Only three players and head coach Brian Daboll spoke after the Giants’ win over the Jaguars in Jacksonville, but those four each had a quote about one important aspect to the victory – so behold, a special edition of Giants Quotebook from Sunday’s victory!
XAVIER MCKINNEY on the fumble he forced to stop a Jaguars red zone possession: “Yeah, I mean, it was just one-on-one situation, and it was kind of one of those things where I knew we needed a play, so just did my best to try to hit the ball out. We've been practicing it in practice. [Giants Defensive Backs Coach Jerome Henderson] has done a great job of just bringing us aside and kind of doing things like that of practicing on punching a ball out. We haven't gotten a lot of picks, so we're just trying to generate turnovers any way we can, and we knew they were loose with the ball, so for me, I just punched at the ball, got it out, and it was a big play for us, and [Julian] Love got the ball back for us.”
DANIEL JONES on the Giants’ first first-possession touchdown since November 2021: “[Darius] Slay[ton] made a good play on the outside, so giving him a chance to do that, and he made a great play, got a good release and made a great play for us. I think that was key for us to get off to a good start, but we've got to build on that and find a way to keep that going.”
SAQUON BARKLEY on the Giants running the same rushing play/formation several times in a row: “Can't stop it, why not? The difference was I was just doing a better job of hitting it, trusting it. The O-line was doing a great job opening it up. I don't know if they realized that it was the same play until probably like the fifth or sixth time, to be completely honest. Then we had something off of when we keep it, and DJ made a big play, used his feet. It's hard; it can look like we're running the same play, but you can run so many things out of that formation. That's credit to [offensive coordinator Mike] Kafka and [offensive line coach] Bobby [Johnson] for setting us up. When you lean on defense throughout the game, you can feel them starting to soften up, and take them to the deep water and drown.”
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DABOLL on the “next man up” mentality: “It's like I've said before, whoever is in our building, it’s our job as a coaching staff to get them ready to play. It's their job to be a pro and learn how to play. That's why we evaluate these players. We practice them hard. If we feel like they can help us, they play. I think they did a good job stepping up. Those guys stay after practice and work really hard.”
And finally, MCKINNEY on when the Giants might start gaining more respect now that they’re 6-1: “I don’t know, and I really don't even care for that question anymore. I'm kind of tired of answering it because it's the same thing every week. Obviously, we know that. I really don't care. We don't care as a team. The only thing we can do is keep focusing on what we can do and keep getting better.”
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