Brian Daboll sidesteps question of whether he had rough meeting with Shedeur Sanders
As we learned from last year's offseason Hard Knocks, Giants coach Brian Daboll likes to put quarterback prospects on the white board and grill them.
As we learned from last year's offseason Hard Knocks, Giants coach Brian Daboll likes to put quarterback prospects on the white board and grill them.
On Thursday, a report emerged suggesting that one such session between Daboll and quarterback prospect Shedeur Sanders did not go well.
Todd McShay of The Ringer, previously a longtime fixture on ESPN's draft coverage, had this to say on Thursday, via Dan Benton of USA Today: "Shedeur didn’t have a great interview with Brian Daboll in a private visit. An install package came in. Preparation wasn’t there for it. [He] got called out on it. Didn’t like that. Brian didn’t appreciate him not liking it."
(This claim shows the difference between attributing facts and opinions to an unnamed source. This is a specific anecdote with little room for interpretation or editorial, not a generalized airing of grievances under an excessive grant of anonymity.)
Daboll was asked about the report on Friday, after the Giants picked defensive tackle Darius Alexander. Daboll did not directly answer the question.
"Yeah, I'd say we had good meetings with all the guys that came in here [for] visits," Daboll said. "Quarterback meetings were productive. And, you know. we're happy with Jaxson [Dart]."
G.M. Joe Schoen thereafter shut it down, trying to focus the questions on Alexander and not on players not on the New York roster.
Obviously, the Giants preferred Dart. The real question, to which we'll never know the answer, is whether they would have taken Sanders before pick No. 144, if they knew they could have gotten him that late.
However it would have played out, Shedeur now has a Giants-related draft story to parallel his father's. Here's what Deion Sanders had to say in 2017 about his experience with the Giants in 1989, when they wanted him to take a lengthy test: "They sat me down and gave me a thick book,” Deion Sanders said at the time. “I mean, this thing was thicker than a phone book. I said, ‘What’s this?’ They said, ‘This is our test that we give all the players.’ I said, ‘Excuse me, what pick do you have in the draft?’ They said, I think, 10th. I said, ‘I’ll be gone before then. I’ll see y’all later. I ain’t got time for this.’ That’s a true story.”
Maybe one of these days Shedeur will tell his version of the true story of his interaction with the Giants. Whatever it was, they ended up wanting Jaxson Dart.