Playoffs?! Brian Daboll just focused on preparing his team for Colts
New York Giants head coach Brian Daboll, left, talks with quarterback Daniel Jones (8) during the first half of an NFL football game against the Minnesota Vikings, Saturday, Dec. 24, 2022, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr) Credit: AP/Abbie Parr
Eight times on Monday’s Zoom call with the media, Brian Daboll was asked about the playoffs, the prospect of making the playoffs, what it would mean to Giants fans if their team does indeed make the playoffs with a win over the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday.
On each occasion, Daboll deftly avoided answering the question.
In other words, he regrettably did not channel his inner Jim Mora, whose “Playoffs?!” rant remains legendary two decades later.
No, the Giants’ first-year head coach is too disciplined for that. He has the current Colts team on his radar this week, nothing else.
“I’d say the one thing that I just fall back on is, in all the years that I’ve been doing this, I think being consistent and focusing on the things you can control, which I know is a boring answer, but it’s the truth,” Daboll said. “That’s all we really can do.”
Let’s be honest: The Giants have the opportunity to do more than that on Sunday.
With a win over the Colts (4-10-1) at MetLife Stadium, the Giants (8-6-1) would earn their first playoff berth since 2016 and their second since 2011.
If they do so, the accomplishment would be remarkable. Sunday will be just the 16th game of the Daboll era, and the Giants will have gone from ruins to resuscitated.
Ben McAdoo was an offensive coordinator who wasn’t ready to be a head coach (the 2016 Giants were one-and-done, losing at Green Bay in the playoffs). Pat Shurmur couldn’t handle any degree of the pressure cooker that defines this region. Joe Judge’s my-way-or-the-highway rigidity wore out his players, who thought the practice field was for correcting mistakes, not getting punished for them.
Enter Daboll.
He had instant credibility from his work in his most recent stop as the offensive coordinator of the high-powered Buffalo Bills, who have made few big-picture mistakes of late. If you think Daniel Jones and Saquon Barkley were particularly happy about the hire, you’d be correct.
Asked Monday if he will tell his players that Sunday’s game is “a playoff game, more or less,” Daboll said no.
“I think everybody knows what you just said,” he replied. “But what we can control is, again, the same stuff we try to control each week — making sure we’re prepared, ready to go and go out there and put our best foot forward.”
In that regard, the coaching staff should have the full attention of the players this week coming off Saturday’s 27-24 loss to the Vikings in Minneapolis. It was a winnable game, and at times, the Giants were their own worst enemy.
The Giants lost on Greg Joseph’s dome-sweet-dome 61-yard field goal as time expired, but in the postgame locker room, the players were kicking themselves.
“You have two turnovers, a blocked punt . . . you can’t have those mistakes,” Daboll said. “The fumble took away three points, the interception took away at least three points — that’s minimum. And then we give the ball back to them in our territory [on the blocked punt, which set up a touchdown].”
In other words, in a week that could end with the euphoria of a playoff berth, the Giants’ coaches and players know they have plenty of corrections to make. And it won’t be nitpicking.
Said Daboll: “We’re not in it yet. I’m not going to look too far down the road, and we’re going to try to beat the Colts. And that’s where I’m at with it.”
There also is an incredibly alluring bottom line. Giants fans and players can dream again.
“We control our own destiny,” Barkley said. “Win and you’re in. At home. That’s beautiful.”
Kimberly Jones covers the Giants for Newsday, a beat she first worked in the early 2000s before joining the YES Network to cover the Yankees. She worked for the NFL Network for more than a decade and has been heard semi-regularly on WFAN.
