Giants begin Brian Daboll era with gutsy win over Titans

By Ralph Vacchiano
FOX Sports NFC East Writer

When the Giants got the ball back late Sunday afternoon, trailing the Titans by a touchdown with five and a half minutes to go, new coach Brian Daboll had already made up his mind about how the game would end. 

If — when — the Giants scored a touchdown, he was going to go for two. He would play for the win.

Just to make sure he was doing the right thing, though, he ran it by the defensive players on the sideline. He asked if they were OK with the decision.

“F— yeah!” the coach said they responded.

And with that, the 47-year-old Daboll sent a message to everyone that this really may be a new era in Giants football. 

This is still a team and a franchise with plenty of problems. They might not be capable of much more than one wonderful day. But for this one day, one moment, they finally had something to really feel good about. Because their coach decided to go for it.

And they won 21-20.

“He’s a man of his word,” said Saquon Barkley of Daboll, after the running back scored the two-pointer that let the Giants escape Nashville with a dramatic win. “He told us he was going to be aggressive. He told us it was going to be on the players in that situation.

“When you have a coach like that, it definitely makes you go out there and fight for him.”

How refreshing that is, considering what the Giants went through the past two years … and the past four years … and really, the past decade. This franchise has been stuck in constant misery since its last Super Bowl season, 11 years ago. Any time the Giants thought they had reason to be excited, everything quickly fell apart.

But not on Sunday. Not only did the Giants march down the field for the game-tying touchdown, they showed guts, creativity and a confidence that they haven’t shown in years. And it all came together on that two-point play — a shovel pass called by offensive coordinator Mike Kafka that the Titans seemed to see coming from the start.

QB Daniel Jones, who had just thrown a play-action touchdown pass to tight end Chris Myarick to pull the Giants within one, looked like he was going to run at first. But he then flipped the ball to Barkley, who already had 164 rushing yards and seemed the guy likely to get the ball. The Titans seemed sure of that, which is why Barkley had to sidestep two defenders in the backfield, then barrel through two more to get the ball over the goal line for the win.

And when he did — and after Titans kicker Randy Bullock missed a game-winning, 47-yard field goal a few plays later — the screams could be heard from Nashville to Times Square, because it’s been a long time since the Giants have had a moment like that. It’s been a long time since they had a coach like that, too, who really seemed to believe in his players, and who gave them reason to believe in him.

And they all deserved that moment after what the franchise has been through. The Giants have lost 10 or more games in seven of the past eight seasons, including each of the past five. The last four – under GM Dave Gettleman — were particularly painful. They went 19-46, watched Jones fail to develop into a franchise quarterback and saw the organization get buried in salary-cap hell.

But it’s been about more than just those depressing numbers. The Giants under Joe Judge, Pat Shurmur and the last year of Ben McAdoo were as boring as they were bad and dysfunctional. The last two years were horrifying, with tough guy Judge seemingly in over his head as a head coach and offensive coordinator Jason Garrett calling plays like he was stuck in the 1970s.

The result was two years of hideous offense, where they didn’t even average 16 points per game and late last season were simply giving up on drives and plays. There were no thoughts of being aggressive because they had no ability to be aggressive. They couldn’t have marched down the field at the end of the game for a touchdown if the opposing defense fell down.

But look at what this team did on Sunday. Jones, who was an efficient 17 of 21 for 188 yards, nearly threw the game away with a terrible end-zone interception with 8:50 to go. Then the Giants got a stop on defense and Jones got the ball back and didn’t wilt under the pressure. He marched his team right back down the field again, going 73 yards in 12 plays and 4:21, including a fourth-down conversion on a naked bootleg on his way to that final touchdown pass.

And, as the players said, “F— yeah” they were going to win after that.

“We’re going to be aggressive,” Daboll said. “That’s what we want to do. That’s the mindset I want the players to have.”

Barkley talks about the Giants’ comeback victory

Saquon Barkley tells FOX Sports’ Laura Okmin about how the Giants stayed resilient in their come-from-behind win. “This team has a lot of guts,” he said.

That’s what players want. They want to be the aggressors. They want the ball in their hands. And they want a coach who believes they can win a game and doesn’t just play not to lose. Far too often the past two years they didn’t seem sure their coach believed in them at all.

Daboll just made an enormously loud statement that he does.

“He’s been very clear throughout training camp and throughout the week that he’s going to be aggressive,” Jones said. “So I wasn’t surprised. I don’t think any of us were surprised at all.”

It is all still just one game, one day and one win, even if it is hard not to get at least a little excited about a glimmer of a rainbow after 10 years of unending rain. A loss next Sunday at home against the woeful Carolina Panthers and the storm clouds will surely return. There is, as Daboll said, “a long way to go” and a lot of work to do on the offensive line, the quarterback, the defense and so many other holes.

The realists among the Giants and their suddenly enthusiastic fans surely understand that this year will be rocky at best, and there will probably be far more losses than wins. But at least now they can believe what they’ve wanted to believe ever since the end of last season — that they finally have the right coach to lead them and really are headed to a better place.

Maybe it’ll take a few years to get there. Maybe Daboll’s Giants never will. But honestly, on Day 1, none of that mattered at all. What mattered was that with one gutsy call, one gritty win, the Giants had a reason to smile, reason to hope, and a reason to be optimistic after the depressing Judge Era, the disastrous Gettleman Era, and one of the worst decades the franchise has ever had.

One game can’t erase or reverse that history.

But it really was a heck of a start.

Ralph Vacchiano is the NFC East reporter for FOX Sports, covering the Washington Commanders, Philadelphia Eagles and New York Giants. He spent the previous six years covering the Giants and the Jets for SNY TV in New York, and before that he spent 16 years covering the Giants and the NFL for the New York Daily News. He can be found on Twitter at @RalphVacchiano.

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