They are all out there.
All those “first time since …’’ and “the last time they…’’ and, of course, “this means that…’’ when digging into what the Giants sitting with a record of 5-1 means. For a franchise that matched the Jets for the worst record in the NFL the past five years, and a franchise with one postseason appearance in the last 11 years this is heady stuff. Unexpected, improbable, and hard to fathom, too.
The Giants beating the Ravens 24-20 this past Sunday was their fourth victory as an underdog in the first six weeks, matching an NFL record.
The Giants trailed the Ravens 20-10 early in the fourth quarter and became the fourth team to ever win three of its first six games coming back from a deficit of 10 or more points. The most recent team to do so was the 1993 Eagles, so it has been a while.
Brian Daboll is the first Giants coach to win five of his first six games since Dan Reeves — also back in 1993.
This is the first time in franchise history the Giants’ first five victories in a season have come against opponents outside the NFC East.
The last time the Giants won a game when trailing by 10 or more points in the final seven minutes of the fourth quarter? You have to go back to Dec. 11, 2011, when they were down 34-22 in Dallas and ended up winning 37-34 after scoring two touchdowns in the final 3:14 — an Eli Manning pass to Jake Ballard and a Brandon Jacobs 1-yard run.
The Giants won three games at MetLife Stadium during the 2021 season. They are 3-1 at home before Week 7 of this season.
This is what happens when a franchise mired in losing finally finds a way to reverse the trend. It happened with Reeves in 1993 after the two-year Ray Handley nightmare. It happened in 1997 with Jim Fassel. It happened (not immediately) with Tom Coughlin in 2004. It happened for one year with Ben McAdoo in 2016 but that fleeting success was not built to last. It did not happen with Pat Shurmur in 2018. It did not happen with Joe Judge in 2020.
For tight end Daniel Bellinger, a rookie who has been here for about five minutes, this is all he knows with the Giants.
“We’re a resilient group,’’ he said. “We work hard. We fight hard and when the tables are down, we just keep fighting. That’s what we do.’’
For safety Julian Love, one of the longest-tenured Giants — he arrived in the 2019 draft class, along with key 2022 contributors Daniel Jones, Dexter Lawrence, Oshane Ximines, and Darius Slayton — this all starts with Daboll. That draft class was 13-36 the previous three seasons before Daboll walked into the building.
Read Related Also: Aaron Ong guilty of murder of Croydon fruiterer Paul Virgona
“I think his approach has been great,’’ Love said. “I’ve told that to him. When we win games, when we lose games, it stays constant. His mindset and his mentality and his approach to us stays really constant. There is not super high-highs when you win or super low-lows when you lose. I told him ‘Man, that’s an approach I haven’t seen in recent years.’
“He also knows what has happened in the past. He knows how we have been feeling in that building and creating a culture, to where if you make a bad play, your head isn’t down all day, and you’re embarrassed for your teammates or for yourself. You shake it off really quickly, and you can approach everybody as people. He’s created a beautiful culture in the building right now; the staff and everybody top-down. I think that’s why he’s been successful so far.’’
Daboll is stoic up at the podium, a contrast to his energetic and emotional posture on the sideline. He has been remarkably consistent, a difficult personality trait to maintain for someone in his first year as a head coach, at any level.
The plan he put forth in the spring is the same plan he is going with in the fall. Work on today. No big-picture thoughts. Stress mental and physical improvement ahead of win-loss results. It all sounded fairly benign a few months ago. It is hard to believe anyone, including Daboll, imagined the work back then would translate to all this. His team rarely is the best team in the first quarter or the second quarter but by the end of the four quarters, the Giants are the team with a few more points.
“Well, you try to do that before this even happens back in training camp and OTAs and create situations offensively, defensively, the kicking game,” Daboll said. “You just try to make things as competitive and put them in situations where they got to compete. Again, what they do during the week – I can’t emphasize it enough – their attitudes, their commitment to getting better, being on time to everything, taking care of their bodies, that’s important.
“And that leads to – it doesn’t always lead to wins – but doing the right thing on a consistent basis is what we’re trying to establish as a program: Let’s get guys that want to do the right thing and want to compete and that play hard.’’
More that came out of yet another Giants upset victory:
— Leonard Williams is a beast. He missed three games with a sprained knee and it figured he would be on a pitch count in his first game back coming off the injury. No way. He nearly went the distance. The Giants were on the field for 59 snaps on defense and Williams was out there for 54 of them — 94 percent. That’s a heavy workload coming off so much time off. And on Williams’ last snap, he displayed plenty of energy when he pursued and then pounced on the loose ball created by Kayvon Thibodeaux for the game-sealing fumble recovery. The only lineman who played more was Dexter Lawrence, with 57 snaps. Lawrence is no longer in any sort of rotation. As this coaching staff learns the personnel it has become evident they believe they need Lawrence on the field at all times. His playing time percentages this season through six games: 68, 79, 81, 94, 90, and 97.
— Call them the Last Minute Men. When Saquon Barkley took a leap for a 1-yard touchdown vault with 1:43 remaining it was the second time in the first six games the Giants took the lead in the final two minutes. They also did it in the season-opening 21-20 victory in Nashville, on Daniel Jones’ 1-yard TD pass to Chris Myarick, followed by Jones’ pass to Barkley for the successful two-point conversion with 1:06 to go. When Daboll harps on playing for 60 minutes, he ain’t kidding around.
— Jones went 19 for 27, a completion rate of 70.4 percent. It was the third game this season Jones has connected on more than 70 percent of his passes. He beat the Titans by completing 81 percent of his throws and knocked off the Packers in London by hitting on 78 percent of his passes. Prior to this, Jones completed 70 percent of his passes three times in his first three seasons with the Giants.
— You have to figure what we saw from rookie Wan’Dale Robinson in this game is a prelude of bigger things to come. He returned after missing four games with a sprained knee and was used judiciously — only 15 snaps. Despite that limited workload, Robinson was targeted four times and came away with three receptions for 37 yards, including his first NFL touchdown on a five-yard catch-and-run in the second quarter to pull the Giants even at 7-7. With Kadarius Toney and Kenny Golladay forever in injury limbo, it looks as if no longer-forgotten man Darius Slayton and Robinson are emerging as WRs 1-2.
