Giants head coach Brian Daboll was surging with an ‘I told you so’ level of confidence after Thursday night’s upset win over the Eagles.
He raved about rookie Jaxson Dart’s leadership, performance and impact, enough to remind everyone that Daboll was the driving force behind the Giants drafting him and inserting him as the starter in Week 4.
“I’ve liked everything about Dart since we got him,” Daboll said.
He took credit for telling defensive coordinator Shane Bowen to blitz more, an ironic comment considering Daboll hired Bowen back in 2024 to run a less aggressive scheme than Wink Martindale’s.
“I told Shane to be aggressive,” he said. “Don’t hold anything in your holster. Go after them.”
Then Daboll provided a detailed description of his Thursday night sideline outburst at the Giants’ team doctor while he waited on Dart’s concussion evaluation in the second half.
“I apologized directly to our team physician,” Daboll said. “I just wanted his ass out there if he was OK. We were getting ready to go for it on a potential fourth down. I would have burned a timeout if he could have come out there. I was asking how long was it going to take.”
“You want your guy out there. Not at risk of anything else,” he added. “But if he’s going to be good, I’m going to call a timeout on fourth down and go for this son of a bitch.”
Daboll even used the incident as an opportunity to take a shot at the media’s recent reporting on his relationship with the “medical people” in the building.
“I love our doctors. I’m sure you were going to ask me about that,” the fiery Daboll said. “I’m just giving the answer. I apologized. I was in the wrong. But he’s all right. He gave me a hug.”
The coach’s most interesting and honest comment, though, was his broader explanation for losing his cool on the sideline in general.
“There are a lot of emotions,” he said. “I certainly am an emotional guy.”
That was fascinating to hear Daboll say out loud, because all he has done recently in his public appearances is keep his personality and responses as boring as possible.
The hotter his seat got, the duller Daboll’s demeanor became. The idea is that the less he says or does, the less ammunition anyone inside or outside the building has on him. And that way he can keep his head down.
A different Daboll showed himself on Thursday, however: the real Daboll.
The one who went for the two-point conversion in Tennessee in his first game as the Giants’ coach in 2022. The one who threw a tablet on the ground once after Daniel Jones threw an interception against the Seahawks.
The one who has gotten himself in trouble plenty of times for how he has treated certain members of his staff.
He began returning to his true, unfiltered self in Week 4 when he benched Russell Wilson, put in Dart and announced it as “my decision” rather than a collective one.
And on Thursday night he continued to remind everyone, implicitly, where his influence has been unique compared to GM Joe Schoen’s.
That’s because Daboll is desperate, with his back against the wall, and because he hand-picked the two key offensive rookies who are backing him up with the same energy: Dart and running back Cam Skattebo.
It’s no coincidence that Daboll typically spends a couple minutes during the stretch period of every practice talking to those two players. They’re the tip of his spear in his quest to put a genuine stamp on this team and extend his tenure.
“I have a lot of confidence in these young players, these rookies,” Daboll said of two players whose selections were guided by the coach’s hand. “They’ve got the right mindset. They’re tough.”
No one can argue that point after watching Thursday’s game.
Dart jumped and tried to spear Eagles linebacker Jihaad Campbell to get a first down on the sideline. Skattebo ran over All-Pro Eagles linebacker Zach Baun. Skattebo ripped his shirt off on the Prime Video national postgame show.
Dart confidently stood at the podium and told the world that the Giants had heard all the noise and negativity around them, that they had seen the sportsbooks make them touchdown underdogs at home, and that they relished proving people wrong.
“We don’t care about that stuff,” Dart said. “We feel like we’re confident to go out there, put on a good performance, and win games.”
He said Thursday’s victory was “absolutely” a statement win.
“Quite honestly, nobody really expected us to put up a performance like this,” he said. “As a locker room, as teammates, we felt confident.”
Then there was Skattebo, doing backflips in the end zone, wagging his tongue and joining Daboll in peeking into the blue medical tent while Dart was getting evaluated for his concussion.
“I was making sure that Jaxson wasn’t hurting anybody in the injury tent,” Skattebo joked. “He’s a dog. He wants to be back on the field. I knew going over there, I needed to calm down a little bit because I knew he was going to be on fire.”
This is how Daboll is putting all his chips on the table, then. He is leaning into a street fighting mentality, into his occasionally uncontrolled emotion and into his gut instincts about when it’s time to turn up the volume.
Late in Thursday’s first half, a lack of composure led to an ill-advised timeout that bailed the Eagles offense out of a delay of game penalty.
But postgame Thursday, the emotional Daboll appeared to hit exactly the right note by giving a game ball to co-owner John Mara, who is battling cancer.
“There’s one tough son of a bitch in here. His name’s John Mara,” Daboll said, handing a ball to Mara as the players cheered.
Time will tell if Daboll can survive as head coach after incidents like Thursday’s sideline outburst at a team doctor, of course, especially considering his history. His fire can light up the team in a good way, or it can burn others inadvertently in its wake.
Now that Daboll has Dart and Skattebo playing with reckless abandon, talking tough and echoing his competitive drive, though, it seems he is again willing to be himself and is now coaching like he has nothing to lose.
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