Pat's Pick: Just Improve, Baby
Just improve, baby.
Wait a minute, you're probably thinking. The saying is "Just win, baby!"
It is and I'm well aware of how winning is the bottom line goal of every team at every level, regardless of the sport.
It’s why you put in hours and hours of practice. It’s why you endure the pain that comes with training yourself physically to execute different actions that may or may not be natural to the human body.
It’s why you turn down that second helping of lasagna at the dinner table, so you end up consuming fat or calories to slow you down.
But winning, at least consistently doesn’t happen overnight. A team has to want it—badly. A team also has to work for it—no short cuts allowed.
I’m sure that I’m not telling you anything you already know, but the reason why I bring all this up is that there are some who, when they look at this Giants team, will measure its growth in head coach Joe Judge’s first year by the number of wins recorded.
Given where this team is, that’s not the best way to measure just how far this team, which I’m sure I don’t have to remind you, was rebuilt literally from scratch, has come or has to go.
Here’s what Judge had to say this week when he was asked of his expectations of his team in their Week 2 contest at Chicago.
There are a lot of levels of improvement. We have to see, not only this week, but throughout the year, we have to grow as a team. We’re still working on really getting our identity and our base set as a program and as a culture. The things I want to see this week, on top of playing together as a team for 60 minutes, which I was pleased with how we did it last week, is I want to see the guys go out there and execute and not set ourselves back with mistakes.
I can pretty much guess what some of you might be thinking: “Patricia is setting us up for another Giants loss.”
That is not my intention at all—in fact, I believe the Giants can and should win this game.
My point is that it might still take some more time—heck, it might take the whole season—before this Giants franchise’s new identity at its core level is established and solidified.
There will be ups and downs, but the goal should be to become more cohesive on both sides of the ball and cut down on the mistakes that are often a staple of a new team that’s learning how to play with one another within new schemes.
If the Giants, who showed signs of being able to do that last week in a loss to the Steelers, can show more of that this week against the Bears, and then in the following weeks, we might finally have something to get excited about.
