They all know about the tradition, about Eli Manning and Tom Coughlin and Michael Strahan. They have heard or been told about Lawrence Taylor charging through the tunnel behind Bill Parcells and an assistant named Bill Belichick. And Sunday at 1 p.m., a hungry team driven to put an end to the misery of the recent Wilderness Years will be greeted warmly by a diehard fan base starving for the winner it deserves.
“It’s been a tough couple of years here,” Saquon Barkley told The Post, “but at the end of the day, we want to give the fans something to be proud about.”
The Giants owe their fans. They owe them better than a decade without a playoff win. They owe them a smart, tough, dependable team. They return home 1-0 for the first time since 2016 with a rookie head coach who plays to win.
They’ve cheated their fans long enough.
“This program has a rich history of successful teams, and I think if you’re a fan, they work hard to earn their money that they’re paying to watch us play, they want to see us win and compete for the championship,” Andrew Thomas told The Post. “That’s what we’re striving every day to get to.”
They want them to be loud? They’ll be loud at the start. Keep them loud. Play like Giants for a change. Defend your home field for a change. Make it a house of horrors for a change.
Brian Daboll and Daniel Jones are looking to have another postgame celebration in Week 2 as the Giants face the Panthers at MetLife Stadium.USA TODAY Sports“We want to create an atmosphere that is just back to New York Giants glory,” Julian Love told The Post.
This is Year 1 of a new regime’s rebuilding, so no one should be expecting miracles. But no one should have to remind the fan base that the Giants ain’t some clown-show organization.
“I think this city, this fan base, this community, they love winning. Without a doubt they need to be winning,” Love said.
It was the late George Steinbrenner who said: “Winning is the most important thing in my life, after breathing. Breathing first, winning next.” No one would be surprised if John Mara, who at the end of last season was holding his press conference at Rock Bottom, N.J., has felt compelled to utter those very words.
“The franchise has a lot of rich tradition, the fan base had a lot of expectation and a history of winning that they’ve been a part of in years past,” Daniel Jones said, “so we’re looking forward to doing everything we can and playing as well as we can each week.”
Wild-eyed optimists are dreaming of a 4-0 start — with a stretch that includes the Cowboys, minus Dak Prescott, and the vulnerable Bears and kicks off Sunday against the Panthers. The Giants are favored over Carolina in a game that only former Panthers and Giants general manager Dave Gettleman would be calling the Gettleman Bowl, with Christian McCaffrey dueling Barkley in a battle of his 2017 and 2018 first-round picks. But Daboll and Giants rookie GM Joe Schoen have only just begun what they hope will be the sweet, innocent climb from 23 wins in the franchise’s past 82 games.
“We know we can get the job done, we know we can go in and win these games,” Xavier McKinney told The Post. “We got a great coaching staff that’s really helping us and propelling us towards the right direction.”
Daboll won the hearts and minds of his team as well as the fan base when he went for 2 — and got it with Barkley — at the end of the upset of the Titans. This can be a different team, and Jones can be a different quarterback with a healthy, motivated Barkley showing up as arguably the best weapon on the field on any given Sunday. That coaching staff includes defensive coordinator Wink Martindale, who will have a plan for McCaffrey, Baker Mayfield and Panthers offensive coordinator Ben McAdoo.
Saquon BarkleyGetty ImagesCulture changes don’t always work. The previous coaching changes — McAdoo to Pat Shurmur to Joe Judge — didn’t work. Daboll is real. A same-guy-every-day straight-shooter. A leader. A pro. An offensive mind. An uninhibited dancer. On a scale of 1-10, why does Leonard Williams rate him just a 9?
“He’s short,” said Williams.
Here’s the kind of team the Giants said fans should expect on Sunday:
McKinney: “They’ll see a team that’s hungry, that’s competitive and that’s not getting complacent with just one win.”
Barkley: “You can’t promise wins or losses in this league. It’s a hard league, so many ups and downs. But a team that can go out there and never give up and fight. A team filled with grit.”
For the legions of long-suffering True Blue loyalists, a team that can’t promise losses would at least be a start. But only a start.
