The longest-tenured Giants player still standing and playing says this about Brian Daboll:
Give him another shot.
“I think so,” wide receiver Darius Slayton told The Post on Wednesday after practice. “It’s been three years, I think another year to try to give him a chance to really get things rolling would be warranted.”
Slayton does not have a contract for 2025, so this is not simply a case of a player making nice with the boss.
Daboll could be working through his final few days with the Giants, which is a stunning reversal of fortune, considering he was named the NFL’s Coach of the Year in 2022.
The Giants are 3-13 heading into Sunday’s season finale against the Eagles — who will not be using their starters, including Saquon Barkley — and not long after that trip to Philly, the decision will come down from ownership whether Daboll stays as the head coach and Joe Schoen remains as the general manager.
“If Joe and Dabes are gone, those are the guys that drafted me, so yeah, it definitely would affect me,” third-year receiver Wan’Dale Robinson told The Post, “but at the end of the day, still got to make this thing work.”
Making things work this season has been exceedingly difficult and darn near impossible for Daboll.
He has kept the locker room together, which is a plus, but there also has been a franchise record 10-game losing streak, which is quite a minus.
Outside linebacker Brian Burns is finishing up his first season with the team and thus his reference point with Daboll does not go back to 2022, when Daboll arrived to take his first-ever head coaching assignment at any level of football.
The Giants last week accomplished something rare and unexpected — actually winning a game, beating the Colts 45-33 — and Burns was asked if the players had rallied around Daboll to claim this victory.
“We’ve been around him all year,” Burns said.
That was that. A simple declarative statement devoid of much emotion.
That seems to sum up the feeling about Daboll inside the Giants locker room. Most of the players have not been on the scene long enough to display a strong personal attachment.
Some of the prominent players who were with Daboll for the lone winning season in three years — Andrew Thomas, Dexter Lawrence — are on injured reserve and not really a part of the fabric of the team right now.
“Ultimately, it’s up to the ownership and what they decide,’’ said Slayton, who has been through three head coaches in his six years. “It’s a tough business and just like there’s tough decisions made on players, there’s tough decisions made on coaches. I remember when Joe Judge got fired, he didn’t get fired and then the next day he came into meetings and he was fired. You just never know.”
Daboll did not hide his excitement early in his first NFL Draft with the Giants when Robinson was selected in the second round.
This was the slot receiver Daboll believed would work perfectly in the offensive system.
It has not gone completely as planned — nothing really has — but Robinson does have a career-high 83 receptions this season and is a strong advocate for Daboll.
“It’s above my paid grade but I would love for him to be back,” Robinson said. “He’s the one who drafted me, stood up on the table for me. I believe in him, he believes in me.”
Daboll has not gone public to make a case that he deserves to return, although when he said, “I think if you get good quarterback play, you have an opportunity in every game” after Drew Lock accounted for five touchdowns and no turnovers in the victory over the Colts it was heard in some circles as a message to ownership: Get me a quarterback and you will see how much better everything is.
When asked about the evaluation of his performance being separate from Schoen’s body of work, Daboll said, “You’d have to ask John,” referring to the team’s co-owner, John Mara.
As for the assessment of the big change made this season — taking over the play-calling on offense from Mike Kafka — Daboll said, “Yeah, we’ve won three games, so not good enough.’’
The record is not impressive — 18-31-1 in the regular season, 1-1 in the playoffs — and the downward trajectory is alarming — nine wins to six to three.
There also is the not so distant memory of his debut season as evidence that he once had the touch in close games and was able to navigate a suspect roster through a winning season.
“I’ve had ultimate confidence in Dabes and our offensive staff ever since I’ve been here,” Robinson said.
Soon enough, we will find out if ownership is thinking the same way.
