Inside Slant: Giants seek to stop self-inflicted wounds in quest to avoid another 0-2 start

With another 0-2 start staring them in the face, the Giants are focused on eliminating all the self-inflicted wounds from their performance last week as they look ahead to their regular-season home opener against the Buffalo Bills.

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Since 2013, the New York Giant have opened the regular-season 0-2 in five out of the last six campaigns, the lone exception coming in 2016 when they started 2-0.

So the goal for the Giants this weekend when they host the Buffalo Bills in their 2019 regular-season home opener is to get off to a 1-1 start for the first time since the 2012 season.

It’s not an easy task, certainly not against a Bills team that showed resiliency last week after falling behind 16-0 to the Jets at MetLife Stadium only to bounce back with a 17-16 win.

But Giants head coach Pat Shurmur, who is always talking about staying in the moment, was again preaching that message to his players, correctly pointing out that they can’t do anything about last week, so there’s no point in spending energy wondering “what if”?

“We’re doing the math on this one game,” Shurmur said. “We’re trying to be 1-0 this week. We don’t focus on (last week). It’s not something we talk about moving forward. We’re putting all of our focus on what we’re going to do this week.”

While no one has been linking the Giants and Super Bowl contender in the same sentence, there is still a goal of building on the baby steps the team made last year in terms of progress.

General manager Dave Gettleman and Shurmur completely revamped the locker room culture, which they both believe will better equip the team when it faces adversity.

And the Giants added a lot of new faces, most of them young and most of them on defense, the jelling process taking a little extra time than perhaps initially thought to occur.

But in terms of making progress versus pressing, that ‘s where the Giants have been walking a fine line. Quarterback Eli Manning noted that it’s important to understand the difference.

“There is always urgency, you have to understand the difference between stressing and forcing, and urgency,” he said. “I think it’s still a matter of having great preparation, great work, it starts on the practice field. Understanding the game plan, going out there and executing.”

Tight end Evan Engram agreed.

“It’s important to win every week, he said. “Definitely our mindset is really strong, we’re strong mentally and understand what we have to fix and what we have to improve on."

Engram noted that most of what sunk the Giants ship in the past was self-inflicted. He said the goal this week is to take more care to eliminate those mistakes on both sides of the ball to give themselves a better chance of winning.

"We know there are things that can hurt ourselves, and if we limit those, it gives us a better chance to win," he said.

"That’s the goal this week, to stop hurting ourselves and play the offense that we can play and play better as a team as a whole.”