The Giants' next coach will determine whether Jaxson Dart becomes a franchise savior or just another statistic

It was exhilarating, chaotic and impossible to sustain. Rookie Jaxson Dart did something no one else could: he revitalized an apathetic Giants fanbase in his first start. But as a fearless, freewheeling gunslinger, that also meant provoking the football gods with his style of play.

After improbable wins over the Chargers in his debut and the division-leading Eagles two weeks later, Dart kept making big plays -- with his legs and, when things broke down (which was often), with his arm in just about every conceivable way.

Dart was so good, so soon, that he looked like he was going to save Brian Daboll's job. 

But that style -- more Cam Skattebo than your typical NFL quarterback -- caught up with Dart and Daboll in Week 10. The Giants blew another fourth-quarter lead, this time against the Bears. The rookie left Chicago in concussion protocol. And the coach was fired midway through his fourth season.

We all knew that Daboll faced long odds to survive the season. In January, some three months before the team traded back into the first round to take Dart, Giants co-owner John Mara said of righting a franchise that has had just one winning season since 2016, "It'd better not take too long because I've just about run out of patience."

Any remaining threads of patience evaporated after the Giants blew a 10-point fourth-quarter lead in Chicago. Now, Dart finds himself in familiar territory. He's the latest first-round quarterback to see the coach who drafted him fired during or immediately after his rookie year.

And he's far from alone. 

History isn't kind to rookies who lose their coach

This table is a mixed bag of cautionary tales and TBDs -- players thrown into impossible situations, and teams desperate for a savior but lacking the structure or patience to see it through.

Of the 11 teams above, only the Rams have shown sustained success, appearing in two Super Bowls and winning one. The Chargers appear to have turned a corner since hiring Jim Harbaugh before the 2024 season, and the Bears (who have drafted three quarterbacks in Round 1 since 2017) are on a similar trajectory with Ben Johnson. 

Meanwhile, the Patriots have gone from laughingstock to back atop the AFC East in 10 weeks, in part because former No. 3 overall pick Drake Maye is a legit NFL MVP candidate, but also because first-year coach Mike Vrabel was the exact right person for the job.

And that's the rub: If, after firing your coach, you miss out on your Mike Vrabel and once again convince yourself that the latest hot coordinator can magically morph into a CEO, you're doomed to repeat the same mistakes -- stuck in top-10-pick purgatory while your "franchise quarterback" flames out, only to outperform expectations when he lands in a more stable environment elsewhere.

That's been the case with Sam Darnold, Baker Mayfield and Daniel Jones, reinforcing the notion that it's nearly impossible to overcome the dysfunction that plagues so many of these organizations. We say it all the time, but put Patrick Mahomes on the Browns and let me know how many Super Bowls he wins. The other side of that argument: Pair Darnold with Kevin O'Connell or Klint Kubiak, Mayfield with Liam Coen, or Jones with Shane Steichen, and let's all marvel at how the trio of first-round retreads is all in the MVP conversation. 

That says a lot more about the organization than the player -- a point O'Connell has hammered home when talking about how teams develop young quarterbacks.

"In what world do you go from wearing a life vest and learning how to swim to being thrown in the deep end in the middle of a 200-meter freestyle against Michael Phelps?" O'Connell asked The Athletic before the season. "We decide in this league very quickly whether a guy can or can't play quarterback like it's a simple yes or no: This is the guy or this isn't the guy; let's either have a parade in the streets or let's move on and try and find another one."

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Mike Renner

The real difference-makers: leaders, not play-callers

So what's next for Dart and the Giants? 

Conventional wisdom says something like, "You shouldn't fire the coach and GM who just drafted a first-round quarterback because now that quarterback is going to have to start over in a new offense, with a new play caller. And, oh, by the way, that new coach may have said in the interview that he couldn't wait to work with the young QB, who was no doubt No. 1 on his draft board last year, but the reality is that no one on the roster, from the quarterback on down, is 'his guy'." 

