On the morning after the New York Giants’ eighth loss of the season and the 22nd in their past 27 games, nobody was surprised when John Mara and Steve Tisch summoned Brian Daboll to tell him he was fired. The only surprise was that he was leaving the building alone.
But it probably shouldn’t have been a shock because Daboll was never tethered to the general manager that hired him, despite the fact they shared a dismal 20-40-1 record. Nor should it be a shock that Joe Schoen might still be the Giants GM in 2026 and beyond. It would be an incredibly unpopular move, to be sure, and hard to explain to their tired and angry fan base.
But it would be the right move for a franchise that desperately needs stability. The Giants just need to pair Schoen with the right, experienced coach.
That may be where this is headed, too. Though the Giants owners haven’t specifically said Schoen will return in 2026, multiple team sources said that’s the internal expectation. And while the coaching search (which will be led by Schoen) is only in its infancy, another team source told me that previous head coaching experience “isn’t a necessity, but it’s a high priority for some.”
“There’s going to be enormous pressure to win there — both on Joe, if they keep him, and on the owners,” an NFL executive who recently spoke to Giants officials told me. “The last thing they need is another coach learning on the job.”
They also don’t need to start over from scratch, again — something they’ve gotten all too familiar with in the decade since they shoved Tom Coughlin out the door. A franchise once lauded for its stability has cycled through four GMs and six head coaches in the past 10 seasons. That constant turmoil is a big reason why the Giants are 53-106-1 in that span.
Was Brian Daboll the biggest problem with the Giants? New York will find out if it elects to keep GM Joe Schoen. (Photo by Perry Knotts/Getty Images)
It’s also why they turned to Schoen, an outsider, when they hired him in 2022 to fix their floundering franchise. And he and his hand-picked head coach had immediate success with a 9-7-1 record and an unexpected run to the playoffs in their first season.
Obviously, the results since haven’t been good. But GMs shouldn’t be on the same win-now plan as the coaches they hire. They’re in charge of a bigger picture, with one eye always on a better future. And while the results might not make it obvious, there certainly are signs that the Giants’ future is bright.
“It takes time to build a program,” a former NFL general manager told me. “Nobody wants to hear that anymore, but it’s still true. We used to say it takes at least five years to really see what a GM can do, to really have his program in place. And sometimes it takes at least one coaching change, too.
“If you’re starting over every three or four years, you end up absolutely nowhere.”
It’s important to remember that’s exactly where the Giants were in 2021, when they fired GM Dave Gettleman with his four-year record of 19-46 — a quick hook for a franchise that had only had four GMs in the previous 42 seasons. But Gettleman had already hired two coaches, built a flawed roster filled with holes, and had the team facing huge salary cap issues that would prevent them from keeping the talent they had. And his decidedly old-school approach was wearing thin on many in the front office.
“I don’t think people outside realize how far this franchise had sunk when Joe first got here,” a Giants team source told me. “I know fans don’t want to hear about improvements to the infrastructure or modernization of the scouting department. But that stuff matters. So does the salary cap. And when he arrived we were absolutely in ‘cap hell.’
“It’s just a more professional, modern, better operation now. I know fans don’t care, but it’s important.”
Schoen helped bring the franchise out of the dark ages and into the digital age, and that mattered to the owners. Cleaning up the cap, though, mattered more. It allowed the Giants to keep some of the better players left over from the Gettleman era — specifically left tackle Andrew Thomas (five years, $117.5 million) and defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence (four years, $90 million). And yes, that list includes quarterback Daniel Jones (four years, $160 million), who was battered by injuries in the two seasons after he signed.
Daniel Jones and Saquon Barkley were key cogs in the Giants’ best season of the past decade, but the organization made big mistakes with both of their contracts. (Photo by Jim McIsaac/Getty Images)
Schoen did make controversial decisions to let some others leave (most notably running back Saquon Barkley and safety Xavier McKinney, who had huge years with the Eagles and the Packers, respectively, in 2024). But fixing the cap situation still gave the Giants room to be players in free agency in each of the past two offseasons, and to make dynamic moves like their trade for Brian Burns, who then signed a five-year, $141 million deal.
That matters for a general manager, almost as much as the win-loss record. So does this statement from Mara while announcing Daboll’s dismissal: “We feel like Joe has assembled a good young nucleus of talent.” There is no doubt that the current roster, when fully healthy, is better and deeper in almost every area than it was four years ago.
Yes, Schoen’s draft record obviously includes some notable misses (first-rounders like cornerback Deonte Banks and tackle Evan Neal), but his past two drafts, in particular, have added a lot of productive players. The most important, of course, came from the draft-day trade he engineered to get back into the first round for franchise quarterback Jaxson Dart — an aggressive maneuver that one team source told me “earned him a lot of points” with his bosses.
It also helped that Schoen brought Dart into a situation with a No. 1 receiver (Malik Nabers), a dangerous running back (Cam Skattebo), a veteran offensive line that is playing better than a Giants line had played in years, and a defense believed to be much stronger than it’s played, too.
