It was reported on Friday evening that the Giants have hired Brian Daboll, a former offensive coordinator for the Buffalo Bills, to be their new head coach. Daboll will work with his former Buffalo Bills colleague Joe Schoen, who was introduced earlier this week as the Giants’ new general manager, in an attempt to replicate the success the Bills have had during a period in which the Giants have struggled.
“I have a very decent understanding of where our fan base is at right now, and I understand their frustration,” Daboll said in a statement.
Since the Giants’ fourth Super Bowl victory in February 2012, the club has only entered the playoffs once, losing in the first round to the New England Patriots in 2016, and has only had two winning seasons in that time. It has been an especially difficult five seasons for the squad, which has won only 22 games in that time frame and concluded the 2021 season with a 4-13 record. As a consequence, the role of head coach has become a revolving door: Daboll will be the team’s fourth hiring since 2016, a pace of change that seemed particularly jarring coming off the heels of Tom Coughlin’s 12-year tenure as the team’s head coach and general manager.
In Buffalo, Schoen was a member of the new coaching staff that brought the Bills’ 17-year playoff drought to an end in 2017. The resurgence of the company proceeded with the addition of Daboll, who joined the team with quarterback Josh Allen a year later. Since then, the squad has won the American Football Conference East twice and advanced to the AFC championship game last season.
On October 5, Daboll was in charge of a Bills offence that generated 422 yards and 36 points on the road against Kansas City in the divisional round of the playoffs. The Bills came up just 13 seconds short of upsetting the Chiefs. Developing Allen into one of the N.F.L.’s brightest young stars during the previous four years was a major selling point for a franchise seeking to design a more promising future for quarterback Daniel Jones, who was selected with the No. 6 overall choice in the 2019 draught.
The Giants’ co-owner, John Mara, accepted responsibility for failing to create an atmosphere in which Jones could reach his full potential, telling reporters earlier this week, “We’ve done everything we possibly could to mess this kid up since he’s been here.”
Daboll started his coaching career in the National Football League in 2000, working for Bill Belichick in New England as a defensive quality control coach. His recommendation for the position came from Nick Saban, with whom he had previously worked as a graduate assistant at Michigan State for the previous two seasons. Daboll went on to win a national title with Saban as Alabama’s offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach in 2017 before joining the Bills as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach.
Allen’s raw skill as a rookie provided equal parts promise and potential as a development project, but over time he and Daboll crafted one of the most dynamic attacks in the game. While Allen is a one-of-a-kind talent, Daboll’s previous experience with a multifaceted quarterback will no doubt be beneficial as he attempts to develop a system for Jones, who has been recorded sprinting at speeds of more than 21 miles per hour during a game at one point.
It goes much beyond working with the quarterback to be a head coach, but Schoen made it plain at a press conference this week that the new coaching staff will be expected to “create an offence around Daniel to showcase what he does best,” as he put it. Because of Schoen’s experience with Daboll in Buffalo, the Giants were confident that Daboll was the perfect person for the job and for the elusive organisational alignment that the club was looking for when they made the hiring decisions.
One of the few constants for the Giants over the previous several seasons has been the need of starting from scratch each season. That is one of the things the Giants are hoping Daboll and Schoen can fix, and it is toward the top of the list.
