The Giants had gotten stomped but good in Week 1, and the people demanded answers from the coach. They wanted insight into why things had gotten off so poorly, so completely, so depressingly. They wanted him to explain.
“We have to play better, all phases,” the coach said. “We have to coach better, all phases.”
A day later, given 24 hours to absorb the evidence again and again on video, the people again returned to the coach seeking wisdom, seeking acumen, seeking explanation for such a resounding thud. And this time the coach opened up and let it all pour out.
“We just have to play better,” he said. “We have to coach better.”
That was Tom Coughlin. That was Sept. 9 and 10, 2007. If it sounds an awful lot like the non-answers, non-sequiturs and non-denial denials that Brian Daboll would offer up on Sept. 8 and 9, 2024 … well, they’re almost exactly the same.
Coughlin, you may recall, was never exactly John Madden, unfiltered opinions ready to burst from his tongue at any moment. He was, well, almost exactly like Daboll, a little impatient, even if he always looked like he was a few seconds away from fully morphing into Michael Douglas as William “D-Fens” Foster in “Falling Down.”
Now, full stop: We are by no means comparing the 2007 Giants — who not only lost Week 1 but Week 2, too, and were trailing 14-0 in Week 3 before sort of rallying on their way to winning the Super Bowl — to the 60 minutes we’ve seen of the 2024 Giants so far.
We will not even insult the sacred memory of Eli Manning by reminding you that as late as Week 12 that year he had the worst game of his life, a four-interception, three-pick-six disaster at home against — coincidence of coincidences — the Minnesota Vikings.
Or hint that if the Giants somehow allowed in those days for Eli to take the postgame walk of shame Daniel Jones took Sunday night, strolling from locker room to automobile absorbing all manner of invective from incensed fans, that Eli would’ve looked like Sonny at the tollbooth by the time he put his key in the ignition that day.
What’s relevant is this: Fans want answers when things go as sideways as they did Sunday, and their frustration multiplies when the coach piles up non-answers, and one of the players says he “doesn’t respect” the booing, and it can all bubble over and culminate when an easy target like Jones — newsflash: he didn’t play poorly on purpose — unwittingly ambles through an ugly gauntlet of taunts.
More than answers, though?
Fans want what the players want, and what Daboll wants: better football.
You’ll remember that Coughlin was a fired coach walking most of that 2007 season. He couldn’t concern himself with acting like a tweedy professor explaining his team’s problems; he had to solve them. And he did. A leaky defense that surrendered 94 points those first 10 quarters of the season wound up stopping an historic New England juggernaut offense cold. Manning wound up forging the first chapter of a forever legacy.
That would’ve been the case even without the Lombardi Trophy, by the way. Just taking into account the Giants’ improvement from Week 2 to Week 17 showed the power of masterful coaching in the NFL. The Giants could’ve lost any of their four playoff games — by rights should have lost the last three of them — and Coughlin would still have done a magnificent coaching job.
That’s what’s on Daboll now, in Year 3. Nobody expects a Super Bowl. Only the most pie-eyed optimists envisioned a plus-.500 season. If he wants to be bland and vanilla in his postgame remarks, or his day-after comments, if he is forever insisting “I need to see the film” … well, that’s tough for reporters with empty notebooks and fans with emptier drives home after witnessing a thumping.
But that’s all just white noise, really. It’s fun to be colorful. Rex Ryan was colorful. All these years later, Jim Mora still draws laughs for saying “Playoffs?” and Dennis Green does the same for “The Bears are who we thought they were!” Book this: All three would trade those memorable moments for a Super Bowl ring.
Book this, too: So will Daboll. If the Giants turn it around on Daboll’s watch, nobody will care that he’s a dull quote. Last we checked, Tom Coughlin was not in “Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations,” either. He is in the Giants Ring of Honor, however.