Giants coach Brian Daboll isn’t ‘toast’ — at least, not yet

Is Brian Daboll already “toast” as head coach of the New York Giants, just four games into the 2024 NFL season.

ESPN’s Chris Canty, a former Giant, thinks so.

“He’s done. He’s toast. He’s the biggest loser coming out of last night (Thursday),” Canty said Friday on ‘Get Up’. “He’s about to lose his damn job in season. That’s what’s going to happen. …

“He is giving the Giants’ brass ammunition to move on from him after this season. … Daniel Jones has a better chance of being back next year than Brian Daboll does.”

Here is the full clip:

That is certainly a hot take from the former Giants defensive tackle. It’s great TV/radio. It has certainly accomplished what television and radio always hope to accomplish. The clip has been replayed hundreds of thousands of times, and is being talked about and written about in myriads of places. Now, including this one.

I think it’s off base.

In my view, it is far too early to write Daboll’s epitaph. And, if you are writing Daboll’s, perhaps GM Joe Schoen’s, too.

The start of this season, a 1-3 beginning that is exactly what we said again and again — and Schoen acknowledged on ‘Hard Knocks’ — was the type of thing this regime could ill-afford, has opened the door to this speculation.

I understand that. What we are seeing, what we have seen too much of since the beginning of the 2023 season, can’t continue. It is, though, too early in my view to declare that Daboll is done as Giants’ coach, that he’s a dead man walking.

There are 13 games to play. The story of this season is still only in its early chapters. There could be lots of plot twists. To consider anything a fait accompli at the season’s quarter-pole is foolhardy.

Now, offensive lineman Jermaine Eluemunor’s bold confidence after Thursday’s loss to the Dallas Cowboys might also be misplaced.

“Hell, yeah,” Eluemunor said when I asked him if he still had confidence in this Giants team.

“This is a really good team,” Eluemunor said. “We’re a really good team at 1-3 and by the end of the year our record will reflect that.”

Maybe it will. Maybe it won’t. Point is, 76.5% of the Giants’ 2024 season remains to be played. Things can change. What anyone believes is an absolutely certainty today might not be the case three-and-a-half months from now.

Daboll certainly deserves his share of the blame for how this season has started. Maybe the lion’s share. Though perhaps one or two plays from the quarterback — more on that as we go — might have taken him off the hook.

It is fair to say that the Giants could be 3-1 if just a couple of things had happened differently against the Washington Commanders Week 2 or the Cowboys in Week 4. The Giants had clear opportunities to win both games and it feels like they should, at the least, be 2-2.

But, they aren’t. They are 1-3. As Bill Parcells used to say … ah, if you’re a Giants fan you know what Parcells used to say about a team’s record.

Back to Daboll’s culpability.

The Giants have been embarrassed in back-to-back season openers by a combined score of 68-6. I lauded Daboll for embracing a more competitive regimen this offseason. Still, in back-to-back openers his team has looked like it didn’t realize the season had begun. The head coach has to take a hit for that.

Odd roster management seemed to be a feature of the 2023 Giants. That hasn’t changed. The Graham Gano situation, whatever the truth may be about his readiness to kick in Week 2, seemed avoidable with a placekicker on the practice squad. No one could have known Gano would pull a hamstring on the opening kickoff. It seemed clear, though, that he wasn’t fully healthy entering the game. Protecting themselves would not have been difficult for the Giants to do. The Week 1 Gunner Olszewski situation, relying on a punter with a groin injury who was still moving gingerly days before the opener and having him unable to make it to the opening kickoff, also seemed avoidable. The ping-pong ball treatment of Jakob Johnson is weird.

Beyond that, the offense, Daboll’s baby, has not shown an ability to score more points than it did a year ago when the Giants were 30th in the league at 15.6 points per game.

That despite Daboll taking play-calling from offensive coordinator MIke Kafka and doing it himself. I’m not criticizing that choice. It was the right one, and I have praised it. So far, though, it just isn’t bringing the anticipated, and much-needed, results.

