As New York Giants Move To 6-1, More Signs Of How Far They’ve Come

Considering the New York Giants won a total of 12 games over the past three seasons combined, head coach Brian Daboll could have been forgiven a bit of giddiness as he met with the media Sunday following New York’s 23-17 win over the Jacksonville Jaguars, running New York’s record to 6-1.

He sounded, however, like a coach looking for more from his team. Of the dramatic game-ending play, stopping the Jaguars at the one-yard line, Daboll said this:

“Where we stopped them on the 1? I was happy. Just watched the ball thrown and came up short and watched the guys compete there for that yard. Good to get a win. Shouldn’t have came down to that, though.”

The Giants struggled to run out the clock late in the fourth quarter, giving the Jaguars one more shot. But once again, this team came up with the critical play at the critical time.

The Giants already trailed, 11-10, and Jacksonville running back Travis Etienne looked bound for the end zone, before safety Xavier McKinney punched the ball out of his arms. Julian Love picked the ball up and quickly danced out of bounds to secure possession.

“It was just one-on-one situation, and it was kind of one of those things where I knew we needed a play,” McKinney told the media following the game. “[I] just did my best to try to hit the ball out. We’ve been practicing it in practice. [Giants Defensive Backs Coach Jerome Henderson] Rome has done a great job of just bringing us aside and kind of doing things like that of practicing on punching a ball out. We haven’t gotten a lot of picks, so we’re just trying to generate turnovers any way we can, and we knew they were loose with the ball, so for me, I just punched at the ball, got it out, and it was a big play for us.”

It represented a season in which the unexpected has quickly become routine. New York is no stranger to 100-yard rushing performance, for instance. But it usually isn’t Daniel Jones, with the quarterback logging 107 yards on the ground, his career-best total, and the most by a Giants quarterback since October 6, 1946.

Jones, more importantly, led the Giants to a fifth game-winning drive, once again solidifying himself as the heir apparent to Eli Manning not just in person, but in spirit as well.

“I think we all want to be in those situations,” Jones said. “I think as a team throughout the year, we’ve created them and been in those situations seems like week after week, but I think we all want to be in the pressure situation where you have to deliver, and we’ve done a good job of doing that.”

It’s enough to make a head coach happy. Right?

“Well, I’m never really happy ever,” Daboll said. “You know it’s always on to the next week. I’m glad we won, but like I say every week, there’s certain things to clean up, and this week is no exception. There were some good things we did. I thought offense got off to a fast start, did a good job of converting third downs, did a good enough job in the red zone, took care of the ball defensively, got the ball out there when they were going into the red zone, had a critical fourth down stop. At critical moments that was good, but we gave up too many yards, we didn’t capitalize in the red zone. Didn’t finish the game we should have finished the game. There’re always things to clean up.”