NFL games for the 2021 season are now over, concluding with the Los Angeles Rams’ 23-20 win over the Cincinnati Bengals in the Super Bowl this past Sunday. So now every team enters next season with a clean slate. For the Giants, the ongoing reshaping of their coaching staff and front office has added several new members in Brian Daboll, Don “Wink” Martindale, Mike Kafka, Andre Patterson and Brandon Brown.
The 46-year-old Daboll was introduced as the franchise’s 20th head coach on Jan. 31. He spent the four previous seasons as the Buffalo Bills’ offensive coordinator and is charged with greatly improving an offense that has been one of the most feeble in the NFL the past several seasons, as well as elevating the play of quarterback Daniel Jones, who after being drafted with the No. 6 overall pick in 2019 has been oft-injured and mediocre in three seasons as the team’s starter.
Under Daboll, who succeeded Joe Judge, who was fired after only two seasons as the Giants’ head coach, Bills QB Josh Allen has become one of the best players in football. Giants fans are hopeful the Buffalo area native can mold Jones into a consistently productive leader of the offense.
Daboll emphasized he’s not going to compare Jones to Allen, and just hone in on what will make Jones most successful. “We’ll just take it one day at a time. We’ll work with him, help him get better,” said Daboll at his introductory press conference held at the Giants’ football complex in East Rutherford, New Jersey.
“It takes a lot to raise a quarterback. He’s been around the block through these last three years with some different pieces. We’re going to try to give him some stability and just take it from there.”
On Feb. 7, the Giants announced the hiring of Brown as the franchise’s assistant general manager. Brown, who is Black, joins the Giants a week after the franchise was named in the federal discrimination suit filed by former Miami
Dolphins’ head coach Brian Flores against the NFL and three of its teams. The Dolphins and Denver Broncos are also defendants.
Brown will be directly under newly installed general manager Joe Schoen on the organization’s hierarchy. Schoen was hired on Jan. 21 to replace Dave Gettleman, who retired at the end of this past regular season, in which the Giants went 4-13 and were last in the NFC East.
The 33-year-old Brown is a local product from Glen Cove (Long Island) and was a four-year letterman at Fordham University in the Bronx, where he played defensive back on the Rams’ football team.
Brown was the Philadelphia Eagles’ director of player personnel last season after ascending from their assistant director of pro scouting in 2017 and 2018, and the director of pro scouting in 2019 and 2020.
Martindale is the Giants’ new defensive coordinator after holding the same position with the Baltimore Ravens the past four seasons. Kafka comes to the Giants as the team’s offensive coordinator following a five-year stint under Andy Reid with the Kansas Chiefs. For the past two seasons Kafka was the Chiefs’ quarterbacks coach/passing game coordinator.
Patterson is a one of the most highly respected defensive line coaches in all of football and has assumed that position with the Giants after leading the Minnesota Vikings unit from 2014 to to this past season, when the team fired former head coach Mike Zommer. Patterson was also the team’s co-defensive coordinator in 2020 and elevated to assistant head coach the following year.