Big Blue View
Rookie QB gives Daboll a chance to show his reputation for evaluating, developing quarterbacks is justified
Is New York Giants head coach Brian Daboll really a “dead man walking?” That is how Mike Tanier of the ‘Too Deep Zone’ substack described Daboll in answer to a recent mailbag question about NFL coaches under the most pressure in 2025.
The Giants face a brutal schedule that will make it something of a miracle if they don’t experience a third straight losing season with Daboll as head coach. NFC East fan bases in Washington and Dallas are already salivating at the idea of their teams driving the final figurative nail into the career of Daboll as Giants coach.
Though odds for coaches most likely to be fired in 2025 are not yet available, Daboll is considered to be one of the five coaches most likely to lose his job.
Is that really the case?
I am not so sure.
Of course, if the Giants win three games again the question answers itself. It will be virtually impossible to justify not making a change. On the flip side, a season of nine victories or more — especially if it includes a playoff berth — would make it seem obvious that the coach should not go anywhere.
It is the likelihood that the season falls somewhere in-between those extreme outcomes that makes the situation one to monitor.
John Mara warned back in January that the on-field results needed to improve for Daboll to stay beyond 2025.
“Obviously the results are not even close to what we want them to be. They’re going to have to get better if we’re going to move on,” Mara said.
At the same time, Mara more or less mandated the drafting of a potential quarterback of the future.
“Obviously the number one issue for us going into this offseason is to find our quarterback of the future,” Mara said.
The Giants, of course, found that potential quarterback of the future when they traded back into Round 1 of the 2025 NFL Draft to get Jaxson Dart, a quarterback Daboll has made clear he is excited to work with.
This is where figuring out the criteria for how Daboll’s future could be decided gets complicated. And fascinating.
Back in January, Mara stopped short of saying that keeping the coach acknowledged as a quarterback developer while getting him a quarterback to develop would be, in essence, making a two-year commitment to Daboll.
“I’m not going to put any kind of time limit on it,” Mara said.
You have to know that Mara does not want to put Dart into the head coach/GM spin cycle that Daniel Jones endured.
“We’ve done everything possible to screw this kid up since he’s been here,” Mara said when he hired Joe Schoen as GM. “We keep changing coaches, keep changing offensive coordinators, keep changing offensive line coaches. I take a lot of responsibility for that.”
My guess is that Mara will spend the 2025 season...