That storyline has played out frequently in Chicago, where Mitch Trubisky wasn't Matt Nagy's or Ryan Pace's guy, so they drafted Justin Fields. Fields, it turns out, wasn't Eberflus' or Poles' guy, so they drafted Caleb Williams. Eberflus was gone 12 weeks into Williams' rookie season, only to be replaced by Ben Johnson ahead of the 2025 campaign.

But history tells us it's more nuanced than that. Jared Goff improved after his rookie season when Sean McVay replaced Jeff Fisher, though he didn't become one of the NFL's best quarterbacks until he was traded to the Lions after spending five years with the Rams. 

Bryce Young was benched two games into his second season under first-year coach Dave Canales. At that point, we all assumed Young was done in Carolina, Canales and new GM Dan Morgan would get "their guy" in the draft, and Young would be elsewhere. But after Andy Dalton suffered an injury, Young returned to the lineup after a month on the bench and balled out for the rest of the 2024 season, solidifying his spot as the Panthers' QB1.

Returning to Chicago, it turns out Williams appears to be Johnson's "guy" too.  And the results have been encouraging with each passing week. The lesson: changing the head coach isn't inherently a bad thing, and it doesn't guarantee you'll stunt the growth of your young quarterback. In fact, sticking with the status quo can often be worse, in both the near and long term. 

Giants coaching candidates after Brian Daboll firing, plus one big name already ruled out

Tyler Sullivan

The coordinator trap the Giants must avoid

If you're the Giants -- and I cannot stress this enough -- it is imperative that you get the head coach right. Joe Schoen remains the general manager, and he will lead the coaching search. If he gets it wrong, nothing else matters. 

So what does the right guy look like? 

I talked about the perils of falling for the coordinators who are currently crushing it, only to find out they lack the skills to oversee an entire team. While Kyle Shanahan, Sean McVay and Matt LaFleur are all in that category, they have proven they can be CEOs as well. 

It's too early to tell, but maybe Ben Johnson will join them. Dennis Allen, Matt Nagy and Brian Callahan had less success as coordinators-turned-coaches, though there are various reasons why they struggled (and Mike McDaniel could join this list if the Dolphins continue to lose).

I think the surest, safest way to both develop a young quarterback and get buy-in from the entire team is to look for a leader first, above all else. Think Vrabel or Dan Campbell or Mike Tomlin or John Harbaugh. Even more important than Xs and Os is knowing how to motivate a group of grown men, all with mortgages and families and grown-up problems outside of work. 

Outscheming the opponent is great, but guess what? Great leaders hire great people. Josh McDaniels has helped Drake Maye elevate his game. Campbell's former coordinators, Johnson and Aaron Glenn, are now head coaches in Chicago and New York. Tomlin had Hall of Famer Dick LeBeau as his defensive coordinator for the first eight years of his tenure in Pittsburgh, and that group went to two Super Bowls, winning one. And Harbaugh employed Rex Ryan, Chuck Pagano, Jim Caldwell, Gary Kubiak, Mike Pettine, and Mike Macdonald, all of whom became NFL head coaches. 

The Giants' most important coaching hire in a decade

The Giants will have no shortage of candidates to replace Daboll. And if it was easy to identify the next Mike Vrabel, more teams would be doing it. It's hard not to find, say, Seahawks young offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak's success intoxicating. The same with Chargers defensive coordinator Jesse Minter. But are Steve Spagnuolo or Brian Flores (two men with previous coaching experience who seem to have learned from their mistakes the first time around), or even a long shot like Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman, more in the mold of Vrabel, Campbell, Tomlin or Harbaugh? 

We overthink a lot when it comes to football, whether it's evaluating players for the draft or complicating otherwise straightforward decisions. 

If you're the Giants, here's all you have to know: You don't just need a new coach. You need to break a cycle. Focus on finding the next closest thing to Tom Coughlin over Ben McAdoo, Pat Shurmur, Joe Judge or Brian Daboll.