Eagles' coach, QB have big fan in Brian Daboll
Philadelphia Eagles' Nick Sirianni directs his team during the first half of an NFL football game against the Tennessee Titans, Sunday, Dec. 4, 2022, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum) Credit: AP/Matt Slocum
Brian Daboll, it turns out, played a pretty large role in helping the Eagles become the team with the best record in the NFL this season.
It was at the 2020 NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis. Daboll, the offensive coordinator for the Bills, was chatting with one of his former coaches from Kansas City who then was the offensive coordinator for the Colts. One of Daboll’s former players from Alabama who became an NFL prospect from Oklahoma strolled by.
Innocently enough, Daboll introduced them.
Nick, this is Jalen. Jalen, this is Nick.
Little did Daboll — or anyone else involved — realize he was playing chemist to a combination that soon would explode and come to sit atop the division in which he himself would land. The Eagles wound up drafting Jalen Hurts in the second round of the 2020 NFL Draft, and a year later, Nick Sirianni was hired as the head coach of the Eagles.
On Sunday, they will face Daboll’s Giants at MetLife Stadium, an 11-1 juggernaut one win away from clinching a postseason berth.
“We talked for a minute, all of us talked for a minute, and then he went off,” Sirianni recalled of the brief but impactful interaction. “And I remember Brian, what he said about Jalen after that, how much of a student of the game he was. All the things that I’m seeing now.
“Brian was right on with that.”
There isn’t much Daboll respects more than someone who can overcome adversity. He’s said many times that in his quarter-century journey to become a head coach in the NFL, he has learned much more from his failures than his successes.
It’s probably why he always has been so drawn to both Hurts and Sirianni.
Daboll was Hurts’ offensive coordinator at Alabama for the 2017 season and part of the coaching staff that pulled him from the national championship game at halftime, inserting Tua Tagovailoa to help the Crimson Tide win the title.
Hurts was able to overcome that setback, playing as a backup to Tagovailoa the next season (without Daboll in Tuscaloosa), transferring to Oklahoma, eventually being drafted by the Eagles and now playing at an MVP level for the team with the NFL’s best record.
Daboll called Hurts “as competitive and mentally tough [a person] as I’ve ever been around.”
“Nothing rattles him,” Daboll said. “He had this happen, this happens, he doesn’t worry about all that stuff. He just focuses on what he needs to focus on . . . You have a great appreciation for his mental toughness, his competitive stamina and his leadership.”
Sirianni, like Hurts, worked with Daboll for only one season. His first job as a position coach in the NFL was handling the wide receivers in Kansas City in 2012. Daboll was the offensive coordinator of that team.
“When one of your biggest mentors is one of the guys on the staff from that 2-14 team, you know he’s teaching me a lot in that sense,” Sirianni said of Daboll.
So who on this Giants team is earning Daboll’s respect for fighting through hard times?
We’re about to find out.
It would have been really nice if the Giants had cruised into the playoffs this season, something they appeared to be heading toward a little more than a month ago. This route probably is better for them.
The losing — and the tying — are difficult to take, no doubt. But that’s just the point. This stretch of recent struggles, a run of five games in which the Giants have won only once, gives the first-year coaching staff and front office a much better picture of the type of men they have in their locker room.
Finding out how they handle this trough and who among them can fight through it and earn an invitation back to next year’s team is, in the long run, more beneficial to the organization than any unchallenging stroll to short-term success could be.
“I think you’re always evaluating,” Daboll said. “Certainly when things aren’t going as great as you’d like them to go.”
He wants to know who can go through a losing streak and maintain his professionalism. He wants to see who wavers and starts scrambling for answers and who remains steadfast and consistent.
These Giants, for the most part, have been through a lot of losing. There isn’t anyone on the active roster who has played in a postseason game for the Giants, and for many, this season will be their last opportunity to do so with the organization.
Changes are coming, and Daboll and general manager Joe Schoen will start to fill the locker room with the kinds of personalities they want, not just the ones they inherited.
Getting this year’s team to the playoffs still is the goal, and still a very reachable one even if the Giants lose to the Eagles, as most expect they will. But trying to establish the foundation for a future in which the postseason is more commonplace remains an integral aspect of this season.
Daboll won’t have to look far on Sunday to see two men who epitomize the resiliency he wants to see from the present and future Giants.
They’ll be coaching and playing quarterback for the Eagles at MetLife Stadium.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