There is a better offensive line. A superstar No. 1 wide receiver. A healthy, quality group of receivers joining that No. 1 receiver. An improved offensive line. A quarterback playing much better than he did during a miserable six-game 2023 campaign, though his limitations are apparent.

Yet, the Giants are scoring just 15.0 points per game, a shade below what they averaged a season ago.

Daboll can’t prevent dropped passes. Critical drops by Malik Nabers in Week 2 and Wan’Dale Robinson in Week 4 could have changed the outcomes of games. Giants’ receivers have dropped 11 passes thus far, 10.8%. Only receivers for the Jacksonville Jaguars (14.5%) and Cleveland Browns (13.0%) have dropped the ball more often.

Daboll can’t prevent fumbles. The Giants have a league-high three so far, albeit they have played one more game than everyone except Dallas.

Daboll can’t run block. Carmen Bricillo has received a ton of praise so far for his work with the offensive line, but Jon Runyan’s admission after Thursday’s game that linemen weren’t sure who they were supposed to block on a lot of plays against the Cowboys was alarming.

Daboll doesn’t possess a remote control that would guide Jones’ deep throws into the arms of receivers rather than over their heads, at their feet, or out of bounds.

Jones is just 3 of 15 (20%) on throws of 20+ yards beyond the line of scrimmage. The only quarterback who has been worse in that category so far is Chicago Bears rookie Caleb Williams.

That, obviously, isn’t good enough. There are missed deep throws against Washington and Dallas that might have put the Giants in position to get different outcomes. If it continues, no one will blame Daboll if he opts at some point for the big arm of Drew Lock over the efficiency Jones has played with so far this season.

Daboll got the head-coaching job with the Giants based largely on his work in Buffalo with quarterback Josh Allen and his reputation as a play-calling wizard. Yet, through four games I think much of that play-calling has been suspect.

Can the Giants please rip that deep throwback across the field pass out of the playbook? Daboll has called it twice, and it has nearly been disastrous twice. Jones, in my view, doesn’t have the howitzer required to make the juice worth the squeeze on that type of dangerous, across the field throw. One that quarterbacks are generally taught not to attempt.

There has been a great deal of discussion about Daboll’s decision against the Dallas Cowboys to kick a field goal rather than go for a touchdown on fourth-and-goal at the 3-yard line on the opening drive of the third quarter with the Giants trailing 14-9.

Our readers were split almost evenly when asked what Daboll should have done.

Initially, I didn’t take a side. I could see the merits of both going for the touchdown and taking the almost-automatic three points there. The farther away from that decision we get, though, the more I think Daboll missed an opportunity.

I realized at some point that the decision reminded of something I always used to complain about with Joe Judge. The former Giant coach had a tendency to always play the game in the hopes of setting the Giants up for something to happen later. Kicking the field goal when he could have gone for a first down. Punting and playing for field position in the hope of scoring later — rather than trying to score now and take control of a game.

I honestly hate the fact that I feel like kicking the field goal, which brought the Giants within two points at 14-12, is the decision Judge would have made.

In retrospect, when you have the lesser team on paper — and the Giants were clear underdogs in the game — you have to take more risks. You can’t be conservative. When you have the opportunity to do something game-changing, you have to try to do something game-changing.

The Giants could have grabbed the momentum there. They could have taken the lead. They could have fired up a MetLife Stadium crowd waiting for something other than an awesome pre-game light show to get excited about. They could have put Dallas on its heels. Instead, they let the Cowboys off the hook. They played for later.

With Jones so far unable to hit the big, game-changing throws I referred the other day to the Giants playing “offense by inches.”

A lot of heavy personnel to help the offensive line. Squeezing as much as they can out of the running game. Using short, quick, efficient passing to move the chains and bleed the clock. Relying on yards after catch, even sometimes on manageable third downs.

