At the top, it’s important to make this point: You can offer fair and winning testimony that neither New York football team should even have considered changing their head football coaches.
Brian Daboll’s case is easier. He is a year removed from being the NFL’s Coach of the Year. His team went 6-11 this year, and a guy who used to hold his job always cautioned “you are what your record says you are,” but the Giants were also playing much better at the end of the year than they were at the start, and it didn’t take much imagination (or more than a couple of plays) to turn six wins into nine — in which case there’d have been a legit shot they’d have squeezed into the playoffs.
If Daboll is lately being portrayed in certain circles as a sideline tyrant whose temper renders him a cross between late-Indiana Bob Knight and the drill sergeant from “Full Metal Jacket” … well, a little anger never seemed to adversely affect Vince Lombardi or Bill Parcells.
It’s a little harder for Robert Saleh, whose 7-10 matches last year’s underwhelming record, whose lifetime mark of 18-33 is plenty fireable on the surface and whose sideline performance has yet to inspire many to declare him the second coming of Weeb Ewbank. Or even Walt Michaels.
Still, Saleh’s job security is even more solid that Daboll’s for one reason and one reason only: He has the Aaron Rodgers seal of approval. Now we can go 15 rounds over whether that’s the best way to run a football team — spoiler alert: it is not — but that’s simply the law of the land in Florham Park. Saleh was getting Year 4 as long as Rodgers was signed up for Year 2.
But here’s the thing:
Coaching in the NFL — where just 32 men at any one time have the job — is enough of a pressure cooker. Doing it in the high-expectation fishbowl of New York ratchets up the intensity even more. But next year, Daboll and Saleh won’t just be measured by what their teams do on the field, they’ll be constantly measured against what these teams might’ve looked like if someone else were running beside them onto those fields.
It turns out to be a perfectly lousy time to be a team who isn’t looking for a coach since the market has recently been flooded with multiple coaches with championship pedigree. Bill Belichick is out there. So is Jim Harbaugh. So is Pete Carroll. So is — you would assume, if the price is right — Nick Saban.
Now nothing is a given in the NFL. All of those guys except Harbaugh are a little long in the tooth. There is also a school of thought that the NFL is far different than when Lombardi could go to Green Bay (and then, briefly, Washington), Don Shula could go to Miami and Parcells could come to the Jets and, just by showing up, turn dreadful dregs into instant winners. Success in the modern NFL is far more talent-dependent than ever before. Ask Sean Payton about that.
Still …
It’s fair to also believe that an elite coach can at the least establish credibility in teams that have scuffled for the better parts of a decade and more. Payton may not have delivered the miracles he described in his first weeks in Denver, but he did stabilize a sinking ship, and his gravitas allows the parting with Russell Wilson to seem part of a larger plan.
Maybe Daboll is in the early stages of developing the Giants into that — many (including your humble narrator) believe he is. Maybe Saleh, given the full 17 with Rodgers as his co-pilot, can also be that hub for the Jets — some (including the same narrator) are dubious about that.
What matters, for now, is that the men who sign their checks believe they’re the right people. And those men all had the opportunity to make bold choices these past few weeks and chose not to. After all, the best hires aren’t always as easy as axing a coach who just went 1-15, like when the Jets fired Rich Kotite, or a coach who has become a national punch line, like when the Giants parted ways with Joe Judge.
Sometimes it’s a harder call. Carroll had a winning record with the Patriots and later proved he was a Canton-level coach. Robert Kraft still moved him out when he believed he could make a run at Belichick.
Villanova basketball already had a winning coach in Steve Lappas, but when Jay Wright was hours away from signing on with Rutgers, the school made a hard pitch to Wright.
The rest of the story, in Foxborough and Philadelphia, is history.
We’ll see what the story is this time next year for our locals.
Vac’s Whacks
This was the first issue of Sports Illustrated that arrived in my mailbox in West Hempstead as a 9-year-old. I kept that same subscription for the next 40 years. Friday’s sad news will never erase the impact this magazine had on so many of us.
the next 40 years.
This is cool: The New York Giants Preservation Society will honor Willie Mays with an Appreciation Zoom on Jan. 31 at 7 p.m. Members will reflect on all things Willie, and all participants should wear Willie regalia. The society will present the Giants organization a copy of the Zoom. Google them to find out more.
The more you love a television show, the more critical it is to you that they properly land the plane at the end. And if this was it for “Fargo,” it made it to the gate perfectly, and on time.
I think I could watch an entire 17-game football season of nothing but Chiefs versus Bills. Sunday will be a good night.
Whack Back at Vac
George Corchia: To those who ponied up $6 to get Peacock for the one-sided Dolphins-Chiefs game: On the positive side you now stream “Vanderpump Rules” & the canceled dinosaur show “La Brea.”
Vac: Personally I think “Ted” is worth the price of admission.
Mark Dantonio: Thank you for your tribute to Cindy Morgan. Until she came along, only a few of us knew skinny skiing and Benihana interior decorating were great things.
Vac: Some are born to greatness, some have greatness thrust upon them, some go skinny skiing.
@JIKaufmann: Every team in the NFC East is irretrievably broken right now.
@MikeVacc: How is it possible that the Giants and Commanders somehow feel better about themselves right now than the Cowboys and Eagles?
Thomas Crehan: So that is the Joe Flacco us New York Jet fans remember. The bubble always will burst.
Vac: Or as a sad Browns-fan friend of mine put it: Flacco gonna Flacco.
Read more
