A Giant Failure

by | Nov 14, 2025 | General

Credit: Aaron Fishman; EP Joba and the Mouth
Days after yet another Giants Head Coach has-been, has been unceremoniously fired before the end of the regular season, a new tradition in the franchise the past couple of hiring cycles, we fans are left looking to the future; hoping against hope that the glory days will be here again sometime soon. That’s the thing about the glory days though, there’s a reason they are remembered so fondly, and it’s much less about success back then, and much more about how bad things are now. And boy, are they bad now.

This 2025 Giants squad has lost four games this season in the 4th quarter; in three of which where they were greater than 95% favorites to win the game. Just impossibly bad late game coaching, especially in the historic Broncos loss. The blame fell where it had to fall, the head coach’s shoulders. Yet that is not the reason he is being fired. We can discuss the sideline theatrics and the disdain for his fellow coaches leading to lambasting them on the sidelines and particularly treating new interim head coach Mike Kafka like absolute dog crap for most of his tenure with the team. Yet those behaviors are not why Daboll was let go either. It was the reckless running of rookie Jaxson Dart on designed QB run plays by Daboll that finally cost him his job. The stupidity of continuing to call QB runs, even in blow out scenarios, led Dart to be checked for a concussion 4 times in 8 weeks ending with him getting one last week, before the Giants predictably blew the game. That is why Daboll was fired. Not that it should have taken this long. It was like he was trying to get fired, risking the franchise’s future to show off how good a QB run scheme he could draw up (which were pretty good to be honest). It just was so moronic that the combination of another horrific late collapse with the future getting concussed, finally gave Daboll his just desserts.

If you asked pretty much any Giants fan at the end of last season, they would have told you it was time to start fresh. New coach, new GM, just start over, tabula rasa. Instead, the Giants ran it back and are sitting at 2-8 going into Week 11 with QB1 Jameis Winston throwing to number 1 receiver Wandale Robinson. At least Jameis will make it fun I guess as he is likely for a multiple td, multiple turnover game every time he touches the football…and is a genuinely unique individual to put it mildly. But I mean, what in the Sam Hill are we doing here?!

Credit: YouTube Short: NFL on FOX
Somehow, Joe Schoen remains at the helm of this franchise despite his partner in crime being let go. I guess he gets credit for Cam Skattebo, even though that injury may be something he never fully comes back from, and Malik Nabers (whose future is in Jeopardy due to the undefeated MetLife Turf that the Mara’s and Tisch’s think is just fine apparently). Not enough really is made of how terrible Schoen has been throughout all this as well. Letting Xavier McKinney go for nothing and then spending a 2nd round pick (Tyler Nubin) and a ton of free agent money on Jevan Holland. Trying to replace McKinney, who was 1st Team All-Pro in his first season with the Packers, with bad players, when they could have just paid him, would be the worst move of an offseason for most GM’s, but Joe Schoen also gave away Saquon Barkley that year for nothing to the Eagles; where he promptly ran for 2,000 yards and won the Super Bowl. Even worse is that it was over a couple of million dollars… which were undoubtably wasted on middling players, like Darius Slayton’s 3-year albatross of a contract the Giants won’t be able to get out of this offseason. Not to mention the humiliating Hard Knocks of it all.
Credit: HBO Hard Knocks
Now a year and a half after losing Barkley, Giants fans were supposed to be excited about #3 pick Abdul Carter, who has been okay, but has only 0.5 sacks in 10 weeks, and QB Jaxson Dart who is very exciting, but is out with a concussion due to what many would call a reckless style of play that you can only get away with in college. Although I love Dart, I am equally expecting it not to work out due to recency bias of this franchise. How can it? We have the same infrastructure in place! The same guy that let two all-pros walk out the door, had two miserable drafts to start his tenure, leading to the lack of depth on the team today, and who tied his fledgling future to his Buffalo Bestie, is ever finding a way out of this, especially without him? If so, I’ve got a bridge to sell you! Seriously, why would you let Schoen keep running this franchise? All because he made one good trade for Brian Burns and a couple of good draft picks recently (we think)? That’s it! So why does Joey Bag-a-donuts make John Mara think anything will continue to be any different under his leadership? Hopefully ownership is just keeping him until the end of the season; to then move on from him before the draft and replace him with someone their handpicked head coach (not Schoen’s for the love of God), wants to work with. But why should we think the Mara’s have it together enough to do this right? They’ve screwed this up every time with the lame duck GM (Reese, Gettleman) picking the next coach. Mara is sick and obviously distracted and we wish him the best. All Giants fans know he wants to win. But he’s shown over the years that he is merely a “nepo baby” and needs to have the right people in place to work with (Coughlin, Accorsi) or he’s screwed. And when it’s up to him to pick the right person, he’s shown he doesn’t have good instincts on who to hire for any virtually position in his franchise. The Giants are going to have to get lucky to fix this apparently. But hey, better lucky than good!
Credit: Aaron Fishman, EP of Joba and the Mouth/TMZ
All that said, I am going to miss Daboll. I initially loved the fieriness and heart on his sleeve attitude, considering how devoid of human emotion Joe Judge was before him, but it wore thin. It’s not that being emotional is a bad thing, just a head coach and play caller needs to be more even keeled in key situations, more composed when the players need someone to look towards for reassurance, and someone that people want to work for and be around. Daboll never pulled that part of the gig off and it’s back to square one for the Giants, who are likely headed for another top 5 pick in the draft yet again. And I didn’t even mention Daniel Jones…if he can go to what he was with Daboll, which was barely functional by the end of the 2024 season, to possible MVP candidate with the Colts in 2025…it’s hard to justify that the main problem the team has had the past couple of years wasn’t the big fella at the helm.

I do want to end on a personal anecdote about Daboll. Right before the season started this year, I went to my nephew’s flag football game somewhere in North Jersey. Daboll was randomly there early in the morning on a lawn chair like the rest of the parents watching 5-6-7-year-old flag football. And boy was he into it. Eventually I brought my niece over to take a picture with him, but I was nervous, which made her nervous. I told him that she wanted a picture but was shy (half-truth) and he was super cool about it. I told him about our show and website, and I had plenty of things to say or ask (as you probably can tell by the end of this article), but all I could get out was, “Go get ‘em this year coach!” To which Daboll gave me a fist pump and a reassuring grunt like that was the only thing I could have said that he was going to like. I guess I succeeded where Mike Kafka and crew didn’t on that one. It sucks he couldn’t figure it out; he was a fun guy to root for that first season.

Spoiler alert by the way…He didn’t get ‘em this year.

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Aaron Fishman is the Executive Producer of The Sports Loud Mouth. He is an Offensive and Defensive Line coach and Offensive Assistant for a successful HS Varsity Football program in NY State. With a degree in economics and a decade of AP and IB History teaching under his belt, Aaron now is focusing on a career in sports media. Want to respond to the article? Email me at a.fishman@sportsonthego1.com

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