New York Giants head coach Brian Daboll does not want a repeat of last season when his team came out of the gate with five losses in their first six games.
After a 40-0 flattening at the hands of the Dallas Cowboys at home in front of a national audience, the Giants went out to Arizona and evened their record. But then, they lost seven of their next eight games, tanking their season.
“The most important thing is playing well and coaching well,” Daboll told reporters when asked about getting off to a better start.
“You try to make adjustments each year. We’ve talked about that every year and do what you think is right for the team. But, certainly, you have an eye on the start of the season…the biggest thing is playing well, coaching well, doing everything you can do, leaving no stone unturned to try to get off to the best start you can.”
Tell us something we don’t know.
Daboll was asked to be a bit more specific about how he plans to come out of the gate with more fire this year.
He’s already done some of that by conducting more physical and focused practices this summer in training camp but admitted teams are flying blind the first quarter of the season.
“Early on in the season, you don’t really know what other teams… You can go back and study them (other teams) all you want and get tendencies and things like that and look at preseason games,” he said.
The Giants open at home against the Minnesota Vikings on September 8. Daboll says there’s a lot of work to be done before they begin focusing on that game.
“If you start too early on a team, which we don’t do with the players, I think it can get stale,” he said.
What specifically Daboll will be concentrating on is vague. They need improvement in all phases of the game.
To the untrained eye, this Giants team has some talent among their starters but very little backing them up. The schemes and systems have to be ready to go on Day 1 for this team to compete this season.
“I’d say the defense needs to correct some things, the offense, the special teams. We’ll compete against one another. We’ll also do some carded things on plays we think or situations that we think each side needs,” Daboll said. “But the young coaches and the coaches that break down the opponents that we’re facing early in the year, you do some of that work in the offseason against the teams you’re playing early on in the year. At least we do. So you can get a baseline.”
The Giants already made 12 roster decisions on Sunday — 10 cuts combined with two others waived/injured. They need to make 25 more by the 4:00 p.m. EDT deadline on Tuesday afternoon.
Daboll said last week they will have all decisions made by the time the team hits the practice field at 1:45 p.m. EDT on Tuesday.
