Follow the leader: Giants model themselves after tough coach Brian Daboll

Brian Daboll asks a lot from his players.

He insists they be “smart, tough, dependable,” the three words he offers up several times a week in regard to what he looks for from everyone on the roster. He does not tolerate mental errors; those who commit them often receive severe tongue lashings. He requires competitive natures that go beyond just wanting to win football games and bubble up in everything from video games to ping pong.

But as his first season as coach of the Giants nears its end, with the possibility of the playoffs as close as Sunday’s win-and-in game against the Colts in the home finale, there is one thing above all that he demands from every person on the team:

Authenticity.

“I want everybody to be themselves,” he said. “[I want] all our guys to come in here, be the best version of themselves. Come in and compete. I think we have a good group of people in our building that work extremely hard. I certainly don’t want anybody to be just like me or me to be like anybody else. I want them to be themselves.”

And yet, in that regard, they are exactly like Daboll.

Whether he has been screaming at them or hugging them, yanking them back to reality before their egos became too swollen after wins or pumping them up when those egos needed a boost after losses, there has been one constant from Daboll: His Dabollness.

The very best teams in the NFL often take on the personality of their coach, and these Giants have been doing that since they were introduced to theirs last January. It hasn’t been forced. It may not even have been conscious. But as they now stand on the verge of the postseason, they undoubtedly are his team.

“The head coach for sure affects the team with the way he carries himself, the energy he brings,” defensive lineman Justin Ellis told Newsday. “Every day when [Daboll] comes into the meeting, the mindset he brings to the meetings and the approach, I think it rubs off on everyone who is around, in the locker room and throughout the building.”

It’s been that way since the very first steps of this journey.

Left tackle Andrew Thomas said he first started to believe the Giants could be a playoff-caliber team early in the offseason.

“Just the way that we jelled, the energy that Coach Daboll brought in early, it was just a different feel around the building,” he said.

Even those who knew him already were impressed by Daboll’s ability to be unchanged by his new circumstance.

“I think Dabes has done a great job being a first-time head coach getting guys to buy in and just being themselves,” said center Jon Feliciano, who was with Daboll in Buffalo. “When guys can feel a dude being himself and it’s not fake, it’s a lot easier for teams to buy in.”

There are a number of other ways these Giants reflect their coach. Daboll had to wait nearly a quarter-century to get this shot. The players haven’t gone that long without this opportunity, but very few of them have had much NFL success before now. Certainly the ones who have been with the Giants over the past five years haven’t.

The Giants are scrappy and feisty, not always polished but not slipshod either. Just like their coach.

Many of the players they rely on, particularly as the season has progressed and the injuries have mounted, lack the pedigrees of the stars the Giants were supposed to be relying on. There are a half-dozen regular players (not necessarily starters but ones on whom the team relies) who arrived on the roster claimed off waivers or signed off the street during the season.

Daboll, who grew up raised by his grandparents in Western New York, scratching and clawing his way through life, certainly can relate to that. The coach who was run out of town after disastrous stints as a coordinator in Cleveland, Miami and Kansas City was able to use those experiences to help hone himself for this job.

“Some of my biggest growth moments for me are when I failed or when I didn’t do as well,” he said.

And they hate losing. Anyone who has seen Daboll turn into a cranberry on the sideline howling at officials or correcting on-field mistakes by players has picked that up about him even if his measured words and boringly terse answers in news conferences belie the boiling cauldron that simmers inside him.

“He’s monotone with you all?” safety Julian Love asked reporters when that more measured side of Daboll was brought to his attention. “I don’t think he’s monotone ever with us. He’s a passionate guy who is kind of a kid at heart in terms of that competitive drive and spirit he has. That’s shown I think throughout the team, especially with me. He may be one way with some people, but he shows his heart with the guys because he cares a lot about this team.”

Even during those times when he appears to be going nuclear on the sideline, though, Daboll is always in control and never takes his eyes off the ultimate aim.

“The teams I’ve been around that have been super-successful are teams that regardless of the situation — down 10, down 14 — don’t blink an eye,” Feliciano said. “There is no panic on the sideline. I think that starts with the head coach. If the head coach is losing his mind or if you can feel some sense of worry, that seeps into the team. That’s the biggest thing.”

Daboll, he said, delivers on that.

Where this team will go is anyone’s guess. Where this franchise will go is open to speculation as well.

It wasn’t long ago that another first-year coach brought the Giants to the playoffs, only to have the team and the organization crumble around him before the ensuing season was completed. But those 2016 Giants were built to be a good team without regard for the future, and they certainly never meshed with the personality of Ben McAdoo.

These Giants appear to have a solid foundation not only because Daboll is assembling players who are “smart, tough, dependable,” but because that is who he is as well.

“He puts us in a lot of good positions,” Ellis said, checking the smart and dependable box for his head coach. “You see [toughness] from him standing behind the team whatever we go through. That’s showing mental toughness. Whatever we go through, he is with us and supportive of us.”

Daboll has asked a lot from the Giants this season.

He’s given them just as much, to the benefit of them all.

By Tom Rock

tom.rock@newsday.com@TomRock_Newsday

Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.