Brian Daboll's background on offense could be selling point for Giants

Brian Daboll has an advantage no other apparent finalist for Giants head coach brings to the interview process.

No, not his long and close working relationship with new general manager Joe Schoen from their time together in Buffalo. Though that certainly helps.

No, not his time on a staff that went to the postseason in four of the past five years and won back-to-back division titles. But again, that doesn’t hurt.

What really sets Daboll apart from the competition is that he is the only candidate with an offensive background who the Giants seem to be considering. For a team that managed to score just over two touchdowns a game this past season (15.2 points) and hasn’t averaged more than 24 points per game since 2015, the biggest problem the franchise faces is figuring out a way to get to the end zone with more regularity.

Daboll is the only current option for the Giants who has proved himself capable of getting that part of the job done. He had a second interview with the Giants on Tuesday, meeting with Schoen and ownership at the team facility in East Rutherford, New Jersey. He had met with the Giants on a video conference on Friday just hours after Schoen was named to his new position.

Every other person the Giants have interviewed or are known to be interviewing for the job comes from a defensive background. That includes Dan Quinn, who met with the Giants in person on Monday; Patrick Graham, who is scheduled to meet with them on Wednesday afternoon; and Brian Flores, who is on the Thursday dance card. They have varying levels of experience (Quinn and Flores have both been head coaches) and knowledge of the organization (Graham, still under contract as the defensive coordinator, is a popular assistant coach who has been with the team the past two years) that top Daboll. But each would have to bring someone else in with them to fix the anemic offense.

There aren’t that many magicians around.

Daboll may be one of them. Assuming now former Saints coach Sean Payton is truly taking time away from the game and won’t be lured to the Giants’ sideline where he once called plays as a coordinator for a Super Bowl team, in this hiring cycle for the Giants Daboll appears to be the only one of them.

While Daboll may not have a deep background in coaching defense there are certainly more intriguing and qualified candidates to add as a coordinator on that side of the ball, including Don "Wink" Martindale, Mike Zimmer or Vic Fangio. Either of the last two would give Daboll, who has never been a head coach, the support of someone on the staff who has been.

The Giants have been very busy interviewing candidates since their regular season ended, first for general manager and now for head coach. But they also have taken some time to look up and see what is happening in the playoffs that have eluded them for the last five seasons. The 10 teams that have won postseason games so far have averaged 30.7 points, and that is while going against some of the top-ranked defenses in the league. The Giants haven’t scored 30 or more points in a victory since 2019 and have scored that much just once since.

And the four head coaches who remain alive in the playoffs? Offense, offense, offense and offense.

Defense and special teams matter, and that fact has been on display these past two weekends as well. But it’s a point-scoring league and the Giants have not been able to keep up.

If they want a head coach who can change that, they apparently have left themselves with just one choice.

Schoen's day. The Giants will introduce Schoen at a news conference Wednesday at 11:45 a.m. It will be Schoen’s first public appearance since taking the general manager job on Friday . . . Ryan Poles, a finalist for the Giants’ GM job, was hired by the Bears as their general manager on Tuesday. Poles was the executive director of player personnel for Kansas City.

By Tom Rock

tom.rock@newsday.com@TomRock_Newsday

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.