As Brian Daboll walked off the field in Minneapolis on that momentous January day, he looked up into the stands, where adoring Giants fans cheered.
Daboll soaked in the moment. He held his hands high and applauded back to the crowd. Tears of joy appeared to well in his eyes.
Then a rookie head coach, Daboll had delivered the Giants’ first playoff victory since their 2011 Super Bowl title run. He would culminate that debut season, 2022, by winning the NFL’s Coach of the Year award.
Finally, the Giants had their guy.
On Wednesday — 983 days since that playoff win — Daboll stood behind an outdoor press conference podium in East Rutherford, awkwardly explaining how he had just played his last card available in this job — benching fading veteran quarterback Russell Wilson for first-round rookie Jaxson Dart after a disastrous 0-3 start, coming off last year’s 3-14 debacle.
With bright TV camera lights shining on Daboll, beads of sweat formed on his bald head. He looked exhausted. Someone passed him a towel. Daboll briefly closed his eyes as he wiped his brow with it — a moment of respite amid a barrage of questions.
Those questions still linger, even as Daboll leans into the hope of Dart — who he fell in love with during the pre-draft process — beginning Sunday afternoon at home against the 3-0 Chargers. Daboll went 9-7-1 in 2022 and won that wild-card playoff game in Minnesota. Since then, he is 9-28 in the regular season, with 14 losses in his last 15 games.
This 1-14 stretch is the worst run of 15 games in the 100-year history of the Giants, according to ESPN.
So what happened? How much blame does Daboll deserve for this debacle, with his offense consistently struggling? And was he ever actually a good coach to begin with? Or did he get too much credit for Josh Allen’s success in Buffalo?
“I think he brought a swagger back to New York,” Saquon Barkley, the Giants-turned-Eagles star running back, told NJ Advance Media. “Now what happened after I left [following 2023] and what’s going on now, I can’t speak on that.
“There’s more to it [than coaching] for why New York hasn’t been successful. And it’s something I used to lose sleep over. But now, I don’t, because it’s not my problem.”
As the Giants grapple for answers, Daboll has 14 games with Dart to prove he really is a quarterback guru and an offensive genius. The fate of this fourth-year Giants regime falls entirely on coaching now, which Daboll embraces. Four times Wednesday, he used the phrase “my decision” when speaking about replacing Wilson with Dart.
Daboll knows his current urgent reality: If Dart doesn’t show potential, he is gone, along with general manager Joe Schoen, who has hamstrung this roster with failed draft picks and poor decisions, like letting Barkley leave in free agency.
Plus, Daboll’s continued losing and his seemingly desperate early-season move to Dart come as the quarterback he ditched last year, Daniel Jones, is thriving for the 3-0 Colts. Why, then, could Daboll not get more out of Jones in his 16 starts after 2022?
Jones’ success only fuels Giants fans’ frustration with Daboll. Before Sunday’s game, at least two airplanes will fly over MetLife Stadium, towing banners protesting the team’s horrible results on his watch — aerial anger that already equals last season’s plane banner total.
And if that doesn’t sufficiently embarrass co-owners John Mara and Steve Tisch, what do they think about Daboll’s unusual behavior behind the podium Wednesday and Thursday?
First, he denied being the in-house leak for ESPN’s pre-Week 2 report about the Giants hoping to give Dart time to sit and watch, seemingly pointing the finger at Schoen and/or ownership. Then Daboll made air quotes with his fingers when referring to the Giants’ “medical people,” which could be interpreted as a sarcastic shot at the team’s training staff. (Daboll said Friday he was “absolutely not” upset with the trainers.)
At the very least, the optics of it all are weird — especially amid a tumultuous week for Daboll, as he prepares to mold Dart and coach for his job down the stretch against a brutal schedule.
“Brian Daboll, to me, is a good football coach,” said former Raiders general manager Mike Mayock. “I don’t think that he all of a sudden gets bad.”
Still, Mayock said, “Jaxson Dart is going to uphold his end of the bargain. He’ll be ready to develop. The question is: Will they be able to help him develop? We’re going to find out whether or not the Giants can provide the infrastructure for a young quarterback to thrive.”
‘That guy couldn’t play dead in a Western’
The cynical way to look at Daboll’s success in 2022 is by pointing out how often the Giants got fortunate breaks — and that they went 1-4-1 after a 7-2 start, before clinching a playoff spot in Week 17. Barkley takes a different outlook.
“Dabes did a good job of establishing and building the culture when I was there that first year,” he said. “That was a big reason why we went to the playoffs.”
