The New York Giants named Brian Daboll of Welland, Ontario as the new head coach on Friday according to Michael Eisen giants.com. Daboll was most recently the Buffalo Bills offensive co-ordinator, a position he held from 2018 to 2021.
This past season, the Bills won the AFC East with a record of 11 wins and six losses. They reached the AFC Divisional playoff game before losing to the Kansas City Chiefs, 42-36 in overtime.
One must realize a major reason for the Bills success was the play of quarterback Josh Allen. Daboll has a lot of work to do in New York because Giants quarterback Daniel Jones is not even close to Allen’s overall skillset. This past season, Jones had an awful quarterback rating of 41.6, while Allen had a marvelous quarterback rating of 92.2. The Giants do have an above average running back in Saquon Barkley, but there is no doubt Daboll needs better skilled players if he hopes to have success like he did in Buffalo.
This past year the Giants only had 258 points, the second fewest in the NFL. Only the Jacksonville Jaguars at 253 points had fewer. The Giants were also last in the NFC East at four wins and 13 losses.
In addition to coaching Buffalo, Daboll has been with the New England Patriots as a defensive assistant (2000 to 2001), wide receivers coach (2002 to 2006), and tight ends coach (2013 to 2016), the quarterback coach of the New York Jets from 2007 to 2008, the offensive co-ordinator with the Cleveland Browns from 2009 to 2010, the offensive co-ordinator with the Miami Dolphins in 2011, and the offensive co-ordinator with the Kansas City Chiefs in 2012. While with the Patriots, Daboll won the Super Bowl five times in 2002, 2004, 2005, 2015 and 2017. However, Daboll got to work with an amazing quarterback there too in Tom Brady.
Daboll becomes the second Canadian head coach ever in the NFL. According to Tom Canavan of the Associated Press, the first was Tommy Hughitt of Genoa, British Columbia, who coached Buffalo from 1918 to 1924. Buffalo’s team was known as the all-Americans from 1920 to 1923, but they weren’t All-American, because they had a Canadian head coach.
