EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Wide receiver Jalin Hyatt was out of the locker room quickly, in street clothes but with eye black still painted on his expressionless face.
That’s unusual, even if it’s only Week 1.
“It’s the first game of the year,” coach Brian Daboll said, the day after a 28-6 drubbing by the Minnesota Vikings. “It’s a long NFL season.”
Might as well add the coaching cliché: It’s never as bad as it looks, it’s never as good as it looks and the biggest jump comes from Week 1 to Week 2 to the post-blowout rhetoric. They all could apply.
Now comes the fallout from the demolition Daboll witnessed Sunday at MetLife Stadium. He is going to need to pull everything out of his bag of tricks because even though it was only one loss, it was that bad. It’s going to be a challenge keeping this locker room together if things continue to go south.
The disappointment on Sunday was palpable. This wasn’t just a team that had lost one game early in a promising season. It was a group teetering on the edge of falling into a lot more losses.
“Just down because you know hard you work all offseason. All offseason, all OTAs, all training camp,” safety Jason Pinnock said.
HYATT, THE SECOND-year receiver who was a third-round pick last year, had played four snaps through the first three quarters after spending most of the summer as the team’s No. 2 receiver opposite rookie Malik Nabers. Veteran Darius Slayton took a majority of the game reps opposite Nabers.
But Slayton is now in the concussion protocol, which could create opportunities for Hyatt, whom Daboll called the team’s “third/fourth” receiver.
“That could change week to week,” Daboll said of the wide receivers but seems to apply to several other positions. “This week that is what it was.”
Then there was third-year cornerback Cor’Dale Flott starting in the slot after spending the entire summer working on the outside. Daboll said Monday he probably would be back on the outside more this week. Flott played in the slot most of last season after starting his Giants career on the outside.
Meanwhile, Adoree’ Jackson, re-signed just over a week before the opener, played a good chunk of the snaps on the outside. He committed a costly but controversial 35-yard pass interference penalty in the first half.
As for kick returner Gunner Olszewski, he didn’t even make it to kickoff. Olszewski aggravated his groin in pregame warmups after spending the past few weeks noticeably struggling to move without restriction. He’s now out for “weeks,” according to Daboll. Time for the team to find a new returner.
And how about veteran defensive back/linebacker Isaiah Simmons? He didn’t play a single defensive snap, instead watching Flott start at the position where he spent a majority of the summer and, at times, worked with the first team.
Safety Dane Belton, meanwhile, played the “moneybacker” position ahead of Simmons. It couldn’t have been what Simmons envisioned when he re-signed with the Giants this offseason.
Defensive captain Dexter Lawrence and third-year edge rusher Kayvon Thibodeaux also were unhappy with reporters’ questions in the postgame locker room. They each went with the “next question” approach at one point during their interview sessions.
“It’s on the leaders, the captains of the team, to get everyone’s minds right and get everyone ready for the new week,” Lawrence said after Sunday’s loss. “Flush this. Own it first of all. Own your bad plays, own your good plays. It’s on us to turn the page and get the guys ready for a new week, new challenge.”
That’s a lot for Daboll to massage this early in the campaign. These are the types of things that usually boil over in Week 18. Not Week 1.
This is the kind of stuff Daboll has to manage, on top of perhaps his biggest problem of all: quarterback Daniel Jones. He struggled badly again Sunday, an extension of what unfolded during a disastrous 2023 season. His QBR of 17.4 was the third lowest in Week 1.
Jones will remain the Giants’ starter. Hardly a surprise considering he took every first-team rep ahead of backup Drew Lock and third-stringer Tommy DeVito at training camp. In fact, Daboll will not alter the quarterback reps at all throughout the week. It’s likely not going to slow the outpouring of calls from the outside for Jones to lose his starting job.
Jones is doing his best to ignore it all.
“I’m focused on doing my job and playing as well as I can,” Jones said. “So I’ve got to play better. I know that, and I’m focused on doing that.”
It’s only Week 1, and this is where Daboll and the Giants stand. Nabers is being forced to answer questions about whether his quarterback is good enough. He was even asked in his postgame interview whether Jones looked for him as much as he expected in his first career game.
Daboll is going to have his hands full keeping it together, especially if they can’t win on the road Sunday against the Washington Commanders (1 p.m. ET, Fox). If the Giants lose to Minnesota and Washington, where are there going to be wins? What does this mean for Daboll and many of the guys in the locker room? The Giants have the Cleveland Browns and Dallas Cowboys on deck in Weeks 3 and 4.
The losing also seems to be wearing on Lawrence. He told ESPN several weeks back “there is only so much B.S. that a person can handle.”
The players are part of that equation. But so is the coach, who bears the ultimate responsibility of keeping everyone together.
It’s on Daboll to make sure he doesn’t lose this already fragile locker room. It’s not going to be easy if this season goes where Week 1 suggests it’s headed.
