Why Brian Daboll Should Choose Giants Over Miami

Buffalo offensive coordinator Brian Daboll is believed to be a leading candidate to become head coach for the Miami Dolphins and the New York Giants.

Author:
Patricia Traina
Publish date:
Jan 25, 2022 8:20 PM EST

Unless the tea leaves are all wrong, Buffalo Bills offensive coordinator Brian Daboll will be offered a head coaching job probably within a matter of days.

The question is whether that offer is going to come from the Giants, who have already interviewed Daboll twice for their vacancy, or the Dolphins, for whom Daboll, per SI.com's Albert Breer, "interviewed well."

It's anyone's guess what would happen if Daboll gets offers from both the Giants and Dolphins for their respective vacancies. All Dolphins team publisher Alain Poupart offered reasons for Daboll to pick the Dolphins over the Giants and vice versa. But in this article, the focus is on why the Giants would be the better option.

Draft Capital. The Giants have nine draft picks, five of which are in the top 100 and three in the top 50 (including the fifth and seventh overall picks). The Dolphins draft stock this year isn't quite as strong.

According to Tankathon, the Giants' draft class has the second-highest value ranking (4,332.7 points) based on Jimmy Johnson's draft chart, which assigns points to each draft spot a team holds. The Dolphins, meanwhile, rank 22nd (1,275.4 points).

Salary Cap Space. No, the Giants don't have an ideal salary cap picture right now--per Over the Cap, they are just over $7 million in the red on overall space and are $19,638,213 in the red in functional cap space (needed to comply with the Top 51 when the new league year begins).

The Dolphins, on the other hand, lead the league in total cap space with $70,237,252 and $60,676,729 in functional space. That all being said, the Giants are expected to make some deep cuts to clear away cap space, and it's hoped that they learned their lesson (finally) about spending like an out-of-control holiday shopper in free agency.

The Northeast Weather. Daboll is no stranger to coaching in cold, wintery weather, especially in the back end of the season when the playoff race starts to take shape. While most people might prefer the warmth of the Miami sun, for Daboll, making the transition from Buffalo's weather to East Rutherford's weather might not be such a big deal.

Joe Schoen. When one takes a new job in a new city, it can create a source of stress because of all the unknown factors. Thus it's not unreasonable to assume that Daboll and new Giants general manager Joe Schoen already have a rapport from their work together in Buffalo, which would create one less worry for Daboll if he were to take the Giants job.

And speaking of the general manager position, Chris Grier has been in the Dolphins' seat since 2016. Since then, the Dolphins have only made it to the playoffs once, in 2016. That isn't to say that Grier's seat is hot going into next year, but one might wonder how much longer Dolphins owner Stephen Ross will continue to stick with Grier whereas Schoen will presumably be around for at least a couple of seasons if not longer.

The Roster. The Giants roster needs a lot of work, no question. But it also has several core players around whom Daboll and Schoen can probably build a competitive group. Despite the amount of work that needs to be done on the offensive side of the ball, the Giants appear to have an especially solid defense.