Brian Daboll made his move with Jaxson Dart. Will it save his Giants coaching career?

On the night the Giants traded up and selected Jaxson Dart in April, and a little after the ceremonial and stilted phone calls in the draft room were completed, Brian Daboll had a more private conversation with his new quarterback.

“You’re where you are supposed to be,” Daboll told Dart. “I love you man. I’m banking on you.”

To which Dart responded: “Smart man.”

Five months later, Daboll is still dangling on that same hook.

Daboll was brought here to find, develop and win with a young quarterback the way he did with Josh Allen and the Bills. This week he is using his last — and probably best — chance at fulfilling that mandate. After just three games of watching Russell Wilson steer the Giants to a winless record, he has decided to make a change and insert Dart into the starting lineup.

Dart, who has yet to throw a regular-season pass. Dart, who never really faced a starting NFL defense during his impressive nonetheless preseason performances. Dart, the quarterback Daboll has seemed to want since he was shut out from getting Drake Maye or Jayden Daniels in the 2024 draft.

Dart, the quarterback the Giants planned on stashing on their bench for a year so he could grow and develop and learn how to be a pro behind two veterans.

That plan went poof. Some of it has to do with the way Wilson played, looking sharp in one game out of his three. But a lot of it has to do with an impatience to start this new phase of Giants football.

Wait until next year to play Dart? Daboll is smart enough to realize that if that happened he probably wouldn’t be around to see his guy on the field. He’d waited a quarter-century for this gig and there was no way he was going to let his time as a head coach in the league end without at least test-driving a new sports car like Dart is for him.

So he made his move. And while he obfuscated and side-talked and declined to comment on any of the thinking or conversations that went into it, the one thing Daboll made abundantly clear on Wednesday was that this was his move.

“My decision,” he said several times.

Brian Daboll explains the decision to start Jaxson Dart as Giants quarterback “for the remainder of the season” pic.twitter.com/ySswaMpyKD

— Evan Barnes (@evan_b) September 24, 2025

He even made a point to note that the report from ESPN just last week about there being no organizational urgency to make this switch did not come from him.

This is nothing new. Daboll has been on Dart Island by himself for a while. On draft night, an in-house video of the decision-making process showed general manager Joe Schoen telling Daboll just before the trade and pick: “You guys are convicted in him. You believe in him. We did the process. He checked all the boxes. Let’s roll the dice.”

No wonder Daboll told Dart he was banking on him. The Giants were, sure, but Daboll was the one who was putting his career on the line for the quarterback. Now he’s all in and there are only two possible outcomes. It’ll work or it won’t. If the first one happens then Daboll and Dart may just live happily ever after here in Giants land. If it’s the latter? Well, Dart will be given further opportunities here moving forward. Daboll almost certainly will not. Dart will become someone else’s quarterback to mold and groom and potentially win with.

It's clear from dealing with the two of them that Daboll and Dart have a very close relationship. They are similarly competitive, similarly feisty, similarly arrogant. That’s not such a bad thing. If Daboll were a quarterback instead of a coach he would probably be Dart, the kind of player who believes he can fit a pass through every keyhole, run over every would-be tackler and will any team to victory.

He didn’t share that kind of bond with Daniel Jones or Wilson. He did have a little of that in common with Tommy DeVito, but DeVito’s skills never matched his swagger.

Now Daboll finally gets to have his Mini Me on the field for the first time since he last coached Allen.

One other thing Daboll harped on in his first public comments about the move on Wednesday was to downplay expectations for Dart. “It’s not going to be perfect,” he said. He called Dart “a work in progress.” And he added “I don’t think any rookie quarterback is ready.”

That’s fair. Dart should be granted some grace. The Giants essentially have slapped one of those big yellow car magnets that reads “Student Driver, Please Be Patient” on the back of their team.

Daboll, though, isn’t in the learner’s permit stage of his time here. If this maneuver crashes, he’ll have his license revoked and be thrown in coaching jail. He’ll find work, maybe as a tight ends coach somewhere in the league or pick up an offensive coordinator job in college, but he may never get another shot at being a head coach again.

Those are the stakes for Daboll. He understands them.

Smart man?

Dart said Daboll was in April. Now it’s time to see if they were right about each other.