Will new Giants’ coach Brian Daboll call plays? That depends on the offensive coordinator

GM Joe Schoen says he would rather Daboll hired a coordinator who could do that, but the decision belongs to the coach

Brian Daboll is a four-time offensive coordinator who earned his new head-coaching gig with the New York Giants largely due to great work calling plays and building an offense around quarterback Josh Allen with the Buffalo Bills.

Neither Daboll nor new GM Joe Schoen committed on Monday, as Daboll was introduced to media as the Giants head coach, to Daboll calling his own plays with the Giants. Schoen, in fact, expressed a preference for someone else to be in that role.

“I’m not going to rule that out, if he is or isn’t right now,” Schoen said. “We don’t have an offensive coordinator. If for some reason he had to – ideally he doesn’t. I’d prefer he manages the games. But again, as we’re still interviewing offensive coordinator candidates we’re going to wait and see how that plays out and I’m not going to say that’s set in stone because we’re going to let Brian make that decision.”

Daboll was an offensive coordinator for the Bills, Kansas City Chiefs, Miami Dolphins and Cleveland Browns in the NFL. He also filled that role for Alabama in 2017.

“We’ll see,” said Daboll. “We’ll see how it goes. At the end of the day this hire [offensive coordinator] will be important.”

There have been a number of reports that Daboll and Schoen are trying to pry quarterbacks coach Ken Dorsey away from the Buffalo Bills to run the Giants’ offense. Daboll would only say that the Giants “have done a lot of interviews” for that role.

“We’ll find the right guy and we’ll work together. If he can call the plays and we feel comfortable with that I’m fine with that,” Daboll said. “At the end of the day we’ve gotta make sure we’re doing everything we can to help our offense help our team. I’ve gotta help our team the best I can.”

Daboll was asked if calling plays and handling everything a head coach has to do was a big ask — especially for a first-time head coach.

“I think the two head coaches in the Super Bowl [Zac Taylor of Cincinnati and Sean McVay of the LA Rams] right now are calling plays. Is that correct?”, Daboll said.

“If I could have someone do that. I’ll tell you this – I’ve had some success, I’ve had some failures and I’m OK with that, I’m fine with that, because I think you learn a lot from your failures. If you can put together a good staff that you trust that allows you to do your job better.”