Philosophically, there is nothing wrong with that, though not throwing the ball to the sticks on third down has always annoyed me. In some respects, the way defenses are playing currently is forcing offenses throughout the league to go the long, pain-staking way in an effort to score.

Still, there are times in games that scream for a shot to be taken. The fourth-and-goal was hardly the only such situation Daboll has passed on this season.

• Week 1 against Minnesota the Giants got the ball at the Minnesota 20-yard line after a fumble recovery. Their first play? A run up the middle by Eric Gray. They ran six plays, never once taking a shot into the end zone, and settled for a field goal. On first-and-goal from the 10-yard line, Daboll called back-to-back run plays. Why no shot to the end zone?
• First-and-10 or second-and-short somewhere around the defense’s 40-yard line seems like a great time to be aggressive. By my count, the Giants faced that type of situation six times against the Commanders. They took one deep shot. Admittedly, I do not remember the circumstances of every play. That, though, doesn’t seem like enough.
• Against the Browns, Daboll did call back-to-back shot plays to Nabers in the second half that fell incomplete. Still, there were three other first-down situations around the Browns’ 40-yard line in that game where Daboll chose the grind-it-out approach rather than the go-for-the-jugular approach.
• Against Dallas, after the 39-yard catch-and-run by Nabers put the ball at the Dallas 40-yard line, the Giants went run, run/phantom facemask/a couple of short passes/52-yard field goal.

Now, I’m not a coach or a play-caller. It would, though, seem to me that in at least a few of those situations you would want to be aggressive and try to strike before the field gets compressed.

These are examples of my quibbles with Daboll’s work so far in 2024. None, though, is a fireable offense. Good plays are plays that work. Bad ones are ones that don’t work. Every personnel decision is a risk of some sort. Sometimes, you roll sevens. Sometimes, you roll snake eyes.

None of this means Daboll is already “toast” as Giants coach.

It means that if I were Daboll I would spend some time during the bye week examining my own hand in why the start to this season hasn’t been better, and what I could do about it. Personally, I would look my bearded self in the mirror if I were Daboll and decide that I need to be more aggressive.

Call shot plays more often when the situation is right. Accept the risk and play to make something happen now rather than hope that something will happen later. If you ultimately decide, and I am not advocating for this, that the quarterback is holding the offense back then try a different quarterback. Go down swinging. That’s why you took over play-calling in the first place.

I have been, and still am, an advocate of stability for the Giants. I disagree with a number of things Schoen and Daboll have done. Yet, look around the league and you have to acknowledge that winning — and building a winner — is not easy. We have seen again and again that just because you change the coach or the GM doesn’t guarantee anything getting better. I like the idea that the GM and coach are tied together, both philosophically and on the same timeline. I like the fact that they were brought in together.

I will acknowledge that my bias is that I would like to see this season end in a place where the Giants have done well enough that they can continue down the path of allowing Schoen and Daboll to continue trying to build the team they want. I think John Mara wants that, too.

Daboll and the Giants just have to get there. If the season goes completely off the rails, and we have to realistically admit right now that it might, that may not be possible.

To Daboll’s credit, when I was in the locker room after Thursday’s loss to the Cowboys, I did not sense a beaten, broken team. I sensed a ticked off one. I also did not sense a team ready to turn on each other, or on the coaching staff.

When I look at the Giants’ remaining schedule, I see only one game — Week 10 at the Carolina Panthers — where they might be favored to win.

That, though, does not mean there aren’t plenty of winnable games. I don’t see any juggernauts or unbeatable teams on the schedule. The Giants had chances to beat Washington and Dallas. They will have chances to win other games.

Daboll and the Giants still have 13 opportunities to change the narrative. The way the season has begun has certainly opened the door to the discussions about the Giants perhaps moving on from a head coach yet again.

There is still an opportunity, though, for Daboll and the Giants to slam that door.