Giants sure can get used to this winning feeling
Head coach Brian Daboll of the New York Giants in the fourth quarter against the Chicago Bears at MetLife Stadium on Sunday, Oct. 2, 2022. Credit: Jim McIsaac
Brian Daboll tries to keep the proper perspective on any Giants achievements this season in every message he delivers.
“We just live in the moment,” he said.
It’s easy for him to do that. He came to this team from the Bills, who were not just winners but Super Bowl contenders. The key members of his staff came from Kansas City and Baltimore, also winners. Many of the new players arrived from teams that were either postseason contenders or participants in recent years.
They understand what it takes to succeed and, more importantly, what it feels like when it happens.
For the Giants who have been here a while, though, there definitely is more of an appreciation for what is happening in East Rutherford these days.
“It feels great,” wide receiver David Sills said with a huge grin when asked what winning feels like, given that the sensation had been so foreign to him throughout most of his tenure with the team. “Obviously, no matter if you just got here or been here a while, it feels good, but for a lot of the guys who have been here a while, it’s a little extra-special. It’s something we haven’t had a lot of.”
Said special teams coordinator Thomas McGaughey, “You don’t feel like there is a dark cloud over your head every time you walk in the building.”
Saquon Barkley already has said several times this season that it is “hard to win in this league.” He should know. Despite all the accolades he has received throughout his career, coming into this season, he had walked off the field a victor only nine times in four seasons. Ten if you count the time he celebrated on crutches after spraining his ankle in Tampa in 2019.
“To be 4-1 after five games is a pretty good start,” Barkley said.
It’s more than just a start, though. Four wins is the same number the Giants had all of last season. They have had four or fewer wins in three of the previous five seasons and haven’t had more than six wins in seven of the last eight.
This already is one of their most successful seasons in nearly a decade . . . and it’s a month old. Now they’ll play the Ravens on Sunday at MetLife Stadium with a chance to keep it going.
“At the end of the day, we could lose the rest of our games and we’ll be stuck where we were last year,” safety Xavier McKinney said. “You never know what can happen in this league. That’s why we do the things we do to make sure we can be 1-0 coming out of each week.”
Added Barkley: “There is a reason why we’ve been so successful early in the season, and we just have to keep working and keep pushing each other so that can continue throughout the year.”
It’s impossible to overstate the weight all of the recent losing added to the souls of those who bore it.
“It was tough losing all those games since my rookie year,” said linebacker Oshane Ximines, who has seen his career have a turnaround similar to the team’s.
Said Sills: “It’s tough to know how it feels unless you’ve really gone through it.”
Backup quarterback Tyrod Taylor has been on teams with varying degrees of success throughout his 12-year career. Walking into the Giants’ locker room when he signed as a free agent in the spring, he immediately sensed the gloom of the recent past but also saw the hope creeping through.
“Obviously, last year didn’t go the way they had planned,” he said. “Any time you get a fresh start with new coaches, new scheme, you want to rewrite the story, and this is an opportunity to do it each and every week.”
He turned to something Daboll has been preaching since the team arrived for its first workouts in April.
“You get 17 opportunities to prove that last year doesn’t matter, where you came from or where you were drafted doesn’t matter,” he said. “All that matters is that you come in and try to win the day.”
The Giants are having some winning days now.
It’s new to them, but it’s something they hope they continue to get used to.
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.
