Giants' Brian Daboll, Saquon Barkley named finalists for NFL awards
Giants coach Brian Daboll and running back Saquon Barkley. Credit: James Escher; AP/Seth Wenig
After a season in whichhe restored credibility to the Giants on the field, Brian Daboll is a finalist for NFL Coach of the Year.
After a season in which he stayed healthy and rushed for a career-high 1,312 yards, Saquon Barkley is nominated for the Comeback Player of the Year award.
The winners will be announced Feb. 9.
Daboll is the only rookie head coach among the three finalists. He lifted the Giants to a 9-7-1 record. In the two seasons before Daboll’s arrival, the Giants won a total of 10 games.
The other finalists are Jacksonville’s Doug Pederson and San Francisco’s Kyle Shanahan.
In 2022, Barkley started each of the first 16 games before sitting out the last game of the season when Daboll rested many starters. It was the first time since his 2018 Rookie of the Year season that the fifth-year pro did not miss a game because of injury.
Barkley’s rushing yardage total was fourth highest in the league, behind Josh Jacobs, Derrick Henry and Nick Chubb. Barkley also scored 10 touchdowns and rushed for more than 100 yards in a game four times. He finished seventh in the NFL with 1,650 scrimmage yards, almost double his 2021 total of 856.
Daboll, 47, could become the first Giants coach to be selected Coach of the Year since Jim Fassel in 1997. Like Fassel, Daboll took over a team that was last in the NFC East the previous year and led it to the playoffs in his debut season.
Kimberly Jones covers the Giants for Newsday, a beat she first worked in the early 2000s before joining the YES Network to cover the Yankees. She worked for the NFL Network for more than a decade and has been heard semi-regularly on WFAN.
