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Pat Leonard: No telling how low John Mara, Steve Tisch will let Giants sink with Joe Schoen, Brian Daboll

Pat Leonard, New York Daily News on

Published in Football

NEW YORK — Saquon Barkley left the Giants, rushed for 2,005 yards with the Philadelphia Eagles, took home Offensive Player of the Year and won the Super Bowl.

Daniel Jones left the Giants and immediately began shattering Peyton Manning’s records for the undefeated Indianapolis Colts (3-0).

Jones is the first NFL quarterback since 1970 to throw three touchdown passes, run for three TDs and commit no turnovers in the first three games of an NFL season.

His offense is doing so well that the Colts have only punted once so far. That is the fewest by a team in a season’s first three games since 1940. And Indy’s 103 points are the most through three weeks in Indianapolis Colts history.

Sterling Shepard, meanwhile, left the Giants and racked up 80 yards in Sunday’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers win over the Jets. It marked Shepard’s first 80-yard game since 2021.

The Giants gave up on all of these players. They scapegoated Jones.

None of these players were able to produce — or in Shepard’s case, play much — during their final years in New York. But once they left, they flourished.

Not to mention star Packers safety Xavier McKinney and many others who have carved out better roles in improved circumstances.

Then there was Malik Nabers on Sunday night, barely seeing the ball because Brian Daboll, offensive coordinator Mike Kafka and quarterback Russell Wilson had no solution to the Chiefs defense playing two deep safeties.

There were the Giants (0-3) scoring in single digits for the seventh time in their last 20 games, which is four more than any other NFL team, per ESPN.

Something is rotten in East Rutherford, N.J. So when is it enough?

When is someone in that building going to stand up for a higher standard that demonstrates some sort of pride?

What will it take for the Giants to make changes at GM and head coach?

Leave it to former NBA All-Star Gilbert Arenas to explain what Jones’ success and Wilson’s poor play reveal about the franchise:

“As soon as [Jones] gets out there [for the Colts], he looks like a No. 1 pick. And the [Giants] replaced him with Wilson. Then he looks like Daniel Jones,” Arenas said on “The Arena: Gridiron” podcast. “So obviously it’s the kitchen I’m in. It’s the Giants’ kitchen. No matter what you put in there, it’s gonna cook the same recipe … This is organizational for me.”

Organizational means all the way up to ownership.

Co-owners John Mara and Steve Tisch determined a 3-14 record was acceptable by retaining Joe Schoen and Daboll for a fourth season. They prioritized some abstract process over results.

Their franchise has now lost 17 of its last 20 games.

It’s so bad that NBC ran a graphic of a plane flying a banner during Sunday night’s broadcast, alluding to the frequent air traffic over MetLife Stadium last season.

No doubt, if the skies are clear for Sunday’s 1 p.m. home game against the Los Angeles Chargers, there could more planes circling the field before kickoff in Week 4.

Then there is Schoen, whose poor drafting and evaluations have the Giants still looking like a full rebuild in its early stages even though he was hired in Jan. 2022.

Schoen believed Wilson was a dramatic improvement over Jones. Not to mention he closely manages the club’s messaging, which always finds a way to pin blame on something other than the front office and the roster.

Then there is Daboll and a coaching staff that struggles to give this team an advantage in the margins every single week.

 

Daboll now ranks No. 186 in career winning percentage out of 204 NFL head coaches who have coached a minimum of 50 games, per The Ringer.

Daboll has a 18-35-1 (.343) record as the Giants’ head coach, which is dwarfed by Ben McAdoo’s (13-15, .464) and puts Daboll in the exact same company as coaches like Joe Judge (10-23-0, .303) and Pat Shurmur (9-23, .281) who received a lot less patience from ownership.

Daboll’s record is 11-33-1 since his 7-2 start to their 2022 playoff year. He has won only three games since former defensive coordinator Wink Martindale resigned after the 2023 season.

The icing on the cake, though, is that Daboll got this job because he’s supposed to be a quarterback whisperer and offensive guru. But outside of reigning league MVP Josh Allen — a generational unicorn talent who has continued ascending since Daboll let Buffalo — the Giants coach’s history reflects no evidence that supports his reputation.

Now, after Schoen and Daboll blamed Jones for their shortcomings on offense, Jones has exploded under the tutelage of Colts coach Shane Steichen, while the Giants flounder with the same turnover, red zone, situational and play scheme problems that have defined this staff’s ineptitude.

That has meant a third straight Giants season that has ended before it started: the Giants started 2023 with a 1-5 record in their first six games. They started 2024 with a 1-3 mark in their first four games.

Now they’re 0-3 here in 2025 with Jim Harbaugh’s first-place Chargers bearing down on them in a matter of days.

The only thing that can save Schoen and Daboll at this point would be if Jaxson Dart truly turns out to be special.

GMs can hide a lot of problems by picking the right quarterback. Coaches look a lot smarter when their best player has the ball the entire game.

For that to happen, however, Dart doesn’t just have to show promise. Daboll needs to help shepherd him fully into the light.

Sunday’s Chicago Bears win over the Cowboys, despite Dallas’ horrendous defense, was a reminder of what Daboll came here to do:

He needs to do for Dart what Bears coach Ben Johnson, the former Detroit Lions offensive coordinator, is tasked with doing for Caleb Williams.

He needs to fix the Giants’ quarterback position and offense to drag this franchise out of the NFL’s perennial gutter.

Daboll already failed to do that with Jones, who is clearly not a bad player. Jones may just be a bad player when he has bad coaching.

Players, recent history now shows, are better off playing somewhere other than the Giants.

Now the conversation has turned to whether Daboll will bench Wilson. The Giants’ coach left the door open to a change on Monday afternoon by remaining non-committal on Wilson as his starter.

But this is about more than just a change at quarterback.

The bigger question is when Mara and Tisch will put their collective foot down and reaffirm a higher standard and set of expectations for this franchise by making changes at the top.

Every day that they make excuses for themselves and for Schoen and Daboll is another day that fans lose interest and confidence.

It’s the Giants kitchen. And if people get tired of a kitchen’s same old recipes, they either send the food back.

Or they stop coming to the restaurant altogether.

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©2025 New York Daily News. Visit nydailynews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

 

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