Brian Daboll, the head coach of the Giants, might be down the same route as another coach who formerly called MetLife Stadium home.
Daboll was likened to former Jets head coach Todd Bowles on Monday by WFAN’s Greg Giannatti. Bowles led Gang Green to a 10-6 record in his first season as head coach in 2015, but he went 14-34 in the next three seasons (2016–2018).
According to Giannatti, via Audacy, “The Giants right now are kind of on that same track as where the Jets were in that last year of Todd Bowles.” They completely destroyed it, keeping Todd Bowles as head coach and starting rookie quarterback Sam Darnold. During the offseason, they accomplished nothing. They were essentially rebuilding, but Todd Bowles was expected to triumph; still, he was sacked since he had no chance.
It became impossible for Daboll to maintain the goodwill and luck of the 2022 season in 2023. Despite leading the Giants to a 9-7 record the previous season, their first postseason victory since Super Bowl XLVI, and NFL Coach of the Year, Big Blue finished 6-11 this year, and Daboll received little appreciation for his work as a coach.
The actual, poisonous character of Daboll’s coaching method in 2023 was exposed by a number of anonymous individuals in an article published in January by Pat Leonard of the New York Daily News. When things became really terrible, one of the staff members told an assistant candidate to get lost.
According to the article, the coach loses his cool under duress, assigning blame to others and showing signs of weakness. Leonard claims that general manager Joe Schoen was forced to start listening in on the coaches’ headsets during games because of this.
The story states that while Daboll’s relationship with former defensive coordinator Wink Martindale—who left on January 8—is widely known, Mike Kafka, the offensive coordinator who is “constantly second-guessed,” is the one who “got the brunt of Daboll’s fury.”
Daboll will try to rekindle some of the magic that propelled the Giants through a rebuilding phase in 2022 before everything collapsed in 2023 in 2024. If he doesn’t work out, he can end up like Bowles, who was let go after the 2018 campaign.