But Daboll failed to sustain success, particularly on offense. The Giants finished 31st and 29th in Pro Football Focus’ offensive ratings in 2023 and 2024, as it became clear Daboll could not turn Jones into the franchise quarterback they thought he could be.
Meanwhile, Daboll — who can be volcanic at times — had an ugly falling out with defensive coordinator Wink Martindale after 2023. His replacement, Shane Bowen, has underwhelmed.
“There are probably five or six legitimate elite coaches who are difference makers and can consistently elevate everybody around them,” said Steve Palazzolo, PFF’s former lead analyst, now with The 33rd Team. “Then there are a slew of coaches who are fine, but I just don’t know if they’re always going to be able to make lemonade, given whatever lemons are given to them. Daboll is probably in the middle somewhere.”
The biggest issue Palazzolo sees: As the Giants rebuilt last year, they should have found “an upward trajectory” near season’s end. Instead, “they were getting smoked,” he said. From mid-October through mid-December, they lost a franchise-record 10 straight games.
Daboll seemingly upgraded at quarterback this year with Wilson. But as the Giants’ offense sputtered in two of their first three games, it became clear that Wilson’s late-career limitations weren’t their only issue.
Even in his one good game — the Week 2 loss at Dallas, where he took advantage of the Cowboys consistently blowing deep coverage — the Giants were an undisciplined mess, drawing 14 accepted penalties for 160 yards.
A week earlier, in Washington, Daboll got into a shouting match on the sideline with star wide receiver Malik Nabers, who was unhappy with the team’s lack of energy.
Then, after Nabers (two catches for 13 yards) was a non-factor in Sunday night’s 22-9 loss to the Chiefs, the NFL world scratched its head.
ESPN analyst and former NFL quarterback Dan Orlovsky slammed Daboll’s coaching staff on Twitter: “The Giants are turning Nabers into an old school Baylor WR. Just run fast and straight every play. What are we doing?!?!?!!?”
Said Palazzolo: “Yeah, I saw that — and I don’t know why either.”
While noting that Wilson’s problems with reading a defense limited even Seahawks coaches during his prime, Palazzolo wonders where Daboll’s inventiveness has gone.
“When Tommy DeVito took over [in 2023], it almost felt like they got more creative,” he said. “They got the most out of him for a period of time. That’s what I’ll be looking for [now]. I’m curious to see if there’s a bit more creativity with Jaxson Dart.”
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Still, creativity only goes so far when you don’t acquire good enough players, especially on the offensive line. That’s largely where former NFL offensive guard Mark Schlereth, now a Fox Sports analyst, put the blame for the Giants not being able to “take pressure off” Jones. He considers Jones’ success with the Colts “an indictment” of Schoen more so than Daboll. Schlereth still shakes his head over Schoen drafting Evan Neal at No. 7 in 2022.
“That guy couldn’t play dead in a Western,” Schlereth said. “But he’s big. He looks the part, though, right? You know what we used to call those guys? First-off-the-bus guys. Send him first off the bus in a tight T-shirt and shorts to intimidate the other team. But don’t put him in the game — because he can’t play.
“They have not been able to control the line of scrimmage under Brian Daboll. I don’t care who you are as a coach. If you can’t win the line of scrimmage, you’re just not going to be very good. I would tend to point to talent more than I would to coaching [as the root of the Giants’ problems]. Coaching matters, but players matter more.”
So does building your offense from the inside out — with the line — carry as much value, if not more, than a flashy receiver like Nabers? Schoen got the Nabers pick right. But will it matter, since he missed on linemen like Neal, Josua Ezeudu and John Michael Schmitz?
“Wide receivers in our league, they’re children,” Schlereth said. “Ten other guys have to do their job for them to get a football. They’re completely dependent. And they whine and b—- if they’re not fed. They are toddlers on an NFL hierarchy. Yet we treat them like they’re important. But to me, they’re the least important part of your offense.”
Jaxson Dart … the new Josh Allen?
Up in Buffalo, Allen continues to thrive. He was the NFL’s Most Valuable Player in 2024. In the Bills’ Week 1 win over the Ravens, he threw for 251 yards and three touchdowns in the fourth quarter.
In New Jersey, Daboll keeps spiraling. His career winning percentage, .343, ranks 186th of 204 NFL head coaches all-time, with a minimum of 50 games worked, according to The Athletic.
The Giants hired Daboll mostly because of the success he experienced with Allen from 2018-21. And the hiring, by and large, was celebrated as a success across the league.
