The New York Giants looked flat-out embarrassing in their Week 1 loss to the Washington Commanders. The demoralizing 21-6 defeat saw Big Blue fail to generate any offensive rhythm aside from a few big catches from Malik Nabers and served as a stark reminder as to why Brian Daboll is on the hot seat in the first place.
Under Daboll, the Giants have never finished higher than third place in the NFC East, and the so-called “QB guru” got a pitiful performance from Russell Wilson in the season opener. The 36-year-old went 17-for-37 for 186 passing yards in our nation’s capital, and all his performance did was get fans ready for the Jaxson Dart era.
After Daboll was crowned Coach of the Year for taking New York to the playoffs in 2022, the Giants were among the worst teams in the NFL in both 2023 and 2024, and we all know John Mara isn’t exactly the poster child for rational decision-making. If this performance keeps up, both he and Joe Schoen should be out of jobs by the season’s end.
Week 1 makes Brian Daboll's playoff run feel like a lifetime ago
That 2022 playoff run was a flash in the pan, as well. Winning a playoff game with Daniel Jones is not something very many coaches are capable of accomplishing, but the Vikings team the Giants beat was far from impressive. It's why league perception has begun to sour on him too.
From there, the Daniel Jones contract was a disaster that set the franchise back, and the expectation was that signing both Wilson and Jameis Winston would serve as the perfect segway until Dart is ready to be handed the keys to the franchise.
After Wilson completed under 50% of his passes in his Giants’ debut, we could be seeing the first-round rookie take over sooner than anticipated. Yet Daboll has flatly refused to give the 22-year-old a chance.
Daboll was brought in to modernize Big Blue’s offense, and for all the talk about his offensive genius, the results tell a different story. The Giants ranked near the bottom of the league in scoring the past two years, and Sunday’s performance was another entry in the same depressing trend.
The rest of the offense wasn’t any better. The only highlight was his argument with Nabers on the sideline.
Tyrone Tracy recorded just 24 rushing yards on 10 carries, while Cam Skattebo finished with negative rushing yards on the afternoon. Besides Nabers and Wan’Dale Robinson, no other Giants pass-catcher finished with over 15 receiving yards, and Theo Johnson and Jalin Hyatt combined for just one reception.
Additionally, the defense surrendered over 400 total yards, and that was while Terry McLaurin had a quiet afternoon. The lone silver lining was that Abdul Carter dazzled in his NFL debut, leading all rookies with four pressures.
Daboll is going on Year 4 at the helm, and the Giants have felt stuck in neutral for most of it. The roster finally has a glimmer of hope, but it’s still a long way from competing in the stacked NFC East.
And his and Schoen’s futures are tethered to one another, so if nothing changes in Week 2 against the Cowboys, then the calls for change, both at quarterback and in the front office, might finally be too much for Mara and Steve Tisch to ignore.