Giants' 2022 success not guaranteed for 2023
New York Giants head coach Brian Daboll speaks during the NFC head coaches availability at the NFL football meetings, Tuesday, March 28, 2023, in Phoenix. Credit: AP/Matt York
PHOENIX — The 2022 season was undeniably a success for the Giants. They finished with a winning record for the first time in six years, won a playoff game for the first time in 11 years, found a franchise quarterback in Daniel Jones, and Brian Daboll earned NFL Coach of the Year.
The thing that most sticks out to Daboll about his rookie season as a head coach?
“And we got smoked in the playoffs,” he said on Tuesday at the coaches breakfast during the NFL’s annual league meetings.
He was referring to the 38-7 loss to the Eagles in the divisional round.
“Any time you lose in the playoffs it’s just a crash landing,” Daboll said. “Obviously we didn’t do a good enough job in that game, really in any area.”
More important, it was an illustration of the gap that still existed, at least at the end of last season, between the third-place Giants and the eventual NFC champion Eagles.
Daboll noted that while there is always an emphasis on measuring up against division opponents, there also will be plenty that changes between seasons. And not just on rosters. Every other team in the NFC East besides the Giants will have a new offensive play-caller this season. The Eagles will have new coordinators on offense and defense.
As for the Giants, they retained all of their coordinators even though Mike Kafka and Wink Martindale were interviewed for head coaching jobs. At the very least that makes the Giants the most stable team in the division coming into the season from a coaching perspective, whatever that is worth.
According to Daboll, not much. And it certainly doesn’t guarantee the Giants will get back to the heights they achieved in 2022, never mind surpass them.
“It starts all over,” he said. “We have a long way to go in terms of time and a long way to go in terms of improvement. What you do one year has no correlation to what you do the next year . . . I’m not saying we’re starting at ground zero because there are lot of things they know more than they did last year, but in terms of where we are at and the things we have to do, we have a long climb ahead of us.”
Notes & quotes: Daboll said he has exchanged texts “once or twice” with free-agent wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. this offseason. He and the Giants met with Beckham late last season when Beckham was hoping to sign with a team. The Giants are not ruling out bringing Beckham back but are not pursuing him as actively as other teams seem to be . . . While the Giants’ coaching staff has remained largely intact, one of the most intriguing additions is the hiring of Daboll’s son Christian for the entry-level position of offensive assistant. Christian Daboll spent several years as a student coach at Penn State. Brian Daboll said he won’t have much interaction with his son on a day-to-day basis and he will work more closely with offensive coordinator Mike Kafka.
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.
