If it wasn’t immediately clear at coach Ben McAdoo’s giant-suit press conference that he doesn’t obsess over attire, it should be clear now that his first season as a head coach has commenced.
As explained by left guard Justin Pugh on Tuesday’s PFT Live, one of the biggest differences between McAdoo and his predecessor, Tom Coughlin, is the clothing mandate.
“He’s a little more lax on our dress code, so you don’t have to be in a suit everywhere you go, which is nice,” Pugh said. “We play music during practice, during the whole practice there’s always music going on so maybe it’s a little more laid back of an atmosphere. I would still say they do a lot of things very similarly. Obviously, Coach Mac was here when Coach Coughlin was the head coach, there was a lot of things he carried over. Brought some things from Green Bay that he’s learned, so it’s relatively the same.”
One thing that’s still the same: They continue to operate on Tom Coughlin time, where being on time means being five minutes early.
Whatever they’re doing, they’ve found a way to win games they may have lost a year ago. As a result, the Giants are 2-0 for the first time in Pugh’s career.
“I think finishing,” Pugh said when asked to identify the biggest difference between 2015 and 2016. “Finishing was the thing that we harped on last year that we needed to do in order to win those close games and now we’re coming back and we are finishing those games. The NFL is just so close, all the games come down to that fourth quarter for the most part and to be able to pull out those close games is what separates a good and a bad team. I think last year, I look at it and it’s kind of funny because we lost to Dallas opening game by one point, we go on to lose to the Saints on a last-second field goal, so we’ve kind of come back and beaten those teams we lost to last year in the same type of fashion.”
And that’s the only way the word “fashion” ever will be used in connection with McAdoo’s Giants. It’s all about football, and already the football focus is leading to better outcomes.