When New York Giants head coach Brian Daboll says he wants to see an exhilarating competition across the board, he’s not kidding.
In addition to players competing for roster spots and roles on the team, Daboll introduced a different type of competition where it’s about matching, if you will, between a player on offense (quarterback Daniel Jones) and one on the Defense (Safety Xavier McKinney) goes on with calling up the games for their respective units.
“I think there’s a competitive friendly fire there and the boys get a kick out of it. There was a lot of energy at the end of the training,” said Daboll. “I asked X (McKinney) this morning if he liked his play call and so did Daniel and usually you like it when it works and you don’t like it when it doesn’t. But X was pretty firm in his decision.”
In addition to creating competition, Daboll pointed out that if radio communications are lost during a game, a team must be ready. When that happens, he wants players to be able to handle things themselves.
That’s fine with McKinney, who said coaches have had players do this since OTAs.
“It is fun; it’s a competitive moment,” he said. “We’re both trying to win, so we’re both trying to call the best game so we’re going to be successful.”
More Giants training camp coverage
While it’s not such a far-fetched idea to have the quarterback play call plays for offense, asking the starting security to call plays on defense instead of the middle linebacker is.
Scroll to Next
In recent years, the Giants have had their middle linebacker fill that role, including Blake Martinez before his season-ending knee injury in Week 3.
But times are changing, and with new defensive coordinator Wink Martindale, the decision to let McKinney rather than Martinez call games could be a big clue as to how each player should be used.
McKinney in particular, part of the team’s long-term plans, expects to be on the field for every defensive snap. In contrast, Martinez, whose workload was scaled back on Friday after increasing slightly on Thursday, will only be signed until the end of this season.
Martindale also tends to make more personnel changes seen up front than in the back four, so the expectation is that the center linebacker might not see as many snaps on this defense as he has in the past.
McKinney is still learning defense but said he feels a lot more at home in the system. To help with that process, at Martindale’s suggestion, he connected with former NFL safetyman Eric Weddle, who provided the signals for Martindale’s Ravens defense during the 2016-2018 season.
“He’s actually really helped me cover up certain things and be on the same page with Wink,” McKinney said of his phone calls with Weddle.
“He really helped me watch movies, study film like he did when he had Wink, so he was really helpful.”
McKinney doesn’t know if he’ll get the radio in his helmet for the season, but if the coaches ask him to fill that role full-time, he said he’s fine with it.
“I’ve done it before – I did it at ‘Bama. It’s not surprising, or it’s not too difficult,” he said. “It’s different when you have grown men in the group and you’re trying to call everyone. Obviously if you are at the back end you may have to walk 30 meters and back to get the game to everyone. For me that is not unusual.”