Jaxson Dart’s discovery and growing potential is not enough to justify keeping Brian Daboll and Joe Schoen around for another season.
Sure, the head coach seems to have finally landed on a solution to the burning question that has heated up his seat for nearly three years now, but it is not a lock that Daboll is the offensive mind that can continue to develop Dart into a star.
In fact, based on the look of the Giants in the here and now, it is fair to question if Daboll is holding back Dart and this organization from taking larger strides out of irrelevancy.
Sunday’s embarrassing loss to Mac Jones and the shorthanded 49ers was the latest showing of a team that seemed disinterested in tackling on the defensive end, and largely devoid of impact talent aside from Dart on the other side of the ball. Sure, injuries to Malik Nabers and Cam Skattebo drastically alter the team’s capabilities, but Sunday’s opponent was a shining example of the impact a winning culture can have on a team that has been stripped down to the studs. Even with a laundry list of injuries, the Niners mainly shut down Big Blue until the closing minutes of the fourth quarter when the game was already out of reach.
New York’s current predicament on the injury front is not just a reason for sympathy. It’s an indictment on this regime for missing time and time again on wide receivers (outside of Nabers), as the likes of Wan’Dale Robinson and Jalin Hyatt were supposed to be impact receivers when Schoen and Daboll made those draft picks, and they have largely been complete whiffs. Meanwhile, this defense that was constructed to be a nightmare for opposing pass protection has been disastrous, only turning up the heat on Dart to be near perfect as a rookie given the razor thin margin for error when the defense is a collective turnstile and allowing Jones to have a perfect first half through the air.
The allure of Daboll was always the Josh Allen connection and his ability to develop a young quarterback. That was not as a head coach, and under his watch, the offense in New York has been mainly putrid, and their last quarterback failure left town and immediately blossomed into an improbable MVP candidate (save for Sunday’s rough day for Daniel Jones). Back in New York, another defensive coordinator seems poised to lose his job, another season has been lost by the halfway point of the season, and the head coach has no answers for how things will turn around.
At some point, the question needs to be asked if Dart’s emergence further justifies moving on from Daboll. With the quarterback question hopefully answered, the urgency is turned up to capitalize on Dart’s window and push towards contention. Isn’t it time the Giants try a new regime that doesn’t have a track record of losing and personnel mishaps over the past three years? Doesn’t the failures of this season justify trying a new coach to get more out of a talent like Dart, considering Daboll’s impact on the offense has rarely been positive?
The Giants have won five games since the start of last season. They have had multiple instances, including on Sunday, where player effort and hustle was called into question. Four years is enough of a sample size to conclude that Daboll has proven himself incapable of building a winning culture in New York, and while he deserves credit for the Dart discovery, he cannot be trusted with overseeing the next phase of Dart’s development.