Brian Daboll still won’t reveal who will call plays for the Giants next season.
Ahead of Saturday’s rookie minicamp, the fourth-year coach was asked if offensive coordinator Mike Kafka calling plays via walkie talkie at Friday’s practice meant that he would be the primary playcaller in 2025.
Daboll’s response was unsurprisingly brief.
“Good observation,” Daboll said, before quickly fielding the next question.
He sang a similar tune at last month’s owners’ meetings, stating, “Playcalling, we’ll make that decision as we go into the preseason and training camp.”
“Whatever it is, once we get to that point, that I feel is going to be the best for the football team… whatever that ends up being, the end product, I’m going to probably do,” he added.
This comes months after co-owner John Mara brought up the possibility of stripping Daboll, who led a terrible offense in 2024, of his play-calling duties next season.
“I talked to him [Friday] about, ‘Do you really believe that it’s in our best interest for you to continue calling the plays?’ I said, ‘I’m not going to demand that you do one thing or the other, but are you better off letting somebody else call the plays?‘” Mara said in January.
“And that’s a discussion that we’re going to continue to have. There are issues like that, that we have to have some further discussion about. But at the end of the day, he’s got to make the decision on whether he does that.”
Daboll fully pushed aside Kafka ahead of last season, stripping him of playcalling duties, after doing it at times in 2023. Kafka called all the plays in his (and Daboll’s) debut season in 2022 — when the Giants made the playoffs.
Daboll then took the headset after their disastrous 6-11 season in 2023, during which he alienated many of his assistants and refused to let Kafka interview for Seattle’s play-calling offensive coordinator job. To sum up: Daboll forced Kafka to stay in East Rutherford, then took away his play-calling duties. It’s hard to imagine he’ll just give it back next year, but he did say Kafka will do some play-calling in the spring.
The Giants finished the 2024 regular season 29th in Pro Football Focus’ offensive ratings, compared to 31st in 2023 and 22nd in 2022.
Let’s see if things are different now that Russell Wilson and rookie Jaxson Dart are on the roster.
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Ryan Novozinsky may be reached at rnovozinsky@njadvancemedia.com. You can follow him on X@ryannovoNFL