Big Blue View
That’s probably too harsh
A new ranking of NFL head coaches is not kind to Brian Daboll of the New York Giants.
Pro Football and Sports Network has Daboll ranked No. 25 among the 32 NFL coaches, and the ranking is even worse than it sounds.
The only coaches ranked below Daboll, entering his fourth season, are the seven head coaches new to their teams this season. Honestly, I have an issue ranking Mike Vrabel of the New England Patriots and Pete Carroll of the Las Vegas Raiders with the “new” head coaches. They are not that.
Vrabel and Carroll aside, here is what PFSN said about Daboll:
Brian Daboll’s head coaching tenure with the New York Giants has been a tale of diminishing returns. Following an impressive 9-7-1 debut in 2022, which included a playoff win, expectations skyrocketed. But since then, Daboll has gone just 9-25 over the past two seasons.
New York’s offense has ranked in the bottom three in scoring in each of the last two seasons, and the defense ranked 31st in PFSN’s Defense+ metric in 2024. Though Daboll’s tenure with the Giants hasn’t been long, it’s beginning to seem like his brief early success was more of an outlier than the foundation for something special.
Considering how the Giants have regressed across the board, it’s a bit surprising that Daboll made it through another offseason unscathed. We’ve seen other coaches get canned for less. However, the front office appears to be holding onto hopes that he can find the magic again. It’s fair to question whether or not Daboll should return to a coordinator role, where he thrived in Buffalo.
It is hard to argue that there have been diminishing returns in Daboll’s three seasons. The Giants went from 9-7-1 to 6-11 to 3-14, pretty much the definition of diminishing returns.
For what it’s worth, here is PFSN’s list 1-25:
Based on recent results, I don’t think you can really start to argue about Daboll’s placement until you get to Macdonald at 19.
I am certainly not going to argue that Daboll is a top 10 coach at this point. He doesn’t have the resume...
