The New York Giants opened up their preseason schedule falling short against the Detroit Lions 21-16 this past Friday night at Ford Field in Detroit Michigan. Adrian Martinez scored on a 1-yard quarterback sneak with 1:51 left to give the Detroit the preseason victory
Head Coach Brian Daboll felt there were a lot of positives in the loss as the second year coach looks at this game as a learning experience and steps forward to help this year’s team grow.
“I think it’s just the next step, part of the process,” said Daboll. “The practices and now the game and there’s a lot of guys, particularly young guys that played in competitive spots and now to sit back and evaluate some of the things that we can fix and help those guys with, both as players and as coaches. This is the first game we coached in a while and there’s plenty of things we can all do better, and that’s – hopefully next week you improve on the things that weren’t as good and make some strides for the next few days until we play Carolina.”
Obviously for safety of the injury bug, majority of the starters sat in Detroit including starting QB Daniel Jones, Saquon Barkley. Daboll did inform the media that some of the players did have a workout.
“Yeah, they want to get a good workout in,” said Daboll. “Weren’t going to get any playing time tonight, so (Giants QB) Danny (Jones) organized a workout with the guys that weren’t going to play.”
Quarterback Tommy DeVito threw a 14-yard scoring pass to tight end Tommy Sweeney with 4:55 remaining in the second quarter to give the Giants a 10-point lead against Detroit. The Lions rallied for a 21-16 victory Friday night in Ford Field, but for the Giants the DeVito-Sweeny connection was one of the game’s highlights.
“Yeah, I know they’d like to get a couple more of those,” said Daboll. “But it was – I think probably pretty cool for those two guys. I think he was a freshman when Sweeney was a senior. So sudden change you got there on the 13-yard line, and he made a nice rail swing, made a nice catch. Got to be able to do that more when we get the ball down there.”
DeVito entered the game after Tyrod Taylor played the first two series. He completed 15 of 24 passes for 155 yards and ran for 11 yards on four carries. DeVito was also sacked five times and threw an interception on the Giants’ final play, a desperation fourth-and-15 from their own 33-yard line.
DeVito was asked about the advice given from his fellow teammates Daniel Jones and Tyrod Taylor before the game and both told him to enjoy the experience. Advice he took to heart.
“Really just to enjoy it, ” DeVito explained. “D.J. told me he was nervous the first time going out for his first preseason game. Obviously, Tyrod’s had a million of them, so he’s sort of helped me with certain situations like, ‘Be weary in case the headset cuts off.’ Because I’ve never really had a headset on before, it’s not something I’ve really thought about. So little things like that that they’ve helped me with coming into the game, really just taking a deep breath and enjoy it. That’s what I tried to do”
The Giants return to the field this upcoming weekend against the Carolina Panthers at Metlife Stadium.