Coach and quarterback on how the Giants upended the Packers and claimed their spot as the NFL’s biggest early-season surprise.
Daniel Jones had every reason not to trust the Giants’ new regime.
As Jones entered his fourth NFL season, Brian Daboll would be his third coach, bringing with him Mike Kafka, Jones’s fourth offensive coordinator. Joe Schoen would be his second GM, replacing the one who had spent the sixth pick of the 2019 draft on him. In May, collectively, Schoen and Daboll made the decision to decline the fifth-year option on Jones’s rookie contract, effectively setting him free after this year.
If Jones was put off by all that, it would be understandable. Instead, he and Daboll did something novel in the aftermath of that decision. They acted like adults. They built a relationship and they got ready to work together.
“It was just like I’d build a relationship with anybody—get to know them, get to know about their family, get to know about the person,” Daboll said over his cell as he departed Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in North London on Sunday, headed for Heathrow Airport. “Really, just … I mean, it was nothing earth-shattering—just try to get to know him and let him get to know me.”
Little did either know that the result, no more than five months later, would be Daboll fist-pumping his way off a turf field in England, shouting at no one in particular after his Giants moved to 4–1, keyed by Jones’s gutsy effort in a come-from-behind win over Aaron Rodgers and the Packers. Those are the same Packers, by the way, that finished nine, seven and nine games ahead of New York in the NFC over Jones’s first three years.
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There they were, coach and quarterback, together leading the Giants back from a 14-point deficit in the second quarter and a 10-point deficit at the half to score a win that validated everything that had happened over the first month of the season.
“I’ve really enjoyed working with Dabes—I think we have a great relationship, and I’ve learned a ton from him,” Jones says. “Obviously, it’s been great learning his system and just how he sees football, how he sees offense and what it takes to win and be successful in this league. And yeah, the contractual stuff, it is what it is, but I think focusing on the field, on what we gotta do every week to win games, that’s where my head’s been at. I think that’s where his is. And I’ve really enjoyed working with him.”
Whether this will last past this year is anyone’s guess. For now, it’s working for Daboll and Jones. Just like so many other things seem to be working in Daboll’s first year in New York.
Welcome to Week 5’s MMQB. As usual, we’ve got a lot to cover. Among those things …
• In Three Deep, we’ll get a look at Taysom Hill’s role crystallizing in New Orleans. We’ll also dive into the spot Russell Wilson and the Broncos are in, and Brandon Staley’s fourth-down decision-making.
• In Ten Takeaways, we’ll bring you more on the white-hot Cowboys and Jets, and how the Patriots offense rallied around a fourth-round rookie QB, among other notes.
• Six From Saturday will ID a big-time draft prospect making sure NFL folks know his name.
But we’re starting with New York, where the metropolitan area’s two NFL teams are above .500 simultaneously for the first time in almost seven years (Week 9 of the 2015 season was the last time).
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Maybe the most interesting part of the turnaround Daboll and Schoen have engineered is, well, how unsurprised their players seem by it. Remember, these are the same guys who won a total of 14 games over the last three years, and who’ve been part of teams that have won 25 games over the last six years. Only one player, receiver Sterling Shepard, remains from the franchise’s last playoff team.
The void Daboll entered into was vast. And yet, within a few weeks, the Giants seem to have found a knack for performing, and winning, when it matters most.
“I don’t know if there was one specific moment or anything that happened,” Jones says. “I think winning some of the games early on in the season, some of those tight games, where they weren’t all perfect and it came down to a possession at the end of the game, we found a way to get it done. I think that felt good for us. We hadn’t done as well with that in the past, so I think we realized it at that point and we continued to build confidence since.”
There was the shovel pass to Saquon Barkley for the two-point conversion to beat the Titans in the season opener. There was the 56-yard field goal from Graham Gano to take the lead on Carolina in Week 2 and the 11-yard scramble from Jones minutes later to close out the Panthers. And there was the ugly win over the Bears, mixed in with a tough Monday-night loss to the Cowboys.
The overarching theme through all that, for everyone involved, was a team exonerated from its recent history, learning how to win and, in doing so, learning to expect better results, even when the Giants’ track record suggested otherwise. Daboll’s plan in showing the team how to win manifested in three distinct ways on this particular overseas weekend.
First, it was in the coherent plan the team has stuck to and executed—with the offense holding the ball, draining the play clock and employing a death-by-a-thousand papercuts approach throughout. One reason for that approach was the personnel on hand, with receivers Shepard (out for the year), Kadarius Toney, Kenny Golladay and Wan’Dale Robinson out. Another was to limit Rodgers’s chances.
It would’ve been easy to abandon that when Rodgers found a wide-open Marcedes Lewis for a two-yard touchdown to make it 17–3 midway through the second quarter. The Giants didn’t.
“That was our plan going into the game, just to stick to our stuff,” Jones says. “I mean, we’ve been successful running the ball early on in this season, so I think that was certainly our plan and then some play-action and some shots off of that. That didn’t change when we went down early on in the game. There was still a lot of time left, and, in those situations, you’re always talking to guys, and coaches are talking about executing one play at a time.
“Plenty of time in the game, and as long as we do what we have to do and execute and play our game, we’ll be all right. I don’t think anyone was pushing or anyone felt like we needed to change up our plan or our approach to the game.”
The Giants’ next four possessions went like this …
• 11 plays, 86 yards, 6:10 of possession, touchdown.
• 11 plays, 56 yards, 7:03 of possession, field goal.
• 15 plays, 91 yards, 8:07 of possession, touchdown.
• 6 plays, 60 yards, 3:34 of possession, touchdown.
As a result, Rodgers had just four real possessions over the game’s final two and a half quarters. The Giants held the Packers to three points after Lewis’s touchdown, and scoreless in the second half.
