The schedule makers did the New York Giants a pretty big favor with how the early portion of their 2026 schedule lines up. The standard for winning football games changed completely the exact second John Harbaugh arrived in East Rutherford to become head coach.
The buzz around the team feels completely different, and the team finally looks like it's moving in the right direction.
Big Blue kicks off the season with brutal, back-to-back prime-time games against playoff hopefuls. Week 1 features a high-stakes Sunday Night Football home matchup against the Dallas Cowboys, a team the G-Men historically struggle to beat, especially when Dak Prescott is under center. Week 2 is a road trip out west for a super tough Monday Night Football matchup against the Los Angeles Rams.
Getting through those potentially brutal first two games is absolutely massive for this team's confidence. Thankfully, the early-season schedule gods provided a perfect opportunity for a reset right after those prime-time slugfests. Week 3 brings a much-needed break from the late-night television spotlight, and it sets up a beautiful chance to build some serious momentum at home against their former head coach Brian Daboll ...and practically half their 2025 roster.
Brian Daboll’s return to MetLife couldn’t come at a better time for the Giants
The NFL schedule writers truly gave New York the absolute perfect opportunity to kick Daboll while he's down. The former Giants head coach returns to North Jersey for a 1:00 PM ET kickoff in Week 3 (Sunday, Sep. 27), and the storylines are going to be absolutely electric, even though the time slot suggests it won't be all that exciting to everyone else.
Dabs finished his Big Blue tenure with a miserable 20-40-1 record. Things went downhill for the 51-year-old after winning the 2022 Coach of the Year Award, culminating in his firing after a we've-seen-enough-of-this 24-20 Week 10 loss to the Chicago Bears last year.
This game doubles as a bizarre family reunion.
Daboll essentially built a pipeline from East Rutherford down to Nashville over the offseason. Giants fans will see plenty of familiar faces on the opposing sideline, including Wan'Dale Robinson, Cor'Dale Flott, Daniel Bellinger, and Austin Schlottmann. Those guys didn't do much winning at MetLife while they were wearing Giants blue. So it'll be interesting to see if anything has changed over the course of an offseason.
Funny enough, Harbaugh's new defensive coordinator, Dennard Wilson, just spent the past two years as Tennessee's DC, so it's a cluster you-know-what of epic proportions all around.
Securing a convincing win over Daboll sets them up for a strong start to October. The G-Men are staying put in Week 4 for another very winnable game against the Arizona Cardinals. But stacking early-season wins only happens if they first remind everyone why they moved on from Dabs.
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