Brian Daboll, Aaron Glenn and how young QBs can shape a coach's future, too
Giants head coach Brian Daboll, left, and Jets head coach Aaron Glenn. Credit: AP / Butch Dill ; Jim McIsaac
Getting to work with a young hotshot quarterback can feel like a blessing for an NFL head coach. It certainly feels that way when they are shown giving war room high-fives and making welcome-to-the-program phone calls each spring.
It also can be a curse.
The last four times a player at that position was selected first overall in the draft, the head coach who helped make that decision was dismissed during the player’s rookie season. It happened in 2021 with Trevor Lawrence and Urban Meyer in Jacksonville, in 2023 with Bryce Young and Frank Reich in Carolina and in 2024 with Caleb Williams and Matt Eberflus in Chicago, and on Monday, it happened with Cam Ward and Brian Callahan in Tennessee.
Part of that is because of the prerequisite needed to have that first overall pick: A team must be really bad to begin with, and adding an unproven commodity rarely makes the kind of immediate impact required to keep everyone employed.
But it’s not only the very-top-of-the-draft guys that doom coaches. Since 2016, there have been 39 quarterbacks selected in the first round. Seventeen of them — nearly half — have had their head coach fired before they got to their second seasons. Two of the three quarterbacks who came to New York as first-rounders between 2016 and 2024 had it happen to them (Sam Darnold and Daniel Jones did; Zach Wilson didn’t).
Such turnover can be a huge disruption to the player’s development and progress, not to mention confidence.
So as Jaxson Dart begins to settle into his rookie season with the Giants and the Jets undoubtedly begin the process of finding a new quarterback in the upcoming draft, both organizations must make an honest assessment of their head-coaching positions.
The Giants should keep Brian Daboll. He seems to have a genuine chemistry with Dart — even if that occasionally leads him astray of the league’s concussion protocol — and they have brought out the best in each other.
The Jets need to make sure Aaron Glenn is their guy before they go and select another quarterback in April. If there is any doubt in their mind about Glenn — and at 0-6, that might be starting to creep in — they should switch him out before giving him a say in what is sure to be a very high pick.
It’s common to bemoan the lack of patience that teams show young players at that critical position. Just look around the league at late-blooming quarterbacks who are succeeding after having been given up on elsewhere: Sam Darnold, Geno Smith and Mac Jones have become solid starters and the MVP race could come down to Jones and Baker Mayfield.
Just as important as picking the right player and having him be a personality fit with the head coach, though, is having them be on something close to the same schedule together. With many of the success stories around the league in recent years — starting with Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid in Kansas City right up to Jayden Daniels and Dan Quinn in Washington — getting those two critical timelines in sync is just as important as who the teams choose for the jobs.
The Giants did that in 2004 when they hired Tom Coughlin and landed Eli Manning within months of each other, and it paid off. They did not do that in 2019 when they fired Pat Shurmur after Daniel Jones’ rookie season, then doubled up on the disturbance by giving Jones two regressive years under Joe Judge.
“We’ve done everything possible to screw this kid up,” president and CEO John Mara said of Jones after firing Judge in 2022.
If he wants to avoid saying similar things about Dart, then he needs to stick with Daboll and see what the two of them can build together. Give Dart the consistency that helps young quarterbacks thrive.
If Mara was weary of Daboll, the time to get rid of him was last year, not this one, no matter where things go from here.
Mara likely knew that to be the case, even when he expressed his growing lack of patience at the end of last season. Bringing Daboll back for 2025 and then letting him have such a powerful voice in selecting Dart wasn’t exactly a contract extension, but it certainly was a signal that Daboll would be staying around to at least see the formative part of Dart’s career take off. Now that we are into that era, and even if the bumps that usually accompany a rookie quarterback show up, it would be a mistake to hand Daboll’s quarterback over to another head coach.
Picking a quarterback in the first round is unlike any other position. It brings joy to a franchise but also puts everyone on notice. Those who succeed at it have an organizational plan that reaches beyond the first few months of the undertaking.
Having a conviction on the player is only part of that process. Having a conviction on the coach is the often-overlooked piece. The Giants and Jets should understand that as they navigate their immediate futures.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
