The New York Giants will have a new head coach for the fifth time since 2016.
Why did the Giants fire Brian Daboll?
New York fired its head coach Nov. 10, after a 2-8 start to the 2025 season. Offensive coordinator and former assistant head coach Mike Kafka will serve as the Giants’ interim head coach for the final eight weeks of the season.
Daboll, who won the 2022 NFL Coach of the Year award for leading the Giants to the playoffs in his first season, didn’t make it through a fourth season with New York. He was the Giants’ first head coach since three-time Super Bowl champion Tom Coughlin to make it through more than two seasons, but he did not get much further.
Ultimately, the Giants’ 2-8 record was more a reflection of poor coaching from Daboll than the efforts of the players on the field.
Here’s why the Giants fired Daboll after three and a half seasons:
Why did the Giants fire Brian Daboll?
The most obvious reason New York parted ways with their head coach is the team’s failure to win games under Daboll in recent years.
Entering the 2025 season, Daboll and the Giants were coming off of back-to-back losing seasons. Big Blue’s 9-25 record across 2023 and 2024 was equivalent to a .265 winning percentage, a worse mark than previous Giants head coach Joe Judge in his two seasons as head coach in 2020 and 2021 (.303).
Despite principal team owner John Mara saying he had ‘just about run out of patience’ after the Giants’ 3-14 season in 2024, Daboll – and general manager Joe Schoen – both retained their jobs for 2025.
Halfway into this year’s regular season, the Giants have compiled a 5-22 record since the start of 2024, ‘good’ for a .185 win percentage. That is the second-worst performance of any team since the start of last year besides the Tennessee Titans, who have had one fewer win in one fewer game (a 4-22 record).
The Titans fired head coach Brian Callahan earlier this season.
Blown leads spelled the end for Daboll’s tenure
A key factor in the Giants’ poor record this season has been their tendency to blow late-game leads.
New York is winless (0-6) on the road in 2025. The Giants held double-digit leads at some point in four of those six losses. Two of those losses – in Denver Week 7 and in Chicago Week 10 – included double-digit leads with less than four minutes remaining.
According to SNY’s Connor Hughes, ‘The feeling internally, I’m told, is that the Giants believe the talent is better than the results have shown – evident by four loses despite holding 10-point leads.’
Giants owners Mara and Steve Tisch backed up SNY’s reporting in a joint statement on the team’s official website:
‘The past few seasons have been nothing short of disappointing, and we have not met our expectations for this franchise,’ the statement read. ‘We understand the frustrations of our fans, and we will work to deliver a significantly improved product.’
They shared that Schoen will remain the team’s top personnel decision-maker.
‘We feel like Joe has assembled a good young nucleus of talent, and we look forward to its development,’ Mara said. ‘Unfortunately, the results over the past three years have not been what any of us want. We take full responsibility for those results and look forward to the kind of success our fans expect.’
The team’s penchant to blow leads reflects on a poor defense, admittedly not Daboll’s forte as an offensive-minded head coach. New York has given up 115 points in the fourth quarter this year, which is the most of any team.
Yet some part of those issues come back to Daboll. Why did the head coach seemingly not have his team prepared to execute through all four quarters each week?
Jaxson Dart injury may have been the final straw
If there’s anything Daboll deserves credit for in the 2025 season, it’s his role in picking rookie quarterback Jaxson Dart to lead the franchise going forward. The rookie has looked like a legitimate ‘hit’ for the team at the position through seven starts.
But that comes with a caveat: Daboll coached Dart like his job depended on it, without much regard for the young gunslinger’s health.
No NFL quarterback has had more designed runs than Dart’s 25 through 10 weeks after he had five of them on Nov. 9. That’s a shocking fact given that the rookie didn’t take over as the Giants’ starter until Week 4.
In his final designed run against the Bears, Dart took a big hit between a couple of Chicago defenders, hit his head hard on the ground and lost a fumble. He did not move for several seconds after the hit and eventually walked slowly back to the sideline.
Dart played two more snaps before the Giants pulled him to be evaluated for a concussion.
‘As he was going back out on the field, he just didn’t seem right, so I called the trainers over and said, ‘Let’s get him out and make sure he gets looked at,” Daboll said after the game.
Now, the rookie is in the league’s concussion protocol in Week 10 after suffering a concussion in the Giants’ loss to the Bears. Dart’s concussion check during the game was already his fourth since the final week of the preseason.
Daboll had also been fined earlier in the season for interfering with a concussion evaluation by team trainers in the Giants’ sideline medical tent.
SNY’s Hughes also pointed to Dart’s concussion as part of the reason the Giants decided to fire their head coach.
Schoen is expected to lead New York’s offseason search for a new head coach, according to the Giants’ official website.
Big Blue’s fans will have to hope that whoever takes over is better than Daboll. And Judge. And Pat Shurmur. And Ben McAdoo.
