EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — History will show that the New York Giants’ Brian Daboll era will land somewhere between the Ben McAdoo and Joe Judge years, according to the franchise’s head coach winning percentages.
Daboll finished with a 20-40-1 record (.336) before being fired Monday. He went 11-33 (.250) over his final two and a half seasons. Only the Tennessee Titans were worse during that span.
“Not good enough,” Daboll would say seemingly every time his team lost.
It applied to most of his tenure.
Multiple sources told ESPN over the past four years that there never seemed to be any sort of consistency with Daboll’s decision-making. Multiple players have even said the Giants were too worried about the narratives and perceptions from outside the building.
Daboll and Giants general manager Joe Schoen were ultimately separated, much as owner John Mara said was the case several years ago, because they had different jobs. In the same statement that announced Daboll was relieved of his duties Monday, Schoen was put in charge of the impending coaching search. Barring a sudden change at the end of the season or specific demands from a coaching candidate, Schoen is expected to lead this team forward.
It goes along with the constant back and forth that existed over the past 18 months or so, as team sources have said the front office believed there was more talent than the club’s record showed. The coaching staff was not getting the most out of the talent.
That was reflected in the decision to retain Schoen and fire Daboll despite both having identical win-loss records on their résumés.
“We feel like Joe has assembled a good young nucleus of talent, and we look forward to its development,” Mara said in the statement.
It was Daboll and his coaching that took the fall after blowing four double-digit leads on the road while collecting a 2-8 record this season. The final straw was relinquishing a 10-point lead with under four minutes remaining Sunday in Chicago during a game in which rookie quarterback Jaxson Dart left with an injury.
Dart suffered a concussion against the Bears, the fourth time in eight games dating to the preseason when he found himself being examined for a concussion.
It seemed inevitable that this would be the final straw for Daboll when the prized quarterback (whom he was instrumental in drafting) finally took the wrong type of hit. This one — a hard hit on a fumble in the third quarter — had Dart walking slowly off the field. It occurred after weeks of Daboll being asked about whether he needed to be more judicious in how and when his quarterback ran the ball. Rather than insisting Dart needed to be more cautious to limit the hard hits, the Giants asserted publicly as well as behind closed doors that they wanted Dart to play his game. They didn’t want to sap the aggressiveness and competitiveness that got him drafted in the first round.
“We’ll do the things we think we need to do,” Daboll said recently about being more cautious with Dart running the football.
Daboll needed to win games this year. He was on the hot seat, dating to last season when sources believed his job was in jeopardy.
Mara made it clear that the franchise needed to see significantly better results if there would be a Year 5.
“It better not take too long because I’ve just about run out of patience,” Mara said at the time.
It wasn’t long ago that Daboll was being praised for the same emotion that proved to be his downfall. In his first game with the Giants in 2022, the team won on a last-second missed field goal by the Titans. The first-time head coach was first pumping as he ran up and down the sideline. It all seemed so refreshing during a successful first season that saw him win Coach of the Year and the team capture a playoff game — still its only postseason success since Super Bowl XLVI in 2012.
That same fire and emotion would become problematic as things went south. There was the time when he flipped a tablet at quarterback Daniel Jones. There was the sideline berating of defensive coordinator Wink Martindale that extended in and out of the locker room at halftime of a 2023 loss to the Dallas Cowboys. The constant explosions even led to Schoen listening in on the headsets during games to make sure Daboll was communicating effectively with his coaches. Heck, Daboll was even caught on camera giving special teams coordinator Thomas McGaughey a death stare during a preseason game early in his tenure.
This season alone, there were the weekly sideline tirades, a hate-challenge following a tush push non-fumble earlier this month and illegally running into the blue medical tent while Dart was being examined for a concussion against the Philadelphia Eagles. That embarrassment cost Daboll $100,000 and the team $250,000.
Mara had to release a statement condoning Daboll’s actions following the Giants’ biggest win since Daboll’s first season.
One player recently told ESPN of Daboll exploding and threatening to take away playcalling from assistant head coach/offensive coordinator Mike Kafka after tight end Theo Johnson dropped a crucial third-down pass downfield against the Eagles.
Meanwhile, Daboll had already taken playcalling from Kafka at times during the 2023 season and then full time for 2024. That didn’t go well to the point that Mara made a point of recommending he give it back to Kafka this season.
Kafka was named the interim head coach by ownership Monday.
Ring around the decisions — a constant during the Daboll era. This all probably would’ve been viewed in a different light if it weren’t for all the other cracks in Daboll’s program.
In 2024, Daboll’s finger-pointing turned in the direction of Jones after he fired Martindale and two of his top assistants, McGaughey and offensive line coach Bobby Johnson after his second year in charge. Daboll dumped defensive backs coach Jerome Henderson and safeties coach Mike Trier after last season, only to watch the secondary struggle even more this year.
None of it made a dent in the win column. Getting rid of a quarterback such as Jones didn’t solve any woes. The losses have continued to pile up while Jones is having a resurgence and is 8-2 with the Indianapolis Colts.
Most importantly in New York, Daboll didn’t win enough games. The results speak for themselves. Coaches don’t go 3-14 by accident. Coaches are not 2-8 in three consecutive seasons by coincidence. Coaches don’t go 11-33 over the past two-plus seasons and get fired because of bad luck. The Giants could do little right under Daboll.
Several players told ESPN that word of the decision to fire Daboll spread before Monday’s team meeting at 1 p.m. local time. Some players found out while in a bible study session when the news went public at 12:43 p.m. They weren’t surprised because several players noticed Daboll’s postgame message the previous day was unusually curt. In retrospect, they viewed it as being resigned to his fate.
When the team convened, Schoen and Kafka shared the news. Daboll was gone before the season was over.