The truth behind Brian Daboll, Wink Martindale, Mike Kafka and the Giants’ drama
The Giants’ coaching staff was awash in palace intrigue and personal grudges this season.
The Giants’ coaching staff was awash in palace intrigue and personal grudges this season.
On Nov. 19 at Washington’s FedEx Field in Landover, Md. the 2-8 Giants led the Commanders, 24-12, late in the fourth quarter.
Wink Martindale’s defense had forced four turnovers. Thomas McGaughey’s special teams unit had forced another. And Mike Kafka’s offense, with Tommy DeVito at quarterback, had scored two of its three touchdowns on short fields off those takeaways.
But now Washington’s offense was driving, aided by a Kayvon Thibodeaux roughing the passer penalty outside the red zone. And that’s when Brian Daboll started playing the blame game on Martindale and the defensive staff:
“You’re gonna lose this game just like you lost us the Jets game,” Daboll griped on the headset, according to numerous sources in the building.
Daboll was blaming the defense for the Giants’ infamous 13-10 overtime loss to the Jets on Oct. 29, in which the offense had thrown for -9 yards and Daboll’s late-game mismanagement had opened the door to a full-scale, team-wide meltdown.
Daboll’s divisive finger-pointing wasn’t out of the ordinary. That’s one of the reasons why, sources say, Giants GM Joe Schoen had begun listening in on the coaches’ headsets on game days that week in Washington — although the GM also was taking a step that both the Texans’ Nick Caserio and the Cowboys’ Will McClay have done to gain a better understanding of the game day operation.
Daboll’s sideline behavior was destructive, in many coaches’ opinions. His input was never proactive, always reactionary. And his outrage was rarely accompanied by a suggested solution.
America saw it first-hand on Sunday Night Football Oct. 15 in Buffalo. NBC sideline reporter Melissa Stark said a “very frustrated” Daboll couldn’t answer questions at halftime because, he admitted: “My head is not in this. I cannot focus on anything right now.”
Now Schoen was monitoring the dynamic at Washington after being alerted by several meaningful parties that Daboll’s behavior and the sideline dynamic were not constructive.
Schoen would stay on the headsets for four games, sources say – against the Commanders, Patriots, Packers and Saints – before stepping back offline for the final three.
The story of the Giants’ 2023 undoing isn’t about a personal feud between Daboll and Martindale and the past, though. It’s about bad football and a flawed process that still exists inside the Giants’ walls.
It’s about an organization with enough problems that one Giants staffer recently advised an NFL assistant calling about a vacancy.
