After the Giants defeated the Titans in comeback fashion 21-20 in Tennessee on Sunday, Giants head coach Brian Daboll, who got his first career win following a gutsy two-point conversion try that gave New York the lead late, was seen on television dancing in the locker room.
On Monday, Daboll, who snapped New York’s five-game opening day losing streak, revealed what song he was dancing to and celebrating with the team.
“It was a Biggie(Smalls) song, and it was a good win,” he said.” These guys worked hard. They were dancing before I got in there. So, I don’t know if I was really dancing very much, if you want to call it that. But it’s good to celebrate with your guys. They put a lot of work (in). And again, credit to the guys that are out there playing. They had a lot of juice after that game, and rightfully so. They played a tough 60-minute game and had some good plays and had some bad plays that you had to bounce back from. They brought me in the circle there; I don’t think I’d call it dancing.”
Conventional wisdom says after you score a touchdown late in the game with an opportunity to tie, you kick the extra point, but Daboll rolled the dice and went for two, and of course, it worked. According to Daboll, he used analytics and other things to make his decision.
“I think analytics always plays a role in key decision makings,” he said. “I know what we do is we talk about that during the week, myself and (Director of Football Operations & Innovation Ty Siam) Ty and (Offensive Assistant/Game Manager) Cade (Knox), two of the guys that run that department on gameday with myself. And we go through tons of different situations; I mean, there were times on fourth down when I was deciding whether or not to go for it, just thought at the point in the game, regardless of what it said, it was a wise thing to punt. It just felt comfortable. We had conversation with it; defense stopped them. I just felt that the momentum of the game and the way we were playing in the second half, if we got down there to score again, we were going to do that regardless. But you certainly take into factor the three timeouts; we would probably have had an on-side kick if we didn’t get it, bring the three timeouts, and then have a really long field. But those are conversations that are happening during timeouts or in between series. But I lean heavily on those guys. One of them went to Cornell; another one went to Harvard. So, they’re pretty good guys to have.”
It was a bold call for sure by Daboll. Fortunately for the Giants, Tennessee’s Randy Bullock missed a field goal from 47 yards at the buzzer, and fortunately for New York, they were able to escape with a victory.
