What QB Jaxson Dart means for Brian Daboll, Joe Schoen's Giants futures

For the fourth time since the NFL-AFL merger, the New York Giants have drafted a quarterback in the first round of the NFL Draft. Jaxson Dart joins Phil Simms (1979), Phillip Rivers (2004) and Daniel Jones (2019) as the only first-round signal-callers to be drafted by Big Blue.

It wasn't surprising that New York took a quarterback. With Russell Wilson signing a one-year deal and Jameis Winston signing a two-year deal this offseason, the Giants were in a prime position to grab their quarterback of the future. 

This decision now casts light on the status of head coach Brian Daboll and general manager Joe Schoen. The pair barely survived the chopping block at the end of last season, keeping their jobs for at least the 2025-26 campaign.

In his end-of-season press conference, Giants owner John Mara did not comment on how long of a leash Daboll and Schoen will have going forward. History has shown us the negatives of head coach turnover while a young quarterback is trying to grow. 

Take the Chicago Bears, for example. In 2017, the Bears drafted Mitch Trubisky in the first round under head coach John Fox. After one season, Fox was fired and replaced by Matt Nagy. Jump ahead to 2021, the Nagy-led Bears then used another first-round pick on Justin Fields. Just one season later, Nagy was fired. 

Caleb Williams is in the same position now. He was drafted under Matt Eberflus, and in less than a full season together, Eberflus was let go. Each time a new regime came into Chicago, they were stuck with a quarterback they didn't draft. They would end up drafting their own and would be fired before they had a chance to build him up. 

Although Mara refused to put a timeline on Daboll and Schoen, he made it apparent that he wants to see a better football team on the field in 2025. “I’m going to have to be in a better mood this time next year… It [the rebuild] better not take too long because I’ve just about run out of patience,” Mara said in January. 

This is not a team that’s ready to contend for real next season. According to NFL insider Jordan Raanan, “This Giants roster isn’t all that close to becoming a real contender. One NFL personnel executive estimated it ‘will take 2-3 years’ to build themselves into a contending team.”

Mara supports Daboll and Schoen enough to keep them around, even after suffering the most single-season losses in Giants history at 14 in 2024. If Mara didn’t want this to be his coaching staff going forward, he wouldn’t have supported the move to trade back into the first round and draft a quarterback. Consistency at head coach is critical, even more so when you are trying to grow a young quarterback into a star. 

New York failed Daniel Jones in every sense as he dealt with three different head coaches in his first four seasons. If they have another disappointing season and decide to move on from Daboll and Schoen, then they are likely to doom themselves to the same cycle of failure that followed Jones. 

To build up Dart as the Giants' next franchise star, Daboll will need to remain the head coach in New York, no matter their record at the end of next season.