Giants coach Brian Daboll set to get to know his players
New York Giants head coach Brian Daboll speaks during a press conference at the NFL scouting combine in Indianapolis, Tuesday, March 1, 2022. Credit: AP/Michael Conroy
The start of the Giants’ voluntary offseason program on Monday gives the coaches their initial opportunity to teach the new playbooks to the players. First, though, coach Brian Daboll wants his staff to do more learning than instructing.
“One of the things I talked to the coaches about was let’s get to know these players,” Daboll said at the league meetings this past week. “We haven’t really been around them. Let’s ask them about their families, what they like. It’s important to get to know one another.”
With only a handful of holdovers on a staff that beyond Daboll’s arrival also includes a new offensive coordinator (Mike Kafka) and defensive coordinator (Don “Wink” Martindale), X’s-and-O’s will take a back seat to the baby steps toward team bonding.
“You’re going to be in a competitive situation and you’re going to face a lot of tough times in this league,” Daboll said. “You can lean on people when you have relationships with them. You’re building trust because there’s going to be tough times. I’ve gone through them in my career quite a bit where I’ve lost, or had some really good times and you’re sharing them with the guys that you’re in the building with each day. You’re working hard to achieve a goal and fighting through some things that don’t go your way. I think that’s what brings people closer together.”
Daboll has gotten a head start on that since he was hired in January. He’s spent most of that tenure at the team facility rather than on the road scouting so he could be around for face-to-face meetings when players trickled in and out, and also so he could spend as much time as possible with the new coaching staff and new philosophies.
Those who haven’t yet been in the building to meet Daboll most likely have gotten a FaceTime call from him.
“I probably haven’t hit everybody, to be honest with you,” Daboll said. “I’ve talked to a few people just to introduce myself.”
Get to know them and let them get to know him; that’s what’s important to Daboll at this point in the offseason.
The rest of the stuff can wait.
“There’s a long time to learn football and things like that,” he said. “We’ll get to that.”
Notes & quotes: Even if there wasn’t a new general manager and head coach, Monday probably would feel like a fresh beginning for the Giants. When players and coaches gather, it will be the first time since the end of the 2019 season that the team is together at the facility without any visible COVID-19 protections or protocols . . . Quarterback Daniel Jones was in New Orleans on Saturday to watch his brother Bates play in the Final Four for Duke. Bates is a 6-8 grad student who used his fifth year of eligibility, thanks to COVID rules, to transfer from Davidson to Duke. Daniel Jones’ plans for Monday are not yet finalized, but if Duke plays in the national championship game, he has told some that he expects to be in New Jersey for the start of the Giants’ offseason program in the morning and will try to return to New Orleans for that night’s contest.
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.
