Jaxson Dart could give Brian Daboll new lease on life with New York Giants

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.

Photo by Adam Hunger/Getty Images

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 looking for every shred of evidence he can find to keep the Daboll-Dart combination together.

Schoen, of course, hired Daboll after their time together with the Buffalo Bills. Daboll’s work with Josh Allen was part of the reason why.

Daboll got the best year of his career out of Jones in 2022, the Giants won a playoff game, and Daboll earned Coach of the Year honors.

Jones could not carry 2022 forward, though. He could not rise above circumstances around him early in 2023, and played only six games due to a torn ACL. Everybody, Jones included, knew 2024 was his last stand with the Giants. It lasted 10 games before the Giants threw in the towel.

Do you ding Daboll for failing with Jones? Or, do you credit Daboll for doing with Jones in 2022 what no one else could, and simply believe Jones reverted to form thereafter?

The Giants have been a bad football team the last two seasons. Coaches don’t often survive going 9-25 over a two-year period.

Daboll did.

“He was the Coach of the Year two years ago,” Mara said after announcing Daboll would get a fourth season. “That didn’t disappear all of a sudden. I still believe he can do that again.”

In the short term, that hinges on Daboll’s ability to squeeze every last bit of ability out of Russell Wilson that the 37-year-old has left.

In the long term, and more importantly, Daboll’s future hinges on his ability to forge a relationship with Dart and make ownership believe that not only is Dart the team’s quarterback of the future but that Daboll is the coach who can help him reach his potential.

Daboll certainly has a ton of believers among NFL draft scouts, analysts and quarterback experts.

In a newsletter post after the selection of Dart, Todd McShay of The Ringer called Daboll “one of the most qualified people in the league when it comes to QB assessment and development” and said he had “earned the right to make his choice at quarterback.”

Here is Orlovsky speaking to John Schmeelk on a recent ‘Giants Huddle’ podcast:

“I’ve been very outspoken. I believe that if you’re the Giants you want Brian Daboll to coach this young man. I just believe that that is the ideal situation for these guys.”

Jordan Palmer, a former NFL quarterback and now personal quarterback coach for Josh Allen, Joe Burrow, Trevor Lawrence, Sam Darnold, and other quarterbacks told the ‘Valentine’s Views’ podcast that he is “a big Brian Daboll fan.”

“I just kind of have felt for a couple years that I can’t wait until Brian can get his guy that he picked, that he brought in,” Palmer said. “I can’t wait until he can come in and start from scratch with somebody and just teach, because I think he’s one of the best teachers in the game.”

Daboll seemed loose and happy when media had access to rookie minicamp practices. He seemed, honestly, more like the 2022 Daboll who led the Giants to an over-achieving, unexpected season.

Photo by Adam Hunger/Getty Images

“What’s the alternative? What do I usually do?,” Daboll said when asked about his dmeanor. “You enjoy being out there on the field, I like the guys we get the opportunity to work with, but it’s always good to get back on the field rather than be in the office.”

The guess here is that unless the wheels fall completely off for the Giants in 2025 the state of the Daboll-Dart relationship and whether or not ownership believes in that pairing will have more to do with whether Daboll remains head coach in 2026 than the 2025 won-loss record.

That brutal schedule might even work in Daboll’s favor. Remember that Eli Manning went 1-6 as a starter in his rookie season, but the experience set his career off on a good path. If Dart is starting by the season’s end, the argument could be made that overall wins and losses are irrelevant. What will matter is whether the Dart-Daboll pairing looks like it could pay off.

Dart and Daboll are off to a good start.

“He coaches me up like every second I’m around him,” Dart said. “He’s the guy that will walk in a room, say goodbye and whatnot, and then he’ll come back 30 seconds later because he has an idea.

“So, he’s constantly coaching me, and I think that’s what I want be around. I want be coached the hardest, and I feel like that’s going help me excel at the highest level and help me reach my potential. So, there’s not another coach I’d rather be playing for.”

Only time will tell if that is still the case a year from now.