NEW YORK - During a rare public moment of introspection last week, Brian Daboll offered a glimpse into his football life as the head coach of the New York Giants.
He is the first since Tom Coughlin to get a third year on the sideline with Big Blue, a remarkable yet disheartening reality for a franchise that long took tremendous pride in continuity and consistency before the three men who preceded Daboll were fired either during or after a second season on the job.
And Daboll himself has experienced two extremes in his two years: NFL Coach of the Year and cult hero among Giants fans in his debut season, mocked in Year 2 following a six-win campaign after which his personality, approach and football acumen were questioned by some following defensive coordinator Wink Martindale's controversial exit.
In two-plus decades of coaching, Daboll has continued to glean lessons from which to learn, maybe none more than in the most recent season that showed just how fleeting success in the NFL can be.
"You're going to have some tough times. There is always a lot to learn, a lot to self-evaluate," Daboll said. "Again, you do everything -- you don't have all the answers - you do everything you can do every year to try to be as good as you can be. You leave everything on the table. Like I said, you don't have every answer. You lean on a lot of people and try to grow and try to build the team you have for this year, whether that's in the leadership department, the plays, schemes, whatever it may be, the chemistry. But certainly those lows, you're going to have them, particularly in this league. They're never fun, but they are very good learning tools if you use them the right way."
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Daboll and the current Giants team will be in the shadows of franchise legends Thursday night as the team pays respect to its history by celebrating 100 seasons since the organization was founded in 1925 during a star-studded event at The Theater at Madison Square Garden.
A who's who in Giants lore will participate from Lawrence Taylor and Michael Strahan to Phil Simms and Eli Manning, lauded captains Harry Carson, George Martin, Justin Tuck and Chris Snee, fan favorites Mark Bavaro, Victor Cruz and Amani Toomer and many more.
In the same building as Coughlin and Bill Parcells, the two men responsible for bringing the Giants their four Vince Lombardi Trophies who will take the stage together, Daboll will witness first-hand what he already knows.
The Giants create lasting legacies, turning coaches and players into icons, not without greatness of their own doing. Yet at the same time, this is a team that tends to crush those legacies as well. As Parcells and Coughlin reminisce on the four Super Bowl victories that pave their path to Canton - Parcells is already in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, it's only a matter of time for Coughlin - it's fair to wonder where Daboll will be when his tenure is complete, whenever that may be.
Will the 49-year-old ultimately earn mention in the same category as Parcells and Coughlin, that of his fired predecessors or somewhere in-between?
The significance of where Daboll's Giants go from here should not be lost, and no one truly knows how things will turn out, beginning with a lack of expectations from the outside for the 2024 campaign.
Remember Parcells nearly lost his job after one 3-12-1 season when George Young flirted with Howard Schnellenberger. Don't forget all the calls for Coughlin's job over criticism that players did not want to play for him and he was too brash to survive the climate in this market.
In his first two years, Parcells went 12-19-1, winning a playoff game in Year 2.
Coughlin went 17-16, winning the NFC East in Year 2.
Daboll has gone 16-19-1 in two seasons with a playoff victory in Year 1.
When Giants co-owner John Mara joked about the rock star status achieved by Daboll last offseason, the lighthearted warning was meant not just for the head coach, but for the team he brought to the playoffs in the 2022 season and picked up their first postseason victory since Super Bowl XLVI in the process.
"We kid him, I mean, right now he'sBonowalking around New York City," Mara told Sirius XM NFL Radio back in March 2023. "But I've told him -- I've said: 'In this business, it doesn't take long to go fromBonoto Bozo.'"
And for two-plus months last season, Mara's words proved prophetic.
Daboll's Giants went out and slipped on those oversized shoes while slapping on the wig and red nose. They were clowned by the Cowboys and the Seahawks at MetLife Stadium, in prime time no less, with vocal members of the opposing fan bases taking over the lower section in the second half of blowouts by a combined score of 64-3.
When the Cowboys blew out the Giants for the second time in mid-November, forced to start an undrafted rookie in Tommy DeVito at quarterback one week after Daniel Jones tore his ACL, the season appeared on the verge of getting even uglier.
Somehow, the Giants stabilized the season. Getting to six wins with everything that went wrong was almost as impressive from a head coaching perspective as nine wins and a playoff victory the previous season.
You don’t thrive in this league as a head coach with too many like last season, but that ability to navigate the lowest of lows shows you might have what it takes to survive.
Daboll won’t be celebrated for 2023, nor should he be, but there is reason to believe he can turn this around.
When Daboll won his opener two seasons ago, that represented the first time the Giants had a winning record since 2016. Let that sink in for a moment.
When Parcells took over, the Giants had one winning season in a decade. They had one winning season in the nine years prior to Daboll's arrival.
What worked for the 2022 Giants seemed to make the 2023 Giants too comfortable, too content with where they were and their ability to overcome whatever is stacked against them.
Daboll is no stranger to the work, having embraced the grind of the coaching life for more than two decades, working his way up the ladder in college briefly before rising through the ups and downs in the NFL.
And when the chips are down, the head coach's role is magnified to the Nth degree, as it should be.
Critics say Daboll is too intense, too fiery. You can also see that emotion as evidence of a coach who is driven to succeed, one who drills down to gain an understanding of who responds best with a pat on the back and those who might just respond better with the opposite messaging.
Too much time has been spent talking about how Daboll's personality is the one that needs changing because he holds his players accountable on the sidelines, gets in their faces when they need it and throws a tablet to the ground in disgust. He equally offers up a genuine hug and praise when that is deserved and earned.
Consider what Parcells told me in the days prior to his Hall of Fame induction in the summer of 2013.
"One thing about New York that I've learned," he quipped. "Once you've won for them, their fans never forget."
Which is why the Giants' 100th celebration serves as yet another reminder about the truth in Parcells' promise: so often the line between legends remembered and those who are forgotten is blurred by time and patience not granted due to circ*mstance and the reality of the NFL.
Time and patience were extended to Parcells and Coughlin despite a few close calls along the way.
The celebration here Thursday night could have had a lot different feel, that's for sure.
Hard to imagine the Giants becoming the Giants we know had the opposite happened.
Time and patience - and most of all, the bottom line of winning versus losing.
That's what Daboll and the Giants are up against this season - against the celebratory backdrop of the 100th season and a standard established by legends.
Giants 100: A Night of Legends
Here is the full list of Giants players and coaches expected to attend A Night with Legends on Thursday night at The Theater at Madison Square Garden. Bob Papa, the voice of the Giants, will serve as master of ceremonies with co-hosts Shaun O'Hara and Peter Schrager. Limited tickets for the event, which begins at 6:30 p.m., can be purchased for $25 at Ticketmaster or www.giants.com/100. Net proceeds will go to the Giants Foundation.
Executives
John Mara
Joe Schoen
The coaches
Bill Parcells
Tom Coughlin
Brian Daboll
The players
Lawrence Taylor
Michael Strahan
Harry Carson
Carl Banks
Eli Manning
Phil Simms
Ottis Anderson
Tiki Barber
Chris Snee
Justin Tuck
Ottis Anderson
Mark Bavaro
Amani Toomer
Victor Cruz
Joe Morris
Pete Gogolak
Phil McConkey
Brian Kelley
George Martin
David Tyree
Jason Sehorn
Contact Art Stapleton at stapleton@northjersey.com. Follow on X @art_stapleton.
