Avery Daboll, Brian Daboll's youngest daughter, celebrated a birthday on Sunday, and all she wanted for her big day was to see Big Blue go to 7-2.
Mission accomplished after a 24-16 win over the Texans that, despite being the Giants’ eighth game out of nine to end within a one-score margin, was the first they’ve led wire-to-wire.
“She asked, “Get me a football with my name on it, dad,’” Daboll said after the game. “That’s pressure more than anything else. I want to wish her a happy birthday, and good to get a win.”
The Giants’ formula was simple, as it has been all season: be smart with the ball (they won the turnover battle 2-0) and ride Saquon Barkley (35 carries for 152 yards and one touchdown, plus one catch for eight yards).
“He looked good to me,” Daboll smiled. “What did he have, 35 for 152? The thing with him is that he takes a lot of shots, so the sports science staff tries to do the best job we can of practicing him the right way.”
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“It's really fun, to be honest,” Barkley said of his workload. “At the end of the day like I said, just want to a find a way to win games and today that was the mindset that we needed to get the job done and we were able to get it done.”
Coming off the bye week, Barkley had a little extra spring in his step, and it showed.
“This week he was fresh, so he had a really good week of practice; he was running the ball 80 yards and coming back for more,” Daboll said. “I thought what he did during the week carried over. He had a good day, and he’s having a great season for us.”
And now the Giants are 7-2, their best start since 2008 (when they went 12-4 in trying to defend their Super Bowl title), and own the third-best record in the NFC more than halfway through their season.
“You have to enjoy the wins and reflect a little bit on where we are; certainly it’s a lot better on this side of it than how we’ve been in years past,” Jones said.
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But, in true fashion of a Brian Daboll team, the Giants are right back to business, knowing they have a Lions team that won a thriller on Sunday coming up next, ahead of a short week leading up to the Cowboys on Thanksgiving Day.
“You have to enjoy that and appreciate it, but at the same time, know there’s still a lot for us to improve on,” Jones said. “There’s a lot still out there for us to do, especially on offense, so that’s where we’re focused.”
Added Barkley: “To be completely honest, it feels good, but you're not too excited about it because you know it's a long season and you got to keep going week-by-week. We're doing it right now, 7-2, great start, especially coming off a bye week and a loss. That was our mindset, come out and go 1-0. We were able to do that and now we got to build on that to next week.”
Follow Lou DiPietro on Twitter: @LouDiPietroWFAN
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