At halftime of Sunday’s game against the Carolina Panthers in Munich, Germany, New York Giants head coach Brian Daboll should have benched quarterback Daniel Jones.
Instead, Daboll later admitted he never even entertained the idea.
Surely, after watching film of the embarrassing 20-17 overtime loss, Daboll reconsidered that stance, right?
During a Monday afternoon Zoom conference, Daboll was asked point-blank if he would be sticking with Jones as the starting quarterback following the bye week. Rather than offering a definitive answer, the coach kicked the can down the road.
“We’re going to spend a lot of time here watching our tape and evaluating things. We’ll do that as a coaching staff over the next week here,” Daboll said. “We’re going to get started on this process here of going back and looking at everything you normally look at in a bye week.
“Schemes, situational stuff, technique, all the things you do in a normal bye week. You evaluate the players. You have a good amount of games to watch. Situational review tape, calls, all those types of things. We’ll do that like we normally do on a bye week and try to improve in the areas that we need to improve on.”
Many will hear Daboll’s response and think, “he’s finally leaving the door open to benching Jones!” In reality, all Daboll did was offer up typical coach-speak and suggest the staff will do what every single NFL staff does during the bye week. He provided nothing of substance and nothing definitive.
Pressed further on Jones, Daboll stuck to the public relations answer.
“I would say we have a lot of work to do here in terms of our evaluation process and that’s what we’ll start doing here shortly,” he said. “I’ve said this before, Joe (Schoen) and I communicate with our ownership group on a daily basis. Not just about the quarterback, but about every position. So, there’s good communication there. We’ll do what we normally do. If there are any changes, regardless of the position, we’ll always communicate.”
The post-conference headlines will read, “Daboll leaves the door open to Daniel Jones benching,” but it was clear he was just rattling off generic answers. He made every one about evaluating all positions and making decisions up and down the roster. Not once was an answer specific to Jones.
What you’re unlikely to read is that Daboll gave the exact same answer about right tackle Evan Neal, who was the team’s best offensive performer in Week 10.
“We’ll go through all that this week,” Daboll said when asked if they plan to stick with Neal as their starter.
So, sure, Daboll left the door open for a possible Jones benching. But do you know what else he did? Left the door open for Jones to potentially remain the team’s starting quarterback over the final half of the season.
