Brian Daboll finding success with these Brady, Belichick lessons

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The most successful head coaches are sponges who can take the lessons they learned in previous stops and apply them to their current jobs.

Brian Daboll appears to be in that category.

Daboll, who is off to a 7-2 start as the New York Giants' head coach, spent more than a decade working with Bill Belichick and Tom Brady over two separate stints on the New England Patriots' coaching staff from 2000 to 2006 and 2013 to 2016. In a feature story published Thursday, The Athletic's Dan Pompei revealed that Daboll has taken very detailed notes during each of his stops -- which included an observation about Brady in New England that he since has applied in New York.

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"One of those notes was on how Brady wanted the perimeter players to be able to view their assignments through the same lens he viewed them," Pompei wrote. "So when Daboll put the Giants’ offense together, he made sure the wide receivers and tight ends learned it the way (quarterback Daniel) Jones saw it."

While that may seem like a minor detail, the Giants have benefited greatly from getting their quarterback and pass-catchers on the same page. Jones is completing a career-high 68.2 percent of his passes and has thrown just two interceptions while leading five game-winning drives, the most in the NFL.

According to Pompei, Daboll also took a lesson from Belichick to "use your best players any way you can to help you win." He's certainly done that with Saquon Barkley, who is averaging an NFL-best 25.2 touches per game while lining up as a traditional running back, wide receiver and even Wildcat quarterback.

The Belichick coaching tree is littered with cautionary tales, most notably Josh McDaniels in Denver and Las Vegas, Matt Patricia in Detroit and Daboll's predecessor, Joe Judge, in New York. But Daboll appears to doing a good job of deploying the wisdom he gathered in New England while not trying to recreate the "Patriot Way."

The result is the Giants' best nine-game start to a season since 2008.

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