Giants coach Brian Daboll deflects praise, says NFL is ‘a very humbling league’

The chatter is deafening. Rookie head coach Brian Daboll is the early leader for NFL Coach of the Year. The New York Giants are 4-1 not because of overwhelming talent, but because they are coaching better than their opponents.

Daboll, back from London with the Giants after Sunday’s victory over the Green Bay Packers, deflected that praise

“I’d say it’s all about the players. Give those guys credit. They’re the ones that come in every day, work extremely hard. Do anything they can do during practice in the film room,” Daboll said. “And I’d say the coaches do an excellent job, the trainers, it’s a team, everything is a team effort here.”

Daboll also reminded that he is well aware fortunes can change quickly.

“We’ve only played five games. So this is a very humbling league. It can get you quick. So, focus on the next game. The things again, we can do better, which there’s certainly plenty of them,” Daboll said. “We’ll continue to work and try to improve in those areas. But it’s all about our team and trying to get better each day.”

The Giants have outscored their opposition in the second halves four of five times this season, with an overall 70-39 second-half edge.

“The communication goes on throughout the entire game, even in the first half. And things that we think we need to try to fix or how we’re going to attack, I think the coaches do a great job on the sideline,” Daboll said. “At halftime, you have a little bit more time to talk about it. And to really give the guys hey, look, this is how the game’s kind of unfolded. This is what we want to get to. It’s not like a massive overhaul of 20, new plays or things like that. But there might be a few things that we’re stressing that, look, this is how we think they’re attacking us from a coaching side, here’s how we think we can counter that. So I’d be alert for this, this and this. Here’s a few plays we want to start out with the second half whether it was a compliment of the play, or maybe it is something that we saw that we changed a little bit.”

Daboll was asked if perhaps the Giants’ roster was better than some believed when he became head coach.

“Obviously guys like Dexter Lawrence and Saquon [Barkley] and X [Xavier McKinney], Leo [Williams]when he was was out there, they’re they’re good football players, but it takes it takes all of us to continue to improve and do well,” Daboll said. “And you saw people yesterday like [Justin] Layne made a couple plays there and in the fourth [Nick] McCloud made a plan a crossing route. Guys that haven’t been here a very long time that again, that’s our that’s our philosophy here is make sure as a coaching staff we get everybody up to speed as quick as we can, and everybody contribute in a positive way.”