Best: Giants have come a long way over last nine months
Giants head coach Brian Daboll coaches against the Jets during the third quarter of a preseason game at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., on Aug. 28. Credit: Brad Penner
So the Giants are facing the Bears again on Sunday, exactly nine months after the teams last met.
As gestation periods go for reborn franchises, it has been quite a journey thus far.
In case you do not recall the events of Jan. 2, that was the day coach Joe Judge followed a 29-3 loss at Soldier Field with an 11-minute, 2,700-word answer to a reporter’s question that did nothing to help his cause for remaining on the job.
The gist of his meandering soliloquy was that he had fixed what was a broken culture in his two seasons.
It seemed his targeted audience was ownership more than the four New York-area reporters in attendance, others on Zoom and fans far and wide.
Whatever it was, it was a doozy. Along the way, he appeared to take not-so-veiled shots at his predecessor, Pat Shurmur, as well as the Washington Football Team.
“This ain’t a team that’s having fistfights on the sidelines,” Judge said, an apparent reference to the latter. “This ain’t some clown show organization or something else. You talk about the foundation built.
“The toughest thing to change in a team, the toughest thing to change in a club, is the way people think.”
Fewer than 10 days later, Judge was gone, preceded by general manager Dave Gettleman. Joe Schoen replaced the latter, Brian Daboll the former.
The two went to work on a messy salary-cap situation, got rid of some veterans, added some draft picks, won their first two games and went about resetting the culture in their own way.
In Daboll’s case, that included showing off his dance moves after wins and sharing his love of 1990s rap music.
There are different ways to create a winning culture, of course. Coaches and players must be true to themselves — not to mention have the necessary talent.
There was nothing inherently wrong with Judge’s Belichick-ian approach. After all, it has worked reasonably well for Bill Belichick.
But Daboll has fostered a looser, happier, warmer vibe and encouraged players not to be afraid of failure — as he showed in successfully attempting a two-point conversion that beat the Titans in Week 1 rather than playing for overtime.
Self-accountability also has been a focus. After Monday night’s dud against the Cowboys, players were lining up to accept blame — including quarterback Daniel Jones, who was on the run all game because of poor protection.
When Daboll was asked on Wednesday what he has learned about himself as a head coach through three games, he offered a thoughtful, nearly 500-word answer — long, but not Judge-long.
His answer, in part, went like this:
“You try to be as consistent as you can be when you’re in this leadership role,” he said. “There’s going to be ups. There’s going to be downs. I think you try to be honest with the players and the staff. I think you build relationships — trusting relationships — because again, the foundation of any good organization, regardless of what it is, is the ability to build trust with a group. I’ve tried to do that.
“I’ve leaned on a lot of people. I’ve leaned on a lot of staff members. I’ve leaned on the players. The one thing is I don’t have all the answers. I know that, and I lean on people that I work with.”
Daboll mentioned by name several people you never have heard of, including Laura Young, director of coaching operations; Ashley Lynn, director of player engagement; Lani Lawrence, director of wellness and clinical services, and Jessie Armstead, special assistant to the GM (OK, you’ve probably heard of him), down to the people who work in the cafeteria.
“The culture in our building is what I’m most thankful for, the people that come to work every day that try to be consistent and that give everything they have to build a winning culture,” Daboll said.
The new coach knows as well as anyone that winning is what matters most in the end. Ben McAdoo and Judge both looked like keepers after their first seasons — Shurmur less so — and never made it to a third.
But nine months and one Bears rematch in, the new regime is delivering.
Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.
