Brian Daboll Takes Ownership of Giants Lost Season
There was no 11-minute ramble from New York Giants head coach Brian Daboll defending his body of work in his nearly two years as Giants head coach.
Instead, Daboll took full responsibility for the team's season-long problems that have seen a campaign initially filled with so much promise fall off the rails due in part to an unusual number of injuries to key players and in-game mishaps that were rare last year.
"Look, I’d say this. We should make no excuses about where we’re at. I own it. I own it," Daboll said. "So, I’ve got to do a better job all the way around, and that’s what we will work towards."
Daboll's approach, as head coach, has always been to refrain from throwing anyone specifically under the bus or getting too emotional when speaking with the media about the problems that have been on display.
But behind the closed doors at 1925 Giants Drive, the fiery and competitive Daboll, driven by a burning desire to win, is constantly seeking ways to improve how the team goes about its business to achieve the desired results that have thus far eluded them this season.
"Yeah, that’s a daily evaluation," Daboll said when asked about the processes he's frequently referred to and how he determines when a change is necessary.
"I believe in what we do, but certainly, when you don’t get the results, those can get questioned, and I completely understand that. So, look, we’ve established something last year when we got here of how we are going to approach things and how we are going to do things, and you build on that in the offseason."
Based on the results of a 2-8 season in which the Giants have been blown out in six of those eight losses, some will argue that the processes that might have worked beautifully with last year's team are no longer worth the paper they're written on.
But as far as Daboll, his staff, and the players are concerned, the only thing they can do at this point is to address the problems that pop up and work to smooth them out.
"You’re always self-evaluating, team evaluating, process evaluating on a daily basis," he said. "One season is never the same as the next; one game is never the same as the next.
"Again, I understand this is a results business. I do understand that; I’ve been in it long enough to understand that. We look at our processes on a daily basis, of what we think we need to do to help our team be as successful as we can be, and that’ll never change."
The problem is that many of the Giants' problems are not fixable, such as the injury situation. The Giants are on their third-string quarterback in Tommy DeVito, a rookie who started in the team's latest loss. And while the loss isn't solely DeVito's fault, that he had to be thrown into the lion's den before he was at a point where perhaps the game moved a little slower for him is one such decision the team was forced to make.
Then there are the struggles of the defense. Defensive coordinator Wink Martindale has largely lived and died by the blitz and a desire to play man coverage, yet with a banged up and young defensive secondary, that has yielded mixed results bordering on disastrous.
With the players being human, it's only natural to wonder if, at some point, they might start mailing it in rather than continue to pour their blood, sweat, and tears into a season going nowhere.
Daboll doesn't think that will be the case.
"(We) take a lot of pride in what you do and what we do and how we go about our business, and we’re not always going to get the results we want. So the challenging part is coming back in after that and moving on to next week," he said.
"Look, everybody’s human. Everybody wants to win and do everything they can to help achieve that goal, and I’d say we take pride in doing those things. But the results haven’t shown, so I understand it’s a production business, and we’re working extremely hard to get different results."
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