How Giants Hope to Emerge from Early Season Funk
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It’s not exactly breaking news to say that the New York Giants 2023 season has been a colossal disappointment, not so much record-wise (1-4) but in the fact that a franchise that showed a lot of upside last year has looked disjointed, non-competitive, and disinterested in its four blowout losses.
But with no calvary about to come riding in to save a roster that has vastly underperformed with few exceptions and no miracle cure in the works to suddenly make hobbled left tackle Andrew Thomas, running back Saquon Barkley, and the rest of the Giants’ walking wounded 100 percent healthy again, all this team can do, according to head coach Brian Daboll, is stay the course.
“You know you’re going to go through some adversity,” Daboll said Monday. “When that is, you never know, but you are consistent with your approach.”
The obvious problem is that the Giants approach, which again worked last year, has not worked this year. The suggestion to stick with an approach that has seen the Giants be outscored 153-62 this season would seem like a crazy one, yet it’s the only course of action the team has given the state of its roster.
According to offensive lineman Ben Bredeson, selling the idea of staying on course to the players who are getting beaten up physically and mentally every week with nothing to show for it will be challenging but not impossible.
“It’s going to reveal much about the team,” he said. “We have a team that’s tight, and these are the times you need to stay together and come together more than ever. And like coach has said, staying the course with continuous improvement, and correcting the issues from the week prior.”
That all sounds good, but why would anyone believe that the process will guide the Giants out of the mire they’re currently in?
Bredeson said it’s because the team still believes in one another.
“Believing in the people that we have in this building, the team that we have – coaches, staff, players, and we’re working every single day to continuously improve and go out there and win games.”
That all being said, early is quickly becoming late for this Giants team that, except for two quarters of football, looks no closer to being ready to compete on any level than it did on the first day of OTAs.
“You can say it’s early, but it’s only early in the season for so long,” said Okereke. “We are 1-4, going into Week 6 of the season. Urgency is upon us, and we realize that if we want to be where we want to be at the end of the season, we’ve got to start playing good football, got to be on the details, and start turning this thing around quickly.
"Everybody has that urgency about us; we’ve had that from the start, and now it’s just making those plays on game day.”
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