But what if Allen was going to be great anyway? Did Daboll get too much credit?
“Yes,” Palazzolo said. “Tom Brady, he’s still getting people jobs across the NFL, just because he was elite. Now that [Allen is] there [at an elite level], he was probably going to get there. I think a lot of elite quarterbacks do carry the coach. Elite quarterbacks tend to give a lot of coaches a lot of opportunities, whether they are deserved or not.”
Ultimately, if Daboll can’t show progress with Dart this season, he surely will not get another NFL head coaching shot, especially if Jones sustains this early success with the Colts.
“If Jones does have a high-end season, of course, you’re going to look back and say, ‘Hey, the Giants wasted an opportunity with him,’” Palazzolo said. “Those things start to add up.”
But Daboll can’t worry about that now, as he pivots to Dart.
“It does feel like they’re making this move because the offense doesn’t look good and Russell Wilson is not playing well, more so than Jaxson Dart is ready,” Palazzolo said. “The coach saving his job thing [by switching to a rookie quarterback] rarely works well. But I think it’s an opportunity.”
An enormous one, at that — for Daboll’s Giants job security and his entire career.
Can he save his job?
So what now? What would success with Dart look like, presuming wins might be sparse?
The Giants’ shortcomings up front “concern me a lot” as Dart steps in, Schlereth said, though he hopes the quarterback can continue relying on his legs with zone-read plays, as he did while playing three snaps in each of the past two games.
“If they’re going to be successful, he’s going to have to run a bunch of that stuff,” Schlereth said. “Then it becomes: Can you protect yourself and make smart decisions when you are running?”
There’s also this evergreen lesson for rookie quarterbacks who tend to get greedy for a big passing play: “Does he take the first guy that’s open?” Schlereth said. “You’ve got to be willing to take a profit and get rid of the football — and do boring well.”
Former NFL quarterback Matt Simms, son of Giants legend Phil Simms, expects Daboll and playcaller Mike Kafka to dip into Lane Kiffin’s brain.
“You will see plays that Jaxson ran multiple times for that [Mississippi] offense recreated for this Giants offense,” Simms said, referring to shotgun-formation run-pass option plays and “resetting the pocket” by getting Dart out into space on bootlegs or play-action fakes.
Simms, for one, has high expectations.
“There were some signs in preseason where honestly, I wouldn’t have been shocked if he was named the starter at the end of the preseason, by the way that he played,” he said.
Mayock — a longtime draft analyst — envisions a different blueprint for Daboll to follow. He sees Dart as a potential “mirror image” of what Bo Nix, whom Schoen passed on in the 2024 draft, accomplished as a rookie with Denver’s Sean Payton. To achieve that, Mayock said, the Giants must do what those Broncos did: Run the ball and play stout defense.
“That formula works with the kind of quarterback Jaxson Dart is,” Mayock said. “For any rookie quarterback, you’ve got to help him. I think Daboll knows what he’s doing. But it can’t just be [Dart] throwing the ball 40 times a game. It’s not just about Daboll and play calls or even how good the quarterback is.
“A lot of it is going to come down to how good that offensive line is. You can’t go 2.8 yards per carry and expect the kid is going to all of a sudden going to hit a bunch of third-and-longs. Not going to happen. If they’re getting down 21-3 every game, and they’ve got to throw the ball all day, it’s going to be a long season for Jaxson Dart and Brian Daboll.”
By the way Daboll looked Wednesday, sweating under those TV lights, it’s already been a long season for the 50-year-old coach who once appeared to be the Giants’ savior. Daboll’s back is against the wall with 14 games to go. The clock is ticking. How will he respond?
Eric Mangini, who knows Daboll well, has a pretty good idea. They worked together with the Patriots in the early 2000s, and Daboll later served as Mangini’s Jets quarterbacks coach and Browns offensive coordinator.
“He is not a ‘woe is me’ guy,” Mangini said. “He is: ‘OK, here’s the problem. Let’s try to fix it.’ I don’t think that he’s looking at it as throwing his hands up, like: ‘There’s nothing I can do.’ That’s as far away from his personality as you can get.”
On Jan. 15, 2023, Daboll walked off the turf at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minnesota with tears of joy in his eyes. That, to Giants fans, feels like a different world now — one the franchise is drifting further away from by the day.
Can he save it?
“You get into a situation like this, and there’s no magic pill,” Mangini said. “There’s no one player that you’re going to be able to go get. If it’s going to get right, it’s going to get right with the people that are there now. I’m sure that’s the message Brian is preaching. That’s the reality.”