Getting rid of Brian Daboll won't fix the Giants' problems
ATLANTA
The easy thing for the Giants to do is to fire the coach. There certainly has been enough rancid football during the past 2 1⁄2 months to justify such a move when this season comes to an end on Jan. 5. Not even Brian Daboll can muster much of a verbal defense for his job. These smackdowns continue to pile up with a losing streak sitting at 10, back-to-back noncompetitive blowouts and absolutely no indication that things will improve in the immediate future.
After the latest debacle, the Giants’ 34-7 loss to the Falcons on Sunday, Daboll oscillated between two themes during his news conference. There were nearly 10 variations of the sentiment that the Giants are “not good enough,” and four or five times, he personally took the blame for that status.
“My fault,” he said at one point.
“Put it on me,” he added later.
But these are the 2024 Giants. Nothing is simple, nothing is clear-cut and no answers to come from ownership once it is all wrapped up will guarantee a better outcome in 2025.
Daboll is part of the problem, yes. Everyone who wears a team logo is at this point, from the general manager to the bus driver. But the whole problem? To the point that canning him will improve things greatly? Hardly.
The Giants do not have a playoff-caliber roster that Daboll is wasting with lunkheaded moves and mismanaged tactics. This is a team that let three of its best players and captains leave by trade or free agency between the beginning of the 2023 season and the start of this one. It’s a team that has had to shuffle through quarterbacks — and probably will continue to do that for the next two weeks — since deciding to end its Daniel Jones era (an era, by the way, that Daboll was neither in charge of initiating nor ending singlehandedly, with those calls coming above his direct responsibilities).
The Giants are, like many in this bottom-heavy league this season, a three- or four-win collection of talent. Daboll has won two games with that crew.
The hits keep coming, too. Micah McFadden is the latest starter facing missed time because of injury, having left Sunday with a neck issue. How long will the inside linebacker be out? Hard to say, but at this point with two weeks left, a paper cut can be a season-ender.
This isn’t a defense of Daboll because this season has been, frankly, indefensible. It is an observation that the issues that plague the Giants as their first century of football comes to an ignominious close are so much bigger than who the head coach is.
That’s why his dismissal at season’s end, while it certainly would satisfy the bloodlust from the pitchfork carriers at the gates, wouldn’t necessarily make things better. Just different. And the Giants have been trying different over and over again for the better part of the past decade (since Tom Coughlin walked out of the building) without much of anything to show for it.
Daboll’s refrains about putting this on himself are not just for public viewing and sword-falling. It’s what he tells the team behind closed doors, too, according to several veteran players. They appreciate that . . . but they don’t necessarily buy it.
“There are a lot of things you can’t blame Daboll for because he’s not out there on the field playing,” linebacker Brian Burns said. “That’s the stoic thing to do, the heroic thing to do, take the blame as the head coach because he is the head of this team. But at the end of the day, he can’t make a tackle and he can’t make a catch.”
Added guard Greg Van Roten: “Fair or not, he’ll take the burden and the blame, deserved or not. I like him a lot. I think he’s a good coach. I came here because I am comfortable in the scheme and I think it’s a really good scheme. It just hasn’t panned out the way that anybody hoped it would this year.”
It was Coughlin who always said the players should get the credit for winning games and that he would take the blame for the losses. He had two Super Bowl rings that helped him take that noble stand. Daboll doesn’t. So while he certainly has entrenched himself at the back end of that axiom, he puts the results on himself rather than any of the too-many-to-count other reasons for this forgettable season.
John Mara has every right to fire Daboll. The team president and co-owner thus far has kept his word from his last public comments regarding the team in early October, when he vowed to show patience and refrain from making any moves in team leadership during the season. Did he think at the time that the Giants might not win another game this season? Probably not.
But Mara had faith in Daboll when he hired him in January 2022. He had faith in Daboll when he won a playoff game and was named NFL Coach of the Year in his first season with the Giants. He had faith in Daboll when he last spoke, way back before the onset of this historic 10-game skid that feels as if it might as well be 1,000 at this point.
This has been an ugly, disappointing embarrassment of a season for Mara and the franchise, with not much going right from the start of the offseason right through Sunday. And Daboll says to blame him?
Fine. Many surely will gleefully go along with his suggestion. Perhaps Mara will, too.
But this current Giants misadventure is far too complicated for one simple maneuver to fix it.