Brian Daboll needs to be careful here.
He took over playcalling full-time on offense after a season of yo-yoing it back and forth from offensive coordinator Mike Kafka. And one week into the 2024 NFL season, the Giants are the lowest-scoring team in the league.
They are the only team that did not score double digit points in their season opener.
Their six points are dwarfed even by the Atlanta Falcons, Cincinnati Bengals, Carolina Panthers and Las Vegas Raiders, who scored 10 points apiece in their defeats.
It’s not just the pitiful output, though. What Daboll has to manage right now is his locker room.
It’s not just the fans that need a reason to believe. It’s the players, too.
Six points. Nine penalties as a team. Five dropped passes by Giants receivers.
Sam Darnold’s 79.2 completion percentage for the Vikings. Aaron Jones’ 6.7 yards per carry.
Only one Giants sack of Darnold and two QB hits. Five Vikings sacks of Jones and 12 more hits on New York’s quarterback by Brian Flores’ Minnesota defense.
There aren’t many reasons for the players to look at Daboll’s Week 2 game plan and feel like things are suddenly going to change.
The score didn’t look as bad as last year’s 40-0 prime time meltdown against the Dallas Cowboys, but Sunday’s 28-6 defeat to Minnesota actually feels worse.
It’s a year later. The Giants’ roster is supposed to be one year further in its progress. Daboll’s closer and extended work with Jones is supposed to yield the kind of results Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell got on Sunday from the failed former Jets first-round pick Darnold.
Joe Schoen’s offensive line is supposed to be fixed. Through one game, it clearly is not.
The Vikings also are not projected to finish any higher than third in the NFC North this season. The Cowboys were last year’s NFC East champions and the conference’s No. 2 seed with a record of 12-5.
Daboll’s saving grace last season, as his dysfunctional operation led to a 2-8 and a coaching staff exodus, was that he never lost the locker room.
The players still gave him the benefit of the doubt of his 9-7-1 first year, that season’s playoff berth and Wild Card win and his 2022 Coach of the Year award.
He spent a lot of time on player relationships. So when the house collapsed, the players didn’t abandon him.
This year could be different, however, if Daboll doesn’t demonstrate a competent plan quickly.
He is the first Giants head coach since Tom Coughlin to reach his third season with the team, and yet he has only a 15-19-1 regular season record (.428), including a 9-18-1 mark (.321) since the Giants’ 6-1 start to his first year.
His pregame Week 1 message that one game doesn’t define a season did not exactly instill confidence in the Giants’ chances of winning their home opener.
The building was tense entering that pivotal first game. The fans already have turned on the team. The players heard it loud and clear on the sideline for most of the game.
And it would be reasonable for players to question the plan if the results don’t change. After all, they already knew coming into this season that people’s jobs were on the line if the team didn’t look competent early.
Their leadership also looks markedly different now. Saquon Barkley’s most underrated contribution to the team last season was putting on a professional face and setting a good example for a lost franchise.
It helped Barkley personally to demonstrate he was a team player after his contract squabble with Schoen. It also helped keep the locker room from asking more questions than it could have about why the entire process was heading south.
The defense is part of the concern that could balloon into something much bigger.
Wink Martindale’s resignation due to Daboll’s dysfunctional staff management in 2023 robbed the team of its ability to outscheme opponents on a weekly basis on at least one side of the ball.
Daboll and Shane Bowen were no match for Flores and O’Connell, respectively. If they’re overwhelmed by the duo of Dan Quinn and Kliff Kingsbury in Week 2 against Washington, look out.
The reality here anyway is that Daboll has an early runway this season to show progress or else he likely won’t finish the season as the team’s head coach.
It’s not all on him. Schoen’s draft picks and roster needs to provide some signs of hope and development in year three, too. But Jones and Daboll will be the ones on the sideline and on the field on Sunday.
They need to fix this now.
As it is, the Giants are now the new favorites to finish with the No. 1 overall pick at season’s end, leapfrogging the Commanders, according to FTN Fantasy.
The Giants have a 14.3% chance, better than Washington (13.2%) and Carolina (13.0%). That is a marked change from their 9.2% preseason chances, while the Commanders were at 10%.
Jones also has the highest odds to be the first NFL quarterback benched at +200 on Bookies.com, ahead of the Raiders’ Gardner Minshew (+350), the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Russell Wilson (+450) and the Cleveland Browns’ Deshaun Watson (+600).
That’s how bad it has gotten this quickly. Giants fans have more reason to watch Texas QB Quinn Ewers, Georgia’s Carson Beck and Ole Miss’ Jaxson Dart than to tune in to their own games.
It’s hard to blame them.
Now, the bigger question is how long the players stick this out with Daboll if the wind doesn’t change?