Remember when Giants fans thought Brian Daboll was their savior?
The former Buffalo Bills coordinator who supposedly knew how to develop quarterbacks was going to turn Daniel Jones into Josh Allen two point zero but that fairy tale crashed and burned in spectacular fashion.
But the Giants ownership fired Brian Daboll after he made this inexcusable decision.
Giants Make Mid-Season Coaching Change After Devastating Loss
The New York Giants fired head coach Brian Daboll on Monday after a gut-wrenching 24-20 loss to the Chicago Bears dropped the team to 2-8.¹
Daboll's dismissal came less than 24 hours after his team blew yet another double-digit lead, this time squandering a 20-10 advantage in the fourth quarter against a Bears team that entered the game with a losing record.
"We spoke this morning about the direction of our franchise on the field, and we have decided that, at this time, it is in our best interest to make a change at the head coaching position," Giants president John Mara and chairman Steve Tisch said in a joint statement.²
Assistant head coach and offensive coordinator Mike Kafka will take over as interim coach for the remainder of the season.
Daboll went 20-40-1 during his three and a half seasons in New York, a .336 winning percentage that ranks 154th out of 166 coaches with 50-plus games since 1970.³
The firing marks just the third mid-season coaching change for the Giants since the 1970 AFL-NFL merger and the first since they axed Ben McAdoo in 2017.⁴
Latest Collapse Follows Disturbing Pattern of Giants Failures
Sunday's loss to Chicago represented the second time this season the Giants blew at least a 10-point lead with under four minutes remaining.
They became just the second team in the Super Bowl era to accomplish that dubious feat, joining the 2004 Seattle Seahawks.⁵
The Giants have blown four double-digit leads on the road this season alone, losing games they had better than a 90% chance of winning according to advanced analytics.⁶
Against the Cowboys, Broncos, and Bears, the Giants held late-game win probabilities of 92.3%, 99.3%, and 96.9% respectively before finding ways to lose all three contests.
The odds of that happening by chance? One in 60,000.
Rookie quarterback Jaxson Dart suffered a concussion during the Bears loss, marking the fourth time this season he's been evaluated for head trauma.
Dart was injured on a designed run play, adding fuel to criticism that Daboll was putting his young quarterback's health at risk to save his own job.
Giants' Coaching Carousel Continues Decade-Long Dysfunction
Daboll becomes the fourth different head coach dismissed by the Giants in the past eight years.
Since parting ways with Tom Coughlin following the 2015 season, New York has cycled through Ben McAdoo, Pat Shurmur, Joe Judge, and now Daboll.
None of those coaches lasted more than two full seasons, and the entire quartet combined for just two winning seasons.⁷
The Giants are 81-140-1 since their last Super Bowl victory in 2012, making them one of the worst franchises in football over that span.⁸
McAdoo went 13-15 before getting canned mid-season in 2017 after benching Eli Manning.
Shurmur compiled a 9-23 record over two seasons and was fired after the 2019 campaign.
Joe Judge lasted two years with a 10-23 record before ownership pulled the plug following a disastrous 2021 season.
Each hiring was supposed to represent a "fresh start" and "new culture" for the organization.
Why This Firing Reveals Giants' Deeper Problems
The Daboll firing exposes everything wrong with how the Giants operate as a franchise.
They've turned into a poverty organization masquerading as a storied franchise based on ancient history.
Daboll was brought in specifically because of his work developing Josh Allen in Buffalo, but he couldn't replicate that success with either Daniel Jones or Jaxson Dart.
Jones is now thriving with the Indianapolis Colts after the Giants cut him, which makes Daboll's failure to maximize his potential look even worse.
The coach's sideline antics this season — including screaming at medical staff treating Dart for a concussion — showed a man desperate to save his job at any cost.
Daboll was fined $100,000 for entering the medical tent while Dart was being examined, displaying the kind of judgment that explains why the Giants have been such a disaster.⁹
Multiple reports suggested owner John Mara wanted to fire Daboll immediately after the team's Week 7 collapse against Denver but was talked out of it by other executives.¹⁰
The Giants had built an 18-point lead in that game before losing 33-32 on a walk-off field goal.
Sunday's loss to Chicago was simply the final straw in a pattern of inexcusable collapses that defined Daboll's tenure.
Now the Giants will conduct their fifth coaching search since 2016, hoping against hope they can finally get it right this time.
But until ownership addresses the systemic dysfunction that's plagued this organization for over a decade, they'll keep recycling through coaches while wondering why nothing changes.
The problem isn't just the coach — it's the people making the hiring decisions.
¹ Jordan Raanan, "Giants fire coach Brian Daboll; Joe Schoen remains as GM," ESPN, November 10, 2025.
² Ibid.
³ "Giants fire head coach Brian Daboll after 2-8 start to fourth season," NFL.com, November 10, 2025.
⁴ "Giants fire coach Brian Daboll; Joe Schoen remains as GM," ESPN, November 10, 2025.
⁵ Ibid.
⁶ "Did the Giants Fire Brian Daboll? Breaking Down the HC's NFL Future," Pro Football Network, November 10, 2025.
⁷ "Brian Daboll fired: Giants dismiss head coach after Week 10 loss to Bears," CBS Sports, November 10, 2025.
⁸ "Giants, in a decade-long spiral, must make a good hire after Brian Daboll debacle," Yahoo Sports, November 10, 2025.
⁹ "Giants fire coach Brian Daboll; Joe Schoen remains as GM," ESPN, November 10, 2025.
¹⁰ "NFL Fans Want Brian Daboll Fired 'Immediately' After Sunday's Game," The Spun, November 10, 2025.
