Brian Daboll delivers strong message to doubters of New York Giants’ undefeated NFL preseason run
New York Giants head coach Brian Daboll discussed the importance of the team’s execution this preseason, which led to their undefeated record.
NFL fans understand that an undefeated preseason really doesn’t mean anything for the regular season. Just because you dominate against backups doesn’t mean it will translate when the top teams have their starters on the field and they’re calling their elaborate schemes.
However, New York Giants fans aren’t discounting their undefeated preseason this year. And neither is head coach Brian Daboll, who delivered a long diatribe about execution and team energy when asked about it by the media on Friday. He was very direct in emphasizing that.
“Our focus is on, are you executing your responsibility at a high level?”
He elaborated by providing a detailed breakdown of what he’s looking for from his players. Daboll can sometimes be curt when answering questions as he tries to hide his intentions. Instead, he gave a quote that was so long that it was too verbose to include the full excerpt. This was the key portion of the message:
“Are they doing the things they need to do to help the offense, the defense, the kicking game be successful? And if you’re executing your responsibility, regardless of was it vanilla coverage or they didn’t do … Whatever it may be … Executing your responsibility is an important part of being a good football team”
Ultimately, finishing with an undefeated record doesn’t mean the Giants will outperform the national media’s low expectations. But there has been a notable difference in the energy, intensity, and intentionality of everyone on the roster. At the very least, it gives them momentum going into their gauntlet of a schedule, and Daboll acknowledged that.
“Each week, you have to be ready to go and be at your best and the challenge in games is when you do get knocked down or you’re down 10 points, how are you going to respond?”
It’s the simple things that stand out when evaluating the team’s camaraderie. From the emotion star wide receiver Malik Nabers showed when celebrating his teammates’ touchdowns to the way the team rallied around injured undrafted free agent TJ Moore, the Giants have a cohesive bond they haven’t had in the past few seasons.
“The guys were playing well. I was happy about the veterans that did not play that were into the game, that were helping the other guys, communicating on the sideline, which is the most important thing but then showing some support for those guys when they did well”
Again, it’s important to level set after the preseason and put everything in the past once the ball is kicked off in Week 1. But it does feel like there is something to latch onto for Giants fans to be excited about when everyone is counting them out.