Giants Country

New York Giants Take a Giant Step Against NFC Contender

Brian Daboll's Giants are no longer a pushover.

Patricia Traina

East Rutherford, NJ -- August 1, 2024 -- Quarterback Daniel Jones during practice today at training camp for the New York Giants.
East Rutherford, NJ -- August 1, 2024 -- Quarterback Daniel Jones during practice today at training camp for the New York Giants. / Chris Pedota, NorthJersey.com / USA TODAY NETWORK
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What a difference a year seems to make for Brian Daboll’s New York Giants.

This time last year, the Giants were still riding the wave of joy from their 9-7-1 playoff season in 2022, looking to take the next step forward in their development to challenge for a deeper playoff run. 

But somewhere along the line, the hard work and strategies the Giants had deployed to get to 9-7-1 got lost on the team. Daboll ran virtually a country club of a training camp, more concerned about getting guys to the starting gate healthy than getting them quality work in 11-on-11 drills. 

It was a gamble that he and the Giants lost, and the first sign of that being true occurred when Daboll took his Giants to Detroit for a joint practice against the Lions only to see Dan Campbell’s feisty bunch eat New York for lunch and spit them out.

That first shot proved to be a sign of what was to come: the Giants getting whacked in the mouth during the regular season en route to a 6-11 season, the team looking hapless along the way.

This year, however, Daboll learned his lesson. He’s erased the easy practices, scrapping 7-on-7s for more 11-on-11s starting back in the spring through the summer. 

In building up his team’s confidence and guiding them to get a little better each and every day, the Giants, despite what Daboll said, were able to pass Day 1 of their litmus test against the Lions, a well-coached team with a bully-like attitude.

Who could forget head coach Dan Campbell, during his introductory press conference, promising to build a team that would “bite kneecaps,” in the heat of battle? Campbell has built that team up to where it fell just short of a Super Bowl berth, earning a reputation for being a bad bunch of hombres to have to deal with.

The Giants? After getting pushed around last year, well, they’re mad as heck and aren’t going to take it anymore. On Day 1 of the joint practice, they came out with a level of intensity not previously seen from this group (or last year’s, for that matter), and they set the tone early, letting the Lions know that there would be no knee-cap biting on the Giants’ home turf.  

No, the Giants weren’t looking for trouble. But when the Lions engaged in some extra pushing and shoving, when third-string cornerback Morris Norris whacked running back Eric Gray with a little too much oomph, the Giants took exception and stood up for each other, showing an unbreakable bond that should prove them well in the coming season.

That was just one of a half dozen incidents dotting an otherwise spirited and productive practice. Another saw quarterback Daniel Jones jump into a fray when the Lions were piling on center Greg Van Roten after a play, and yet another saw Giants general manager Joe Schoen unafraid to stick his nose into the mix to break up a sideline brawl toward the end of practice. 

The good news is that no one is believed to have gotten hurt in the brawls that erupted. The even better news is that DAboll’s Giants have a backbone which, if they continue to show that, will serve them well against a regular-season schedule that, on paper, is even more challenging than what they faced last season. 

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Patricia Traina

PATRICIA TRAINA

Patricia Traina has covered the New York Giants for over three decades for various media outlets. She is the host of the Locked On Giants podcast and the author of "The Big 50: New York Giants: The Men and Moments that Made the New York Giants" (Triumph Books, September 2020). View Patricia's full bio.

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