Top 5 Reasons You Can’t Blame Brian Daboll By Hank Indictor
It’s the Giants’ first drive of the game and already they are in trouble. The Eagles already scored a touchdown on their opening drive and the Giants are trying to answer back as they reach Eagles territory. But after Jones gets sacked by Hasson Reddick and Josh Sweat, the Giants are facing a 4th-and-8.
However, rather than punt, Brian Daboll elects to go for it and the plan backfires with Reddick adding on another sack (this one, the solo variety) and the Eagles getting great field position. This would lead to the Eagles scoring another touchdown.
From there, the Giants were doomed. Which begs the question, why on Earth do you go for it on 4th-and-8 so early in the game? Especially if the risk equals putting your team in a hole that you can't recover from. In other words, everybody knew right then and there that this game was over.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only questionable call made by Brian Daboll. Let's fast forward to the 4th quarter, where it's now 28-7 Eagles, wherein the Giants are now trying to make this game somewhat closer. After reaching their 47-yard line the drive stalls out. A sack and an incomplete pass push them back to their 42-yard line where they face a 4th-and-6 with 13:21 left in the 4th quarter.
This time, going for it makes sense because at this point the Giants have nothing to lose. Then they punt?! What was he thinking? Maybe he got gun-shy after the failure on 4th-and-8, but he essentially waved the white flag of surrender after a year where he was so aggressive with his playcalling.
To his credit though, Daboll faced the music and deflected the blame from his players. If there was a trial and Daboll was prosecuted for this Giants' loss, however, I think his verdict would be: Not Guilty.
Yes, this wasn't his best game in terms of play calling, but we need to take a look at the big picture. It shows that there's a lot more to what happened than those weird decisions.
And so in an homage to one of my old favorite ESPN Classic shows, I will present to you the Top 5 Reasons you can’t blame Brian Daboll for the Giants losing to the Eagles.
5. Daniel Jones: He only went 15-for-27 and threw for 135 yards, 0 TDs, threw a pick to former Giant James Bradberry, was sacked five times, and had a passer rating of 53.8. Not a great game.
However, this loss is barely on him. After all, Isaiah Hodgins only had one catch for three yards (not a typo!) and Richie James dropped a would-be TD pass.
Call me a Daniel Jones apologist all you want, but there's a reason I couldn't put him any higher than No. 5 here. Besides, it’s not like he had much help from the guys that are supposed to protect him.
This brings me to…
4. The O-Line: Not a great game for this unit. Jones didn't have time to throw and Saquon Barkley wasn't able to gain too much traction in the running department (except for a 39-yard run, which pretty much inflated his rushing total).
Plus they were schooled all game long by the Eagles front four as the quartet of Brandon Graham, Fletcher Cox, Haason Reddick, and Josh Sweat each recorded at least a sack (1.5 each for the latter 2).
3. Swiss Cheese Defense: Sorry I couldn't resist using my favorite Clyde expression. But if the greatest Knick of all time (at least in my opinion) was watching this game (with or without one of his epic leopard suits), that's exactly how he would describe this.
The Eagles rushed for 268 yards (a record for any Giants opponent in postseason history, which includes 112 for Kenneth Gainwell and 90 for Miles Sanders. I should also mention Giant killer Boston Scott contributed with a rushing TD too).
Jalen Hurts spread around the ball well with DeVonta Smith and Dallas Goedert tacking on 61 and 58 receiving yards, respectively, with each of them scoring a TD.
On Big Blue Avenue, one of my main keys to the game is always “get off the field on 3rd down!” Letting the Eagles go 10-for-14 in these situations is a recipe for disaster. But of course, so is giving up 38 points. Not to mention safety Xavier McKinney was the only Giant to register a sack!
2. Brian Daboll: If I’m going to be critical of some egregious mistakes he made in this game, then it's only fair to acknowledge that without him, the Giants wouldn’t be here in the first place.
Remember, their only win all year that was decided by a margin of more than 8 points was the playoff clincher against the Colts in Week 17. And if you reverse the result of at least two of the games, we aren't even having a conversation about a third loss to the Eagles.
This is a coach who is a big reason for the culture change, as many of the players seem to believe in his vision and he got the most out of a squad that probably would have had about 5-6 wins any other year.
In short, he has proven to be a true leader of men, and I suppose maybe this can warrant a “Get Out of Jail Free Card!”
Even then, there was still one significant factor that he simply couldn’t control even if he wanted to turn back time and reverse some of his decisions.
1. The Eagles Were Far and Away The Better Team: Yeah, this one was pretty obvious. And quite frankly, the talent gap isn't close.
Although Daniel Jones was able to win a lot of games for the Giants this year, even if the numbers didn’t always reflect this, Hurts has been the better QB this season. Despite the arguments made for Hurts in the MVP discussion, it's also important to consider the team he has around him.
Both QBs have Pro Bowl Calibur running backs, and while I’d take Saquon Barkley over Miles Sanders, it's Hurts that has not one but 2 No. 1 wide receivers in A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith. The closest Daniel Jones had to a No. 1 is probably Isaiah Hodgins (no disrespect to him, but he probably would've been a No. 2 at best on any other team).
Now we get to the offensive linemen and right here we've got an unfair comparison. Hurts and Sanders have the luxury of having pillars named Jason Kelce, Jordan Mailata, Isaac Semaulo, Landon Dickerson, and Lane Johnson.
These guys paved the way for Hurts and Sanders to score a combined total of 24 rushing TDs -- in addition to rushing for over 2,000 yards together! Of the five names I mentioned, three of them (Kelce, Dickerson, and Johnson) are Pro Bowlers, while the other two were named as alternates.
I mentioned that every single member of their front four contributed with a sack in this game, which, looking back, was to be expected. The Eagles recorded a total of 70 sacks this season (including 16 for Reddick, 11 each for Graham and Sweat, and 8 for Cox).
Safety might be the only position where the Giants have an advantage with Xavier McKinney, and maybe Julian Love. But in terms of the corners, Darius Slay and James Bradberry make up for that (with the former being a Pro Bowler and the latter named to Second Team All-Pro).
In other words, the Eagles have a Pro Bowl-caliber player in nearly every area (eight in total) to the point where you could very well call them a Fantasy Team!
This is a team Joe Schoen should strive to emulate as he continues to improve the Giants roster.
To say that Brian Daboll shouldn't have gone for it on 4th-and-8 is understandable because he essentially took a risk too early, and it resulted in 7 points the other way and an early 14-point hole. Punting when down by 21 in the fourth quarter didn’t sit too well with me either.
At the end of the day, however, neither made that big of a difference in the grand scheme of things. As memorable of a season as it was for the Giants, they could have planned a near-perfect game plan, and it's possible they still might have lost.
And so despite his mistakes, I think we ought to let Coach Dabes off the hook!
After all, even if it sucks to lose to a hated rival (and don't be surprised if said rival wins the Super Bowl), the Giants are headed in a much better direction than they are in previous regimes!