At least that’s the view internally. Externally, the reviews are mixed. In conversations with a half-dozen league sources, opinions of the Giants roster ranged from “promising” and “a strong group of young players” to “overrated” and “fool’s gold.”
One rival GM told me, “I think there’s a lot to work with there. They’re in every game. They look like they’ve got the quarterback. He’s got weapons and protection. And most of us would take that defensive line. I could build a winner around that.”
But another rival executive took the opposite view: “I think they’re fooling themselves. They keep saying there’s a lot of promise there, but when exactly are they going to see it? The only thing promise gets you in this business is fired at the end of the year.”
The development of Jaxson Dart figures to be a huge priority in the Giants’ coaching search. (Photo by Rich Graessle/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Of course, what matters most is what Mara and Tisch think. A team source described them as “understandably frustrated” with a third straight season of double-digit losses (and an eighth in 10 years). But they seem to sincerely believe Schoen has constructed the core of a decent team that, at least this season, was poorly coached. The biggest evidence of that, the source said, is the fact the Giants tied an NFL record this season with five blown 10-point leads.
One of those just came under Mike Kafka, who has actually seen his team blow fourth-quarter leads in both of his games as the interim head coach (which is why he fired defensive coordinator Shane Bowen this week). And though the 38-year-old Kafka is well-regarded around the league and was a finalist for three head coaching jobs in the past three years, keeping Daboll’s top lieutenant might be impossible for the Giants to sell to their fans.
Besides, he’s not really what they need. The Giants simply can’t repeat the mistakes they made with Daboll, Joe Judge and Ben McAdoo over the past decade, hoping an inexperienced coach can develop into the next Sean McVay. They need someone who’s done it before, preferably with some success — or at least more than Pat Shurmur had when they hired him in 2018, six years after his disastrous, two-year tenure in Cleveland (9-23).
And while there might not be a slam-dunk hire like Mike Vrabel on the market this offseason, especially with Bill Belichick not at all in the Giants’ plans, as multiple team sources said, there are likely to be a few experienced candidates with impressive résumés. Mike McCarthy, for example, is a former Super Bowl champion who has won more than 60% of his games over 18 NFL seasons. And there’s at least a chance that others, like Cleveland’s Kevin Stefanski or even Pittsburgh’s Mike Tomlin, could become available, too.
Schoen’s list will, of course, include several up-and-coming assistants. Rams defensive coordinator Chris Shula will likely be considered. And Colts defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo is already expected to be a very strong candidate, given the Staten Island native’s ties to the Giants — he was their defensive backs coach in 2018 and his son is currently a scout for the club — and the strong impression he made when he was interviewed by Schoen four years ago.
But remember, four years ago when the Giants hired Daboll, there were several influential members of the organization pushing for Brian Flores, who was coming off a relatively successful three-year tenure in Miami (24-25). Flores likely won’t be considered again, since he’s currently suing the Giants for racial discrimination in that hiring cycle, but he was the type of experienced leader many in the organization want.
“That’s the type of guy we needed,” one team source told me. “Someone who’s done it before. Someone who doesn’t have to learn on the job. Someone with that established, commanding presence.”
“And it doesn’t have to be a guy who has won somewhere else,” the former NFL GM added. “Just find a guy who had a little success, learned some lessons, and just needs a chance to apply them. Sometimes those second-chance guys can be a real steal.”
A candidate like Commanders OC Kliff Kingsbury could be an ideal fit for the Giants. (Photo by Cooper Neill/Getty Images)
The list of second-chancers this year includes Commanders offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury (who went 28-37-1, but went to the playoffs once in four seasons as head coach of the Cardinals), Steelers offensive coordinator Arthur Smith (21-30 in three years as coach of the Falcons), and Broncos defensive coordinator Vance Joseph (11-21 in two years as coach of the Broncos). Former Giants defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo, who is loved inside the organization, also fits that description, even though his three years with the then-St. Louis Rams (10-38) were a Shurmur-like disaster.
“When you hire someone who has done it before,” the former GM told me, “they at least have a sense of what works and what doesn’t.”
And that’s what the Giants need — a coach who already learned some hard lessons and who can work with the core that Schoen has assembled. The roster is not perfect, and it’s definitely not finished. But as one prominent coaching agent told me, his clients view the Giants “as a place where you can win sooner than later.”
“There are players there,” he told me. “They have a potential star at quarterback. The turnaround has a chance to be quick.”
It does, if Mara and Tisch can ignore their worst urges and pay no attention to the angry mob at the gates. Yes, that requires more patience in an industry where that’s often unpopular and hard. But patience, even in sports, can be a virtue, too.
If they realize that and stay on track with Schoen and bring in the right coach to lead the promising roster he assembled, they really could be close to their long-awaited turnaround.
But they won’t be if they blow it all up and start all over again.
Ralph Vacchiano is an NFL Reporter for FOX Sports. He spent six years covering the Giants and Jets for SNY TV in New York, and before that, 16 years covering the Giants and the NFL for the New York Daily News. Follow him on Twitter at @RalphVacchiano.
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