Intense, scrappy and feisty: For the first time, this Giants team is a reflection of Brian Daboll
Brian Daboll during Giants training camp in East Rutherford, N.J., on Aug. 4. Credit: Ed Murray
Like most NFL coaches, Brian Daboll was a bit down on Tuesday. It is, they all say, the toughest part of their job, sitting across from a young player and puncturing their dreams with news that he is being cut. Imagine having to do that over and over like an assembly line to get the roster down to the initial 53 names by the just-passed deadline.
“These couple days we've had, they're always tough on players, on their families, on their teammates, on coaches, on staff members,” Daboll glowered. “We understand that. That's the nature of the NFL.”
At some point though – and it’s probably already happened for Daboll – that mood changes. It lifts. A coach’s mind is no longer on the list of roster casualties but on the survivors, the ones who remain. The team. His team.
And when Daboll reaches that place, it’s a good bet he’ll like what he sees.
This version of the Giants, more than any other in his three previous seasons with the Giants, is a reflection of him. It is filled with intense, scrappy, willful, feisty, sometimes overly competitive players – or dawgs as they generally call themselves –he has cultivated over time to finally play the kind of football he wants.
“I guess you could say that it's definitely all of his guys now,” wide receiver Wan’Dale Robinson said this week. “I definitely think we all have similar mindsets, and at the end of the day just want to go out there and win.”
There are no more leftovers. Everyone on the Giants now is there with his and general manager Joe Schoen’s stamp of approval. Even the few who predate this regime’s arrival are on second or third contracts that show how much they are wanted and how well they fit into the scene.
It’s why Daboll described coaching this team several times this preseason as “fun.” It was easy to see how rejuvenated he was by it, too, just watching him on the field. Daboll may be purposefully circumspect in his news conferences but his body language at practices provided a much clearer barometer on how he truly feels.
The last two summers he was grouchy and surly, perhaps because he knew the Giants were not going to be as competitive as he wanted them to be. This summer it appeared he was having a blast, just as he was in 2022 when they led the league in preseason high fives and the team went to the playoffs. It’s as if he can sense things getting better.
Perhaps that’s as good an omen as the Giants can cling to right now.
“I like the personalities of our guys,” Daboll said earlier this month in a split second of candor. “It's been fun to be around them. They're a group that loves football. We've got a lot of guys that love the game of football and that practice hard, practice the right way.”
His way.
Daboll’s glee was especially evident around his quarterbacks where he is no longer saddled with Daniel Jones as the starter he often struggled to pay even the most baseline compliments to, or a backup cast behind Jones that gave him sleepless nights. Now he has Russell Wilson as his starter, a veteran he can trust, and more importantly he also has Jaxson Dart, the rookie with whom he can build. If Daboll were a quarterback, he’d be Dart.
It was no doubt difficult to part ways with Tommy DeVito as the Giants did on Tuesday, but it speaks to the overall level of the position on the roster that he never really had a chance to break through as a fourth-stringer this summer. DeVito is a much better quarterback now than he was when he stuck around in 2023 and 2024. He just had the misfortune of being part of a much better quarterback room in training camp in 2025.
Dart is just the latest draft pick to have that Daboll-like fire. Malik Nabers has it. Abdul Carter and Cam Skattebo have it. Dru Phillips and Tyler Nubin have it. Greg Van Roten and Jon Runyan Jr. have it.
“It's all about the players,” Daboll said on Tuesday. “I’m happy with a lot of the additions we've made and the chemistry of the group, but again, that's all talk. You have to go out there and do it at a high level when it matters, which is a regular season. It's a player’s game and I'm excited for the players that we have on our football team.”
It took a while to figure out what Daboll wanted, it seemed, and they went through a lot of Evan Neals and Deonte Banks and Josh Ezeudus to get there. Those names still remain in the organization but they won’t be around much longer if they don’t start falling in line with the tenets of Dabollism. Assuming, that is, that Dabollism itself sticks around.
If the coach’s instinctive reactions to this year’s team are correct, it just might.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
