The New York Giants fired head coach Brian Daboll, opening speculation about Bill Belichick as a potential replacement.
The Giants have a promising young quarterback in Jaxson Dart and other key players, making the job appealing.
General manager Joe Schoen will lead the coaching search, which may complicate a potential hire of Belichick, who typically desires full control.
Bill Belichick’s best opportunity to return to the NFL is officially open.
Or, at least with the firing of New York Giants coach Brian Daboll on Monday, Big Blue suddenly has a huge name to consider in the search for a new general.
It’s tempting enough. Giants co-owner John Mara has admitted how thin his patience has become when assessing the prospect of winning big again. With the team floundering at 2-8, following another embarrassing, meltdown loss on Sunday at Chicago, the G-Men have bucked a trend by cutting Daboll loose during the season.
Their recent history of flop hires – before Daboll, there was Joe Judge, Pat Shurmur and Ben McAdoo – fuels the thought of bucking another trend. Rather than hoping an unproven coach catches fire in the Big Apple, maybe it’s time to go old-school like Mara and co-owner Steve Tisch did with Tom Coughlin in 2004 and turn it over to the UNC coach who has won big in the NFL before.
OK, Belichick never won big without Tom Brady.
Yet he’s currently riding a two-game winning streak! And with the Giants, he’d walk in the door and inherit a promising young quarterback in Jaxson Dart.
Belichick, who won two Super Bowls with the Giants as Bill Parcells’ defensive coordinator before seizing six crowns in New England with TB12, might even excite the fan base. Sure, his Giants glory was a long time ago. Google it, kids.
OK, maybe Belichick would excite the most seasoned season-ticket holders, longing for the good ol’ days. I mean, his 4-5 Tar Heels are trending in the right direction.
Go ahead, Giants. I dare you to hire BB as your next coach.
After landing all of one interview with an NFL team after his split with the Patriots in early 2024, Belichick, admittedly or not, could have added motivational juice for the Giants job. It would present a full-circle chance to put one over on the rest of the NFL again while pursuing the all-time record for career coaching victories (347, including postseason) that for decades has had Don Shula’s name on it.
Besides, Belichick, eligible to be selected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s Class of 2026 with his 333 career wins, reportedly has expressed interest in the past of returning to the Giants. Considering that he would be 74 when next season begins, he’d surely align with Mara and Tisch on the patience meter.
Quick fix. Yeah, that’s the ticket. And with several other key pieces in place to go along with Dart, including electrifying wideout Malik Nabers, fireball running back Cam Skattebo and defensive studs Brian Burns, Kayvon Thibodeaux and Abdul Carter, it is an appealing set-up for any coach.
If there was a reason that Belichick’s buyout with his North Carolina contract was just $1 million – which screams of a keep-my-options-open exit door – this is it.
Belichick didn’t wait to get rejected again by NFL teams during the last hiring cycle before bolting to the college ranks. Back then, though, the NYG job wasn’t open. Now it is.
Some side irony: Remember Belichick’s unintentional role in the class-action lawsuit that Brian Flores filed against the NFL and several teams, including the Giants, for allegedly conducting sham interviews to comply with the Rooney Rule?
According to Flores’ suit, he learned the Giants had decided on Daboll from a text-message exchange with Belichick, his former boss. Belichick congratulated “Brian” for landing the job.
Oops. Belichick congratulated the wrong Brian…apparently at the precise time Flores was prepping for an interview with Giants brass.
And it turns out the Giants picked the wrong Brian, with Flores seemingly improving his stock as Vikings defensive coordinator. Now, if only Brian can resolve his still-pending legal matter and emerge as a legitimate candidate for the job.
Then again, history is not in Flores’ favor. The Giants have never had a Black coach. Talk about bucking trends.
A Belichick reunion in East Rutherford, New Jersey, might have better odds than Flores getting a chance. Still, it’s such a long shot that Belichick winds up with the gig.
It’s significant that in dumping Daboll, the Giants kept general manager Joe Schoen on board to lead the search. That means that Schoen – despite the big decision that backfired in 2024, letting Saquon Barkley walk as a free agent who powered the trek to a Super Bowl crown for the division-rival Eagles – is staying.
Sure, it seemed that Schoen was on just as thin ice as Daboll as this season began. But the GM has collected some key building-block talent and maneuvered deftly to trade back into the first round in the spring to draft Dart. And even if his fingerprints are on some questionable draft picks, it wasn’t Schoen who made the coaching blunders that contributed to the G-Men losing double-digit leads in four defeats this season.
If the Giants were going to oust Schoen, too, this would have been the time. After the season, the process for the next draft will be deep into the woods. That was probably at least some of the rationale employed by the Dolphins recently in cutting the cord with GM Chris Grier.
Maybe Schoen would be good for Belichick, running the personnel department like some of the former, key Patriots staffers once did in supporting the coach. Yet it’s tough to imagine Belichick wanting anything less than full control, which was undoubtedly a barrier to him landing with another NFL team after leaving the Patriots.
Back to Jersey for Belichick? Hey, bring it on. It would provide great theater to see if Belichick can recapture his NFL magic.
Just don’t hold your breath the desperate Giants are crazy enough to make that move.
But at least they have been dared to do it.
Contact Jarrett Bell at jbell@usatoday.com or follow on X: @JarrettBell