Uncle Mickey's perspective on coaching and the New York Giants

[Uncle Mickey]

My humble thoughts on coaching in general and how it relates to our beloved G-Men......

Great coordinators/coaches tend to maximize their players strengths and minimize their weaknesses by adjusting the scheme appropriately to their players best strengths. They have the ability to run multiple schemes when the situation calls for it.

Other coordinators/coaches that could be considered somewhere between average and good (but not great) have a specific scheme or small range of schemes they are comfortable with and need specific types of players to run that scheme effectively. If they have those players their scheme runs excellent more often than not, however if not it's usually  disaster. This is often due to an inability to make drastic adjustments to their own rigid philosiphies/ vision for an offensive or defensive system.

Bad coordinators/coaches tend to minimize their players strengths and maximize their weaknesses by either failing to adjust the scheme appropriately to their players best strengths, failing to coach it properly or a combination of both. One may see fleeting glimpses here and there, but almost any type of game plan they run will never truly get the players playing at their maximum potential.

With that said, Daboll's coaching job on offense in 2022 was one of the best coaching jobs I have ever seen. And I mean that. Our 2022 offense was EXTREMELY limited. It was saddled with low talent on the OL AND an absolutely horrible OL coach. We had very sub par WRs and no explosive TEs. It was basically Barkley and not much else. DJ CAN be a good QB but he has certain things he is good at and others he is not so good at. What Daboll did with all those limitations was nothing short of remarkable. The RPOs, the play-actions, the mis-directions, the run formations with DJ rolling out and hitting a late releasing TE was used 4-5x a game and almost always netted a chain moving gain. He almost always kept the Defense off balance with some form of deception. Giving a look or eye candy as he sometimes calls it and then doing the opposite of that look.

2023 to me was an OL that was exposed because Daboll thought his dear friend Bobby Johnson could get his OL to do it's job in a more traditional drop back offense now that NYG had better weapons at WR. The Cowboy game was a microcosm of pretty much the whole year. 85 sacks surrendered is a testimony of a unit being so bad (historically bad really) that it short circuits the entire system.

Now to this year....

Two games in so kind of small sample size but what I'm seeing so far is this. Daboll  recognized after week 1 legitmate adjustments have to be made. You could hear him take it upon himself in his post game interviews. Sure enough, He certainly seemed to do this for the offense in week 2 running more things which reminded me of 2022 in not all but many ways. 

Regarding the OL, Bracillo has 5 guys up front playing like 1 which honestly we haven't seen in a decade plus.

Now the ugly, Bowens adjustments after week 1 did little. In fact, Bowens D seems to do the opposite of what you want to see, which is maximize our weaknesses and mute our strengths. Pass rush with all that talent not getting home, linebackers out of position, zones too wide, corners too much cushion etc.

Bowen right now is my biggest fear and I truly hope Daboll is in his office more or less demanding bigtime adjustments to the way they run this D.