If the New York Giants are going to hit the reset button — again — at head coach and/or general manager, there’s no guarantee the new hire(s) will turn around the franchise.
After all, Giants fans know better than most how difficult it is to find the right hires. Since Tom Coughlin’s exit in 2015, the Giants have churned through personnel. A new head coach would be the Giants’ fifth in a decade, while a new GM would be the team’s third since 2017.
But maybe there’s some solace to be found in knowing the Giants aren’t the only franchise struggling to figure things out at the top. Consider the 2022 hiring cycle when an NFL record-tying 10 new coaches were brought aboard. Less than three full seasons later, only five teams, including the Giants, are still being led by those coaches.
Further proof? Four franchises, including the Giants, made a full regime switch with a new head coach and general manager. Two, including the Giants, are still intact, but just one team (Minnesota) is enjoying success.
To be fair, the Giants, under GM Joe Schoen and coach Brian Daboll, did have some early success. The pair went 9-7-1 in their first year and won the franchise’s first playoff game in a decade. But it’s been a backslide in the two years since, with the Giants failing to win nine games combined between 2023 (6-11) and 2024 (2-12).
Here’s the link to yesterday’s live room: https://t.co/kbb6ALVqMP https://t.co/z5JxIv72fi
— Dan Duggan (@DDuggan21) December 17, 2024
With their recent struggles and the seats of Schoen and Daboll getting warm, it’s worth revisiting that 2022 cycle to see what we can learn. Did the Giants make a mistake with Daboll and Schoen? Did they have better options?
Let’s take a look:
Head coach and GM shakeups
Minnesota Vikings
GM: Kwesi Adofo-Mensah
Coach: Kevin O’Connell
The Vikings look like the biggest winners of the 2022 cycle. The team has thrived under the leadership of O’Connell and Adofo-Mensah, winning the NFC North in 2022, and are sitting atop the NFC (tied with the Lions and Eagles) at 12-2 this year. Minnesota hired Adofo-Mensah from the Cleveland Browns after his two-season stint as VP of football operations, while former NFL quarterback O’Connell earned his first head coaching job after serving as the Los Angeles Rams’ Super Bowl-winning offensive coordinator.
Funny enough, the Vikings lost to the Giants in the 2022 playoffs and underwent some big changes after, most notably the hiring of defensive coordinator Brian Flores. They went 7-10 in 2023, though they were 4-4 before starting QB Kirk Cousins suffered a season-ending Achilles injury.
The Vikings then made the bold decision to let Cousins walk in free agency and selected Michigan’s J.J. McCarthy in the first round of the 2024 NFL Draft. He suffered a season-ending injury during the preseason, but the team’s starter, journeyman Sam Darnold, has flourished in his first year under O’Connell as Minnesota’s bridge QB.
Perhaps the Giants would have been better off with O’Connell (and/or Adofo-Mensah), as he appears to be a true QB whisperer. Or maybe Daboll — a coach also hired largely due to his background developing QBs — was set up to fail with Daniel Jones (now in Minnesota) and a bad offensive line.
Las Vegas Raiders
GM: Dave Ziegler
Coach: Josh McDaniels
While the Vikings might be a picture of stability, the Raiders have been anything but. Ziegler and McDaniels didn’t even last two full seasons, with each getting fired on Halloween last year due to misstep after misstep along the way to a 9-16 record.
Former Giants linebacker Antonio Pierce, then the Raiders’ linebackers coach, was named the interim coach while Champ Kelly took over as interim GM. Following the 3-5 start to the season, Pierce led the Raiders to an 8-9 finish. He garnered interest from other teams before the Raiders decided to retain him as their head coach.
The Raiders then hired former Chargers general manager Tom Telesco as the team’s new GM with Kelly sticking around as assistant GM. But things have been just as ugly this year with the Raiders now dueling it out with the Giants for the top pick in the 2025 draft. It’s possible the Raiders, like the Giants, will be looking for a new head coach this offseason.
Chicago Bears
GM: Ryan Poles
Coach: Matt Eberflus
There’s already been one major change in the Chicago regime after the team fired Eberflus following a Thanksgiving loss that featured a clock management blunder for the ages. It didn’t help that Eberflus (the former Colts DC before he took the Bears job) seemingly lost the locker room with players openly questioning his decisions. QBs coach-turned-offensive coordinator Thomas Brown is now serving as the team’s interim coach.
The Bears are 4-10 this season and 14-34 over the last three years, meaning Poles could be on the chopping block, too.
However, the team finding a potential franchise quarterback at least works in Poles’ favor. Poles decided to trade the first overall pick in the 2023 draft — Chicago finished the 2022 season at 3-14 — to the Carolina Panthers. The Bears then selected USC’s Caleb Williams with the No. 1 pick of this year’s draft after the Panthers’ dreadful 2023 finish. Williams has shown flashes, so maybe Poles gets to try and build around him.
Head coach-only moves in 2022
Jacksonville Jaguars
Coach: Doug Pederson
The Jaguars’ backslide has been impressively bad. Under the helm of GM Trent Baalke since 2021, the Jaguars hired Pederson in 2022. Pederson, who won a Super Bowl as the Philadelphia Eagles head coach in 2018, got off to a hot start. In his first season, Pederson led the Jaguars to an AFC South title and a wild-card round win.
