Dennard Wilson believes most coaches are too afraid to do what he did.
It brought him immediate dividends.
After the Giants defensive coordinator called out “traitors” in the unit for a lack of effort in the team’s 34-27 loss to the Saints in Week 6, he saw a response from his players during their 27-21 overtime win over the Texans before the bye week.
“I think too many coaches these days are scared to have those hard conversations,” Wilson said before practice Thursday. “And it goes back to this: What is your relationship with the group? What is your relationship with the player, right? See, if you build a relationship and you have this bond and you have this tight-knit group, you can speak to them in a certain way and identify certain things without attacking them personally. It’s not a personal attack. It’s a behavioral attack. And that’s how I go about it, and that’s how I’ve been trained to do this since I was a young coach 20-some years ago.”
Wilson was particularly agitated with players not running to the ball on defense in that loss to the Saints, during which they had 13 missed tackles.
The problem was obvious to him when watching the game back. And calling his team out publicly, to him, was the obvious next step.
Even if other coaches tend to keep those things in house and remain bland with the media.
“I think we get too caught up into not speaking the truth, right? The film doesn’t lie and it never lies,” Wilson said. “And it’s always evidence. It’s the silent tape. And what I said in front of this podium, they’ve heard me say it from the first day they were here. So it’s nothing that they haven’t heard before. It’s not calling out a specific player. It’s calling out a behavior. It’s calling out what we’re not doing collectively. Because at the end of the day, it’s me as well. So, if I let it slip, shame on me. So, it’s about us upholding the standard that we set in that room that we want to exemplify on a daily basis when we go out and play.”
Against the Texans, the Giants had just six missed tackles — less than half from a week before.
“They responded in a great way,” Wilson said. “They responded the way I knew they would respond. Honestly, we talked about watching the tape and seeing ourselves not running to the ball. They’re a proud bunch. I really didn’t have to say much. They knew that they had to come out and they had to run to the ball and play with toughness and physicality, and that’s what we did in the game.”
