Brian Daboll was fired as head coach of the New York Giants on Monday.
Daboll and the Giants lost their 11th consecutive road game on Sunday at Chicago and dropped to 2-8 this season.
“The past few seasons have been nothing short of disappointing, and we have not met our expectations for this franchise. We understand the frustrations of our fans, and we will work to deliver a significantly improved product,” Giants president John Mara and chairman Steve Tisch said in a joint statement on Monday. “We appreciate Coach Daboll for his contributions to our organization. We wish the Daboll family all the best in the future.”
Offensive coordinator Mike Kafka will be elevated to interim head coach as the Giants refocus for a Week 11 game against the Green Bay Packers. Green Bay is 5-2-1 entering the “Monday Night Football” matchup with the Philadelphia Eagles.
The Giants were 20-40-1 since Daboll was hired in 2022, making the playoffs in his first season with a record of 9-7-1, which earned Daboll AP Coach of the Year honors. New York won a wild-card playoff game at Minnesota for its first postseason win since Super Bowl XLVI in 2012.
But the team never finished better than third in the NFC East, suffering a 10-game losing streak in 2024 before the franchise decided to bring Daboll and general manager Joe Schoen back for the 2025 season.
The Giants are committed to Schoen going forward and tasked him with hiring the franchise’s next head coach, Mara said Monday. Including Kafka, the Giants have had six different men assume the title of head coach or interim head coach since Tom Coughlin was fired at the end of the 2015 season.
“We feel like Joe has assembled a good young nucleus of talent, and we look forward to its development,” said Mara. “Unfortunately, the results over the past three years have not been what any of us want. We take full responsibility for those results and look forward to the kind of success our fans expect.”
“These are difficult decisions, and John and I do not take them lightly,” said Tisch, “but we feel like this is the right thing to do at this time and will allow us to move forward.”
The Giants appeared to find a spark after turning to rookie quarterback Jaxson Dart and benching Russell Wilson. But the inability to finish close games was all too regular.
New York was up by 10 on the road for the fourth time this season before losing to the Bears on Sunday.
The decision that might have sealed Daboll’s fate came on 4th-and-goal at the Bears’ 1-yard-line with just over 10 minutes to play. Wilson, who entered the game while Dart was checked for a concussion for the fourth time this season, tucked the ball and ran toward the end zone on third down but was stopped short.
Rather than go for six points and potentially put the game out of reach at 24-10 with a touchdown, Daboll sent on the field goal team, settling for a 19-yard field goal and a 20-10 lead.
The Bears scored two touchdowns and added to Daboll’s poor fourth-quarter results. The Giants have allowed 115 points in the fourth quarter this season and the past three opponents — Chicago, the San Francisco 49ers and Philadelphia Eagles — all scored 14.
In a gutting loss at Denver on Oct. 19, the Broncos scored all 33 of their points in the final 15 minutes to stun the Giants 33-32.
–Field Level Media
