Brian Daboll was reigning NFL Coach of the Year when the Cowboys showed up at MetLife and administered a 40-0 opening night humiliation of his Giants.
“It was a bad game, and it’s on me,” Daboll said afterward.
It was a bad game at the beginning of a bad season, and Daboll seems to know exactly what he demands to prevent a repeat in a pivotal season on his watch.
He wants no one to bully the Giants again.
He wants the Giants to be the bullies.
Remember the Pat Riley Knicks weren’t the most talented bunch, but they managed to beat opponents with their toughness and their grit and, of course, Hall of Fame coaching.
Mark Jackson recently talked about Riley’s No Layups rule: “If we saw you giving a layup and you had an opportunity to hammer somebody, that’s a $500 fine. And we held guys to it.”
No layups on Daboll’s Giants.
On any Giant — in any of the three phases.
“I think the draft class has a bunch of tough, young players,” Daboll said Friday. “But you’re constantly reinforcing things that you’re looking for from your team from a foundational aspect. This is a tough game, and I think you have to be mentally and physically tough. I think we’ve added a lot of new pieces in our building that have helped contribute to that. Now where we go from here, we need to continue to build on that. We continue to lean on the physical aspect of our game.”
Malik Nabers: check. Tyler Nubin: check: Dru Phillips: check. Theo Johnson: check. Offensive line reinforcements: check. Brian Burns: check. Tyrone Tracy: check. Darius Muasau: check. Oh, and Daniel Jones: check.
When Daboll first arrived to replace Joe Judge, I asked him to define toughness.
“Well, mental toughness to me is doing the right thing for the team when everything’s not right for you,” Daboll said. “And physical toughness is the ability to push when you’re tired, when you’re sore … and it’s [the] ability to be aggressive when you gotta be aggressive.”
Daboll in Year 3 appears consumed by fielding the kind of team that Judge had promised at his introductory press conference: “We’re going to put a product on the field that the people of this city and region are going to be proud of because this team will represent this area.”
You couldn’t play for Bill Parcells or Tom Coughlin if you weren’t mentally and physically tough. Coughlin at his introductory Giants press conference in 2004 railed against injuries that had sabotaged the club.
“Which is a cancer, let’s face it,” he said. “It is something that has to be corrected. It is a mental thing, I believe, as much as anything else.”
Parcells for years marveled at Lawrence Taylor playing with a shoulder harness and willing a depleted Giants team over the Saints at the Superdome in 1988.
“I thought it was his finest hour from a courage standpoint,” Parcells would say.
Daboll could not stop making one tough point after another during a slew of answers at his postgame presser Thursday night.
A question about Drew Lock: “The thing I was proud of was we controlled the line of scrimmage. Ran the football, which you need to do.”
On his debut as play-caller: “I’m proud we established the line of scrimmage. We’re going to need to do that throughout the season.”
On running back Eric Gray: “But let’s start with the offensive line. Creating holes. He had some good runs in open space. … We’re going to have to continue to try to do that and establish the run game. [Be a] physical team.”
On Boogie Basham: “I thought we played physical. That’s something that we want to try to be is a physical football team in all three areas.”
On the new kickoff rule: “Again, we need to be a physical team.”
On the offseason emphasis: “Being mentally tough, being physically tough, I think you’ve got to train that. … We’re a work in progress, but we’re going to try to be physical.”
Case in point, the joint scrimmages with the Lions: “We’ve got a long way to go, but the style in which I expect us to play is a physical brand of football.”
Bully for Daboll.
Bully for the Giants.
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