Despite finishing with the same record in 2023 (9-8), things have gotten messy this year in Jacksonville. The team suffered its worst loss (a 52-6 beatdown by the Detroit Lions) in franchise history earlier this season and is sitting at 3-11 with quarterback Trevor Lawrence done for the year. Pederson, who is 21-27 over three seasons in Jacksonville, is on the hot seat as a result.
Houston Texans
Coach: Lovie Smith
Smith had joined the Texans as their defensive coordinator and associate head coach for the 2021 season during general manager Nick Caserio’s first year at the helm. After Houston fired head coach David Culley after one season, the team promoted Smith to the top job — his third time at the helm of a franchise after stints with the Bears and Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Smith lasted one season with the Texans finishing at 3-13-1. As a result, the Texans secured the No. 2 overall pick and selected quarterback C.J. Stroud.
While the quick hooks for Culley and Smith might have been unfair to those coaches, Caserio looks to have found himself a good one in DeMeco Ryans. The former Texans linebacker has led the Texans to back-to-back AFC South titles, including this year as the team enters Week 16 at 9-5.
Denver Broncos
Coach: Nathaniel Hackett
Hackett didn’t even make it a full year on the job, let alone his first full season. He lasted just 333 days amid a failed partnership with quarterback Russell Wilson and many other mistakes. He was fired after Week 16 with a 4-11 record. It made Hackett only the second first-time head coach since 1978 to be fired before the completion of his first season.
GM George Paton, hired in 2021, then orchestrated a trade with the Saints for coach Sean Payton to be the team’s fifth head coach since 2016. Payton, who took a year off from coaching before heading to Denver, went 8-9 in his first season in Denver during Wilson’s final year there before the team drafted Oregon quarterback Bo Nix in 2024. Nix and the Broncos are off to a 9-5 start and are close to locking in a playoff spot.
Miami Dolphins
Coach: Mike McDaniel
The Dolphins hired the San Francisco 49ers offensive coordinator for his first head coaching job. McDaniel, who represents a branch of the Mike/Kyle Shanahan coaching tree, led the Dolphins to wild-card round losses in his first two seasons, combining to go 20-14 both years.
This year, quarterback Tua Tagovailoa missed four games after being placed on injured reserve with another concussion suffered in Week 2. Tagovailoa returned in Week 8, with the Dolphins going 4-3 in that span as they currently fight for the playoffs with a 6-8 record.
Despite their playoff flameouts and tough season this year, McDaniel has arguably been the second most successful coach hired during this cycle after O’Connell. But would he have been able to replicate his unique offense in New York? There’s no way to know for sure, but it seems unlikely given the weapons he has to work with in Miami versus what the Giants had in 2022.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Coach: Todd Bowles
Bowles earned his second full-time head coach job with the Buccaneers after working as the team’s DC for three seasons, including its Super Bowl LV victory. He’d previously steered the New York Jets and went 24-40 over four seasons.
As head coach of the Bucs, despite some mediocre records in 2022 (8-9) and 2023 (9-8) Bowles has won the NFC South two years in a row and is in position (8-6) to do it again this year.
The Bucs lost in the wild-card round in 2022 but beat the Eagles last year before falling to the Lions in the divisional round. Bowles’ defense has taken a big step back this year, but he’s nailed his offensive coordinator hires in recent years, first with Dave Canales (now coaching the Carolina Panthers) and now Liam Coen, who is a head coach candidate for the upcoming cycle.
New Orleans Saints
Coach: Dennis Allen
Allen stepped in for Payton as head coach of the Saints in 2022 and was fired this past November amid a seven-game losing streak. Finishing his tenure with an 18-25 record, Allen never reached the playoffs in New Orleans as head coach. It was Allen’s second tenure as a head coach after a stint with the Oakland Raiders. He then spent six seasons as the Saints defensive coordinator under Payton.
Special teams coach Darren Rizzi was named interim head coach after Allen was fired and has led the team to a 3-2 record. At 5-9, the Saints are still technically in the playoff picture but probably won’t be for much longer.
This review was aimed at helping Giants fans understand how difficult it is to hire the right people to helm their team, but it could easily have been geared toward fans of the Raiders, or the Bears, or the Jaguars, or … well, you get it. Finding a quality head coach is hard, and not just for the Giants.
There is no set archetype for what makes a good coach. Look at the names above. There are offensive minds and defensive minds. There are first-time head coaches and former head coaches. While most teams look outside their organization, three teams promoted from within.
And most of these coaching hires didn’t work out.
In some ways, finding that long-term head coach can be as hard as finding that long-term quarterback.
There are only six head coaches who’ve been in their roles since 2017 or longer. Another six were hired between 2019 and 2021 and are still in their roles. The remaining 20 jobs were 2022 hires or beyond. Turnover is a fact of life in the NFL coaching world.
So, if you’re a Giants fan (or a Jaguars fan, or a Raiders fan, or …) and want your team to go in a new direction at head coach, that’s completely understandable. Just remember, with so many variables involved, it’s not easy to get these hires right.
(Photo of John Mara and Brian Daboll: Elsa / Getty Images)
