have to be.”
Whether those training camp processes have actually changed is debatable. There is still no live tackling in practice. There also have been no stretches of three straight padded practices, the maximum number allowed by the Collective Bargaining Agreement. The most the Giants have done is go back-to-back days in pads.
“Every year is a new year so we’ve done that every year we’ve been here,” Daboll said. “Try to make changes if we think it’s going to help us, whether it’s the medical department, practice, fields, scheme, reps, pads, no pads, seven on seven, one-on-ones, less one-on-ones.”
Now, with a preseason game coming up on Saturday the questions for Daboll have turned from training camp practice philosophy to preseason game playing time.
Daboll has historically preferred not to give starters extended playing time in the preseason, relying on padded practices and joint practice reps to get his key players ready for the season.
Will Daboll relent and play his starters more this preseason? The head coach said Monday that starters “sure could play” Saturday in Buffalo, but did not commit to a plan.
“I’ve done a lot of research in terms of teams the last few years and coaches, veteran coaches and what they’ve done and go back to when I worked for some people that had pretty good success and how we did it,” Daboll said. “I don’t think there’s one right formula. Play them, not play them.
“I think you need to do what’s best for your football team. So is it a series? Is it two series?
“Is it a half? You talk about that as a staff as we get going.”
Daboll did admit that “there’s no substitute for playing the game.”
“You have to tackle. You don’t do a whole lot,” Daboll said. “Some people do some live tackling, but it’s not much. There’s no substitute for a quarterback when he knows he can get hit. There’s no substitute for an offensive guard cleaning the pocket or being very physical in the run game, and gang tackling.
“That’s the game of football. So you try to balance that with what you think is best for the football team. You’re always going to have injury risk.”
The Giants are on the road against the Washington Commanders and Dallas Cowboys in critical NFC East games in Weeks 1 and 2, respectively. They lost two games to Washington by a combined eight points last year and two games to Dallas by a total of 11.
They follow those two games with home encounters with the Kansas City Chiefs and Los Angeles Chargers.
If they are not fully prepared to play when the season opens in Washington on Sept. 7, it isn’t hard to see the Giants beginning the season 0-4 despite the many improvements they seem to have made to their roster.
If that happens, another season will clearly already be lost. And, Daboll probably won’t get another season as head coach to see if he can develop Jaxson Dart into a quality NFL quarterback.
“We’ll sit down and do what we think is best for our football team,” Daboll said. “If that’s playing, it’s playing. If it’s not playing as much, it’s not playing as much.”
Daboll had better come up with the right answer.
If he doesn’t, it will be a long season. And could easily be followed by someone else making those decisions next year.
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