Brian Daboll discusses staff updates and calling plays.
Brian Daboll conceded he is considering calling the Giants’ offensive plays this season.
That duty was largely offensive coordinator Mike Kafka’s during Daboll’s first two seasons.
“It’s something I’m looking into,” Daboll said this morning at the NFL owners meeting, his first public comments since Jan. 8, the day after the 2023 season concluded. “I think there’s 20 head coaches at this point in time that call plays in the league (either offensively or defensively). … There might be a little bit more. I’ve been doing a bunch of research, but no decision has been made. I’m still going through that process, thinking about what we need to do.”
Daboll has a long and successful history calling plays. Before joining the Giants in 2022, he was an offensive coordinator for eight of his 20 seasons as an NFL assistant coach. In four seasons (2018-21) as the Buffalo Bills’ coordinator, Daboll devised the game plans and called the plays for one of the most productive offenses in the league, one that helped Buffalo earn three consecutive playoff berths, win two AFC East titles and advance to the conference championship game in 2020.
Responding to a question, Daboll admitted a part of him does miss calling plays.
“Certainly,” he said. “I did it for a long time. There’s a lot of things that go into it. Part of the evaluation that I talked about, there are some other things that I’m looking into. I take my time and do what I think is best for the team.”
A potential negative byproduct of a head coach calling either offensive or defensive plays is it can raise the perception he is not coaching the entire team.
“Still working through that process,” Daboll said. “There’s quite a bit of people nowadays that do that. So, again, it’s something that I’ll look into. Whatever I feel is best for the football team, that’s the way we go.”
Kafka is a potential future head coach. Last month, the Giants gave him the additional title of assistant head coach. Kafka has interviewed for at least five head coaching jobs the last two offseasons, including Tennessee and Seattle this year. He was also the head coach of the West team in the 2024 Shrine Bowl. Daboll is giving him a taste of the myriad responsibilities on a head coach’s plate.
“I thought he earned that role,” Daboll said of Kafka’s additional title. “I want to have him have opportunities to see some of the other things, particularly with some of the head coaching interviews he’s done. You don’t always get an opportunity to do that, to sit in a medical meeting or to sit in a schedule meeting with the strength staff of how we want to handle OTAs or the reason why or to sit down and listen to the different things that maybe you don’t listen to as a position coach or even a coordinator to get that sense of how things go.
“There’s so much time spent when you are a coordinator or a position coach on just this is my position, this is my responsibility, this is the play calling. Some of the bigger things, there’s a lot of other things that go along with it. Any of those meetings that I’ve had here in the last, call it, month that are more just myself, (general manager) Joe (Schoen), maybe some of the other parts of the staff that aren’t necessarily strictly football, I wanted Mike to have the opportunity to see how that goes so he can ask questions and take notes on things, and maybe that helps him in the future, too.
“I hope it helps him to see some things from a different angle,” Daboll said. “Not everybody gets that opportunity, but I thought that was important. He’s been through a few of these interviews. We were having a meeting the other day, and he’s deep into the draft preparation work, as am I. Just getting started here. A couple of strength coaches and medical people, and we had met a few days earlier for about three hours. We walked out and he said, ‘It was a long one here.’ (I said,) ‘Yeah, we’re going to have another one in a couple of days.’
“He’s digging through some players. I said, ‘Hey, you want to get meeting with these guys?’ He is like, ‘Yeah, I got a ton of evaluation.’ I said, ‘Let’s go, man.’ It’s a different perspective of things, of course.”
