Jul 23, 2025; East Rutherford, NJ, USA; New York Giants general manager Joe Schoen and head coach Brian Daboll talk during training camp at Quest Diagnostics Training Center. Mandatory Credit: Vincent Carchietta-Imagn Images
Oct 26, 2025; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA; New York Giants head coach Brian Daboll walks off the field after loss to the Philadelphia Eagles at Lincoln Financial Field. Mandatory Credit: Eric Hartline-Imagn Images

Losing games was acceptable in northern New Jersey. Running the rookie quarterback who served as the last gleam of hope in a lost season face-first into danger, however, was not.

Brian Daboll survived two straight losing seasons as head coach of the 2-8 New York Giants. He won't get the chance to pull off a miracle turnaround to avoid a third. Daboll was fired Monday, less than 24 hours after his team blew a double-digit lead on the road for the fourth straight time this fall.

His departure was academic, if not entirely his fault. Daboll was once the man who'd fixed Daniel Jones by flattening his learning curve to a gentle slope. The 2022 Giants punched above their weight class and into the postseason, where they compounded Kirk Cousins' playoff misery with a Wild Card win over the Minnesota Vikings. Jones leaned heavily on his run game and a litany of short passes to do just enough to win nine regular season games against a soft schedule.

That didn't last. Jones backslid as he dealt with injury, eventually making Tommy DeVito a meme. Saquon Barkley ran into compressed defenses throughout an underwhelming 2023, then ran to the Philadelphia Eagles in 2024 where he was an iconic piece of a Super Bowl run. The team that won 10.5 total games in 2022 (counting a tie against the Washington Commanders) notched 11 victories in the two-plus seasons that followed.

Still, Daboll might have seen out the rest of his final season and saved his axing for Black Monday if not for his latest collapse. Jaxson Dart, Cam Skattebo and Malik Nabers had imbued New York with some modest optimism for its future. None of these players were available late in Sunday's disintegration against the Chicago Bears. Nabers and Skattebo suffered likely unavoidable season-ending injuries. Dart's departure due to a head injury, however, seemed entirely predictable from an offense that had given him the green light to run the ball 55 times in his last seven games.

Dart had carved up an underwhelming Bears defense to that point. Daboll turned back to Russell Wilson at quarterback and promptly played coward ball. He opted for a field goal facing fourth-and-goal at the Chicago one-yard line. When a too many men penalty offered the Giants a re-do from the half-yard mark, Daboll declined. His 20-10 lead quickly became a 24-20 loss and, welp, that's all New York needed to see.

The Giants' regression back to garbage wasn't solely Daboll's fault

There were several factors at play to turn 2022's AP coach of the year into a punchline less than three years later. General manager Joe Schoen deserves a healthy portion of the blame. He's the executive who let Barkley leave for a hated rival at a modest price. He's the one who gave Jones a four-year, $160 million contract after one useful season as an above-average quarterback (which was built largely on smoke, mirrors and an average throw distance of 6.3 yards).

He's the one who let Xavier McKinney become an All-Pro for the Green Bay Packers, then tried to back-fill his place in the secondary with Jevon Holland. He's the one who drafted Skattebo and Nabers and Kayvon Thibodeaux but also Deonte Banks and Evan Neal with first round selections. His defensive overhaul -- including trading for Brian Burns and signing Paulson Adebo and Jevon Holland to top-of-market contracts -- has resulted in the league's 29th-best defense.

But Daboll was the coach who saw players like Barkley, McKinney, Evan Engram, Will Hernandez, Julian Love and Ben Bredeson all go on to bigger roles and better performances elsewhere. He's the one who saw double digit leads disappear against the Bears and New Orleans Saints and Dallas Cowboys. He was the head coach who could offer up nothing but the playcalling equivalent of a disinterested shrug with his season, and job, on the line.

Thus, Daboll will head back to the coordinator ranks for a while and try to build his stock back up. The Giants will dive into a coaching search that should not involve Bill Belichick but will be inevitably tied back, at least in stretched-out talk radio segments, to the former New York coordinator who's currently trying to drag the University of North Carolina toward bowl eligibility.

The franchise will be able to sell those young players and a defense that's currently less than the sum of its parts. It can also peddle the soft expectations of a job where Daboll outperformed the three guys before him (Joe Judge, Pat Shurmur and Ben McAdoo) and was rewarded with what could have been four full seasons to turn things around had he not so badly bollocksed everything at the end.

That coaching search will be needlessly restrained with Schoen around, similar to how the Jacksonville Jaguars had to (reportedly) can Trent Baalke in order to hire Liam Coen last year. Still, there's enough to like on the Giants roster to keep some of 2026's rising stars on the interview list. All they'll have to do is protect leads and not run Jaxson Dart into his own destruction to be a step in the right direction.

This article originally appeared on For The Win: The Giants fired Brian Daboll because, well, duh

Reporting by Christian D'Andrea, For The Win / For The Win

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