Brian Daboll's Giants legacy could one day be looked at fondly because of Jaxson Dart
Giants head coach Brian Daboll and quarterback Jaxson Dart talk during an NFL game against the Los Angeles Chargers at MetLife Stadium on Sept. 28. Credit: Ed Murray
There was a throwaway line in the Giants’ statements on Monday announcing that they had fired Brian Daboll as their head coach. It was buried between the news itself and the parts about what happens next. It was simple, direct and easy to miss.
“We appreciate Coach Daboll for his contributions to our organization,” it read, attributed jointly to John Mara and Steve Tisch.
It’s the kind of platitude that teams say at times like these. It usually doesn’t mean anything. In fact, it usually means the opposite. What these organizations really want to say is: Thanks for nothing!
This one stood out, though, because, well, it actually might be true.
Daboll’s tenure with the Giants became untenable. A fourth straight loss on Sunday, a fourth this season in which the Giants held a double-digit lead and a third consecutive season in which the team had a record of 2-8 through 10 games meant his time here was up. If you listened closely and watched his body language in the postgame news conference in Chicago, Daboll knew it, too.
When a franchise stops asking itself if it is going to fire a coach and starts wondering when it will, the answer is right in front of the decision-makers, and the Giants acted accordingly. No reason to delay the inevitable for the sake of appearances.
Daboll’s immediate legacy, therefore, will be all about losing. There are enough examples of his failed decisions to fill 20 of these columns, from the overtime loss to the Jets in 2023 to the kicker-less fiasco against Washington in 2024 right up to all the debacles of this season in Dallas, Denver, New Orleans and Chicago.
He’ll be ridiculed, lampooned and kicked around for a while to come. He’ll be a cautionary tale for future head coaches and the pitfalls they should avoid. He’ll be added to the list of Giants punchlines with Shurmur, Judge and McAdoo.
But there also is a very good chance that in very short order, he will be remembered for something else.
One day, if all of this turns around as swiftly as it may, he should go down in team history not as the buffoon who delivered little other than heartache and indigestion to the Giants but as the guy who gave them the precious gift of Jaxson Dart.
There were scouts and others who liked Dart as a prospect, but it clearly was Daboll who became enamored of the young passer from Ole Miss. It was Daboll who pushed the Giants to pursue him and trade up for him. It was Daboll who knew he was staking whatever clout he still had within the organization on drafting Dart and then making the decision to start him in Week 4.
The two had an exceptionally close relationship, probably because their personalities were so in line with each other.
Dart couldn’t save Daboll’s job, though. Not without Malik Nabers and Cam Skattebo, the other two Daboll disciples on the field; the three of them never even got a chance to play in a full game together under Daboll. Not without the help of a defense that continually crumbled and consists of supposed star players who fade into obscurity at key moments. And certainly not from the concussion protocol in which Dart landed on Sunday.
Now all he can do is save Daboll’s reputation.
“I’m banking on you,” Daboll told Dart in April in a phone conversation shortly after his selection.
He knew what the stakes were.
“Smart man,” Dart said.
Dart was right. Daboll isn’t a dope. Not everyone is cut out to be successful as a head coach, and Daboll may be better as an offensive designer than as the big decision-maker. There is no shame in that. Plenty of other men, from Norv Turner to Steve Spagnuolo, have found they are similarly suited to such secondary roles.
He also was done no favors by general manager Joe Schoen, with whom he arrived here as Buffalo buddies in 2022. The personnel has been lacking for the majority of his tenure. A steady parade of Pro Bowlers, MVP candidates and Super Bowl winners have walked out of the locker room doors in the past few years, and not because of decisions that Daboll made. It’s hard for a coach to push the right buttons when all of them are wrong.
Schoen now will get to pick the next head coach for what is sure to become one of the top job opportunities of the next hiring cycle . . . mostly, again, because of Dart’s mere presence and promise.
Daboll won’t be around to see what becomes of his long-term project that turned into a short-term relationship. Someone else will get to reap those rewards, maybe even one day hand a Lombardi Trophy to Dart through a storm of confetti.
Daboll, though, will have his fingerprints all over that silver beauty. Whatever becomes of Dart in these next few years and possibly longer with the Giants will all be traced back to Daboll.
The Giants think they appreciate Daboll’s contributions to their organization now?
Just wait.
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.