The second piece to this puzzle was how the Giants managed injuries. It happened, again, with the receiver situation, first and foremost. Darius Slayton’s (six catches, 79 yards), their one regular, stepping up was huge, of course. So was the ability of Daboll, Jones and Kafka to incorporate the backs and tight ends into the passing game more heavily.
And there was another level to it, too—the Giants lost Barkley, maybe their best player through four weeks, on the first play of the final possession of the third quarter and were left with Matt Breida and Gary Brightwell. Somehow, it resulted in the Giants’ going on a 91-yard touchdown drive, with both backups making key plays (Breida’s 13-yard catch-and-run on the possession’s second play got things going, and Brightwell’s two-yard TD plunge capped it).
All that got accomplished, really, without anyone saying much as Barkley worked to loosen up a stiff shoulder on the sideline.
“[Barkley] has certainly been huge for us, no doubt,” Jones says. “I mean, I don’t think it was talked about, but I thought guys stepped up and made plays. Breida, Gary both did a great job on that drive with big plays. That’s part of football, and we’ve already dealt with our fair share of injuries. Having the next guy step up and being able to execute, it’s about each guy doing their job every play, and we got a lot of guys who can do it.”
Then there’s the third element, which is the scheme advantage that Jones thinks Daboll and Kafka are giving the offense, and that players on the defense see Wink Martindale giving them. And the truth is, it’s not about being wildly creative all the time—half the battle is the coaches’ gaining a feel for when to reach into their bag.
One such instance came when Barkley returned for the Giants’ final possession. On the second snap of a six-play, 61-yard drive, second-and-10 from the New York 40, Daboll and Kafka crossed up the Packers from a matchup standpoint by putting both the speedy Breida and Barkley in the game together, lining them up on each side of Jones in the shotgun. Forcing a corresponding adjustment freed up Barkley in the left flat.
Forty-one yards later, the Giants were in the red zone, and they’d get the winning points on Barkley’s two-yard keeper as a Wildcat quarterback—an alignment New York used extensively in Week 4 when Jones and backup Tyrod Taylor got hurt.
It wasn’t the first time that Daboll pulled out a gadget inside the 5. The Giants scored their first touchdown, from the Green Bay 2, with Barkley—flanked to the right—taking a toss from Jones on an end-around then tossing it back to tight end Daniel Bellinger, coming on a reverse. From there, Bellinger had an option to throw the ball to Jones, who was bleeding out into the end zone, but saw a seam, cut back and scored.
“It’s just kind of a gadget there down for us in the red zone, something we’ve been working on for a few weeks now,” Jones says. “I was leaking out there, and Bellinger made a good decision to run it instead of throw it. Hats off to him on that play there.
“I think that’s fun, and our coaches have done a great job preparing us for that, getting a few of those plays in there.”
There’s also a pretty clear purpose behind it, like there seems to be with everything the Giants are doing.
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There’s a long game here, of course. For Schoen and Daboll, this is really just the start. They’ve had just one offseason to rework the roster, install schemes and set up a program. In many ways, from a building standpoint, they are where the Bills were a half decade ago, with Schoen starting in Buffalo in May 2017 and Daboll showing up eight months later.
For Jones, this is about setting up a new start, whether it’s in New York or elsewhere. The shine of being a top-10 pick wore off a while ago, and he’s got plenty to prove with even more on the line over the next three months.
But for now, they’re together. And there was no better evidence of that than Jones pushing through an ankle injury not just to play on Sunday, but also be a factor in the run game—he had 10(!) carries for 37 yards against the Packers. He also, through the fourth quarter, played with a nasty gash on his throwing hand that was bloody enough to leave its mark on center Jon Feliciano’s pants, right in the spot where Jones was taking snaps.
It all goes a long way toward explaining why Daboll trusts him, and why, now, his teammates are following him.
“He's tough,” Daboll says. “He’s got some good physical toughness and good mental toughness. He’s done everything we’ve asked him to do since we’ve been here. I’m just really happy with how he’s playing. Certainly, there are a lot of things we can all do better, but he’s a good leader for our team.”
And in many ways, he’s indicative of how players that Daboll and Schoen inherited are coming to embody what they’ll be looking for as they go forward—the same way guys in Buffalo, like longtime Bills Kyle Williams and Eric Wood, did that for that group years ago.
Just as they’ve brought in guys like Breida and defensive lineman Jihad Ward to help reinforce what they’re looking for, holdovers like DL Dexter Lawrence, OT Andrew Thomas, safeties Xavier McKinney and Julian Love, Barkley and Jones, and even specialists Casey Kreiter and Graham Gano, already embody it. It makes the build that much easier—and, evidently, faster.
“Joe and I try to bring in the right kind of guys that love the game of football, that are smart, tough, dependable,” Daboll says. “We know we’re not always gonna get the results we want, but we try to do everything we can during the week to prepare and put ourselves in the best position. With their effort and how they go about their business each week, obviously, it’s good to get this result.
“We’re a game away from being humbled really quick, so we just try to stay week-to-week. … But I just think they’re humble guys that work hard, and that’s all we’re trying to do right now—be a bunch of hard workers that, at the end of the game, can say, I tried to do enough to win.”
Getting that effort across the board explains why, as Sunday’s game wrapped, Daboll was a little over the top going up the tunnel at Tottenham, looking like a pro wrestler cutting a promo. When I asked him about it, he laughed and picked his words carefully.
“That was probably … I should’ve just done that in the locker room.”
For the moment, that reaction, reflecting the edge his team plays with, really worked for Daboll. As did so many things for the Giants on Sunday afternoon in London, and through Daboll’s first five games in New York.
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