For the first time in his NFL career, Brian Daboll is not just a man affected by the mass roster purges at the NFL’s cutdown deadline – he, along with Giants GM Joe Schoen, will be responsible for making many of those decisions.
The Giants will purge their roster from 80 to 53 by 4 p.m. Tuesday, and then will end up scouring the waiver wire to see if there are any upgrades to the 53 they kept and more moves to be made.
That means saying goodbye to at least two dozen players who have spent the last few months battling for a Big Blue roster spot, and Daboll got ahead of the curve on the departures after Sunday’s preseason finale against the Jets.
"I told everybody I appreciate all their efforts," Daboll said after Sunday’s loss. "This is a tough time for players. It's also a tough time for coaches, for equipment staff, for trainers, for video, for cafeteria workers that have built relationships with players that have been here since April or whatever it may be. And you build relationships, and when someone doesn't make it, again, you're empathetic towards that. But that's the business we live in. And I'm glad everybody put their best foot forward."
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Sunday was a last chance for many players to make an impression and hopefully be kept on the 53, and Daboll used a lot of his second and third teams to get those evaluations. He’ll take another look, too, from outside the bubble, to help that process along.
"I'll watch the game, and then, I'm sure we'll have conversations tonight. We'll meet in the morning. We'll meet again in the morning. We'll meet again in the morning. And then, we'll meet in the afternoon.
There will be a lot of meetings,” Daboll said Sunday.
And those meetings will be tough, because even with two of their 11-man draft class lost for the season, the Giants had those nine rookies plus a lot of other young players in camp – and with a new regime in place, perhaps even some veterans aren’t safe, either.
“At this time, they're all tough regardless…it's a tough decision anytime you're releasing a player,” Daboll said. “Whether they were capable enough to make it or not, it's still tough. But there's certainly a lot of conversation that will happen here tonight, tomorrow, the next day to try to do what's best for our team.”
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