LANDOVER, Md. — Let’s play phrase affiliation.
You say “tank’’ to teach Brian Daboll and he provides a fast response:
“Compete.’’
If it had been solely as simple as that.
The Giants will not be their report of 2-8, finding out the 2024 NFL Draft and pondering, “It’s higher for us to lose now so we are able to choose a prize later.’’
Followers can suppose that manner.
The media can speculate that manner.
There are too many video games remaining — seven of ’em — for the Giants to do something apart from attempt to have some success every week.
Does anybody suppose for a second that Daboll, coming off a Coach of the Yr debut season, is prepared to place a 2-15 or 3-14 report on his résumé?
The identical for common supervisor Joe Schoen and group possession.
This season has been painful and sudden and sobering, a gaping crater that retains getting deeper and deeper, burying a franchise that believed it was past this bottom-feeder existence.
“We’re in a aggressive enterprise,’’ Daboll mentioned. “Attempt to compete in the whole lot you do.’’
The Giants will begin undrafted rookie Tommy DeVito at quarterback for Sunday’s recreation in opposition to the Commanders at FedEx Area.
Daniel Jones is completed for the season and awaiting ACL surgical procedure and Tyrod Taylor is on injured reserve coping with a rib cage problem and should miss this recreation and at the very least yet another earlier than he’s eligible to return.
If Taylor is wholesome and the Giants maintain him on the sideline, that’s tanking.
That’s not the expectation.
“I can’t sit right here and say that’s not the case for some locations, however the best way I have a look at it, it actually doesn’t make sense,’’ Saquon Barkley mentioned, when requested if the Giants may not be doing the whole lot they’ll to win. “As a result of on the finish of the day, the coaches and the individuals within the entrance workplace, their jobs are on the road, too, similar to our jobs are on the road. In the event you don’t go on the market and compete and play at a excessive stage, coaches and gamers get lower, coaches get fired, and that’s the enterprise of it.
“Tanking, I do know it’s not the fitting factor to do, and I don’t know if that’s actually an actual factor, I can’t communicate for each different place, however right here I don’t get that really feel in any respect, particularly with Dabs. You possibly can see how fiery and the way aggressive he’s. That’s not the kind of group or kind of individuals now we have on this constructing or this locker room.’’
Making an attempt is nice.
Failure is just not.
There may be dropping and there’s dropping huge, and the Giants are equal-opportunity traders right here.
Tucked inside their eight losses are six video games that had been one-sided routs, leading to level differentials of 40, 28, 21, 15, 24 and 32 factors.
So, the close-call losses in Buffalo (14-9 with the Giants on the Payments’ 1-yard line as time expired) and to the Jets (an unfathomable collapse and 13-10 additional time defeat) are aberrations.
Largely, when the Giants take the sector, the sport is set effectively upfront of the fourth quarter, and sometimes earlier than halftime.
Daboll will say (and has mentioned) that he sees his gamers competing to the ultimate whistle.
That’s all effectively and good, however when the outcomes are non-competitive on the scoreboard it places the highlight on the standard, or lack thereof, of the gamers the Giants have in uniform.
Or the teaching.
When it’s this unhealthy, the whole lot is truthful recreation to get put by means of the wringer.
The season was barely previous the midpoint when it turned open-season on Daboll, as a result of that’s what occurs when a group effectively earlier than Halloween is useless and buried, when it comes to potential playoff credibility.
Daboll reported he has frequent conversations with group possession and in addition with Schoen, who hand-picked Daboll for the job.
“I’d say there’s good communication in our constructing,’’ Daboll mentioned.
And? Possession’s response to the previous two losses, to the Raiders and Cowboys, by a mixed rating of 79-23?
“Form of like all people’s,’’ Daboll mentioned. “No one’s completely satisfied.’’
Clearly, Daboll doesn’t recognize this line of questioning.
It goes with the territory, although, and Daboll is aware of that, as effectively.