Easygoing Brian Daboll a 180-degree change from previous Giants regime, but winning still matters most

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. – After a couple of months of seeing their new head coach in action, there are still some Giants players who think Brian Daboll is too good to be true. He’s friendly, engaging, fun and relaxed. He’s the opposite of uptight. There’s never any yelling, at least not yet.

It seems so unusual, especially for those who played for Joe Judge, that every once in a while one of them will ask center Jon Feliciano, who played for Daboll up in Buffalo, “Is this him?”

“Yeah. Same guy,” Feliciano will tell them. “That is him every dang day.”

“Coaches, when they get their first head coaching job, sometimes change and try to be someone else or someone they’re not,” Feliciano said. “(With) Dabes, that hasn’t happened. I think he kind of doubled down on being Dabes.”

And what exactly is “being Dabes”?

Said Feliciano: “A dirtbag from Buffalo.”

That’s as good a description – and term of endearment – as any for the 47-year-old Daboll, who so far has earned rave, early reviews from his five months on the job. Of course, it’s only been five months and the new guy is always good, especially after far too many losing seasons.

But it does seem like something more than that with Daboll. Even the most player-friendly coaches in the NFL tend to have a distant aura about them, whether it’s just to project authority or in some cases a little fear. But no one who has interacted with Daboll, from the front office to the players to the support staff, thinks of him as distant. They come away feeling like he’s just a regular and genuinely nice guy.

“He’s just authentic,” Feliciano said. “He’s going to shoot it to you straight and be out here and have juice and have fun. He’s OK with people making mistakes as long as you make them full speed and as long as they don’t become a habit. That freedom as a player, and his juice, is just all combined to being a happy player.”

From talking to his teammates who played or Judge, Feliciano knows that’s a “big change” from how things were around the Giants the last two years. Several players have already talked publicly about the more relaxed and enjoyable atmosphere around the team facility. There was a feeling in the organization under Judge, especially last season, that everyone was wound too tightly, fearing the head coach’s ever-present wrath.

In fact, Feliciano can still see it in the faces of those players when they make a mistake on the field or in a meeting and brace for a reaction.

“You can just kind of tell people get a little scared when they mess up,” he said. “No one likes messing up. But, like, it’s OK.

“Dabes wants you to take chances. If something happens, it's all right. It's not all right, but this is the time for it to happen.”

Here’s where the important caveat comes in: Judge was once thought to be a player-friendly coach too. Who can forget the rave reviews he got when he literally would roll in the mud with his players during training camp? Even when outsiders were criticizing the way he yelled and screamed at his players and punished them for mistakes with things like “penalty laps,” his players lauded him for being a professional and treating them like men.

But that didn’t last. The reality always was that Judge was a screamer – a really loud, profane screamer. He coached angry and so did his staff. Punishment – whether it was penalty laps or fines or calling out a player in a meeting – was always part of his program. Players could take it – some even wanted to take it -- until it was clear that Judge’s Giants weren’t going to win.

Because that still matters more than anything else. Tom Coughlin was a tyrant until he won two Super Bowls in four seasons. Ben McAdoo was a boy genius when he went 11-5 in his first season, but the players tuned him out when they started 2-10 the next year. No one cared that Pat Shurmur was the “adult in the room” when his teams went 9-23. Judge went 10-23, which is why his Bill Belichick impersonation so quickly got old.

So yes, of course Daboll is a 180-degree turn from Judge, because that’s the way it is in sports when a new coach replaces a losing one. And of course his players love him because he’s still undefeated. That’s a huge part of why he gets thunderous cheers every time he’s shown on the scoreboard while he’s attending a Rangers playoff game. And it’s easy to see why his players and so many in the organization so quickly fell in love with him. He really does come across as a genuinely nice, fun, likeable guy. He seems like a great guy to take to a bar for a couple of beers, and he sure acts towards everyone like he’s really willing to go.

Feliciano said that won’t change when the regular season starts – at least Daboll the offensive coordinator didn’t change when the games mattered up in Buffalo. Will he still be just a fun-loving, personable “dirtbag from Buffalo” when the losing starts and the pressure mounts? There’s only one way to find out.

For now, though, he is a welcome port in the storm that has hovered over the Giants franchise for most of the last decade. He’s allowed his weary players to catch their breath, enjoy the game again, and not practice or play in constant fear.

“People were a little hesitant to believe that's how he is all day, all the time,” Feliciano said. “I think he's shown them over the course of six weeks or however long we have been here that he's the same guy every day.”

And so far, that’s a very good thing.