The Giants players’ belief in Brian Daboll hasn’t wavered yet, but it might on Sunday if the team becomes convinced that the coach started rookie quarterback Jaxson Dart against the Los Angeles Chargers to save his own job rather than to improve the team on the field.

Captain and veteran wide receiver Darius Slayton was asked on Friday if the locker room still is behind Daboll or if there is any wavering belief after the benching of fellow captain Russell Wilson for Dart in Week 4.

“I think you play in the NFL long enough, as a player, you’re not gonna understand everything that goes on above your head,” Slayton said. “Whether that be contracts, free agency, trades, starters, bench, there’s a lot of decisions that go on that are above your head. Everything I do I think of, ‘OK, what is gonna help us win? So that’s my assumption, that everybody in the building operates under, is that this thing is going to help us win. And a lot of people have different ways of going about getting that done.”

“So, you know, I don’t think that I would outright say that there’s any change in belief, I guess, but you know, we gotta see,” the seventh-year pro continued. “Obviously, by the logic I just gave you, the reason for starting Jaxson would be because it helps us, gives us a better chance to win football games. But obviously if we don’t win football games, then the buck stops somewhere.”

The buck stops somewhere. So to clarify, Slayton was asked, all the team can do for now is to trust that this was done to improve the team. If it works, great. If not, someone will pay for it.

“For sure,” Slayton said. “It’s just like with Daniel Jones. Like, we weren’t winning, so it’s gotta stop somewhere.”

Daniel Jones. Now the Indianapolis Colts’ undefeated starting QB. There’s someone who lost his job midseason because the Giants stunk one year ago.

Daboll could be the next to go as soon as Sunday night or Monday morning if the Giants (0-3) throw in the towel against the Chargers (3-0).

There are several different possible outcomes for Sunday’s game, even though the airplanes scheduled to fly over MetLife Stadium before kickoff foreshadow a worst-case scenario for co-owner John Mara and his club.

One outcome is that Dart washes away all of the Giants’ misery by stamping himself as a clear upgrade to Wilson who gives the team a better chance to win.

That would jump start the fan base and send Daboll into his postgame press conference ready to present receipts on all of his doubters for days.

“I’m ready,” Dart said this week.

Another possible scenario, though, is that Dart and the Giants struggle so badly against Jim Harbaugh’s Chargers that the Giants’ players have trouble believing this team has any chance to win.

And if that happens, it’s on the table that the team might just let go of the rope in the second half.

“The way I look at it, every week, regardless of how many wins or losses that I have, is each week we’re trying to do the best you can to get a win,” Daboll said. “That’s what we try to do. That’s what I try to do, and that’s what we’re going to try to do this week.”

Does this quarterback change feel a like a panic move to the team?

“I guess I could see how somebody would get there,” Slayton said. “I don’t know if that’s the conclusion I would come to. My assumption is that all these decisions they make, they make in the interest of winning games. So I would assume that was the motivation behind it.”

The Giants’ players support Dart personally. That’s not the issue. But the locker room found out about the quarterback change through social media, not from their coach, and the players had a tepid reaction to the news rather than an enthusiastic one.

Dexter Lawrence summed up the mix of Dart support and locker room uncertainty well on Wednesday when he was asked if he thought this was the right move for the team.

“That’s not my call, honestly,” Lawrence said. “He’s my quarterback now. So I’m going to be by his side and roll with him to the end.”

Here is the issue: when GM Joe Schoen and Daboll signed Wilson in free agency, they turned him in to the locker room’s North Star.

They made Wilson the answer to their leadership void. They asked the rest of the team to follow him. And the players did from March through mid-September.

Now suddenly, three games in, they can’t follow Wilson. The organization has shown them that it now does not believe in the quarterback it propped up in front of them for half a year.

And even if Dart tries to galvanize the group, there is no telling how the players will react Sunday to this completely different dynamic.

“I think Russ is a vocal leader, he’s a very present leader,” Slayton said. “So having that presence at the forefront, definitely when that is, I guess, I don’t even know the right word. Maybe ‘removed’ is the best word?

“Obviously when they add certain quarterbacks you have to defer a little bit to allow space for Jaxson or whoever to grow and lead in their own way,” the receiver added. “But somebody of Russ’ personality, you’re gonna feel that shift, for sure. But it’s the situation we’re in. Here we go.”

Here they go to try to beat one of the NFL’s tougher and more disciplined teams, led by explosive quarterback Justin Herbert, as six-point home underdogs to a Chargers team that flew across the country to play this game.

The Giants’ odds of winning don’t look good for a lot of reasons, especially the coaching mismatch: Harbaugh has a 58-25-1 (.696) record in 84 games as an NFL head coach. Daboll has a 18-35-1 (.343) record in 54 games.

The Giants have lost 17 of their last 20. This is the first time ever in franchise history that the Giants have lost 14 of 15 games in a single stretch, according to ESPN.

Schoen and Daboll set new records for futility every week.

Jesse Minter’s Chargers defense ranks third in points per game allowed (16.7), and NFL sources say this is an especially difficult defense for a rookie quarterback to make his debut against, due to L.A.’s disguised pressures and refusal to let the ball behind their safeties.

Daboll also put more pressure on himself by saying that the quarterback change was “my decision,” by implying that leaks were coming out of the building from people other than him and by using air quotes when referring to the Giants’ “medical people” on Thursday.

He tried to walk back that last comment on Friday, but it’s clear: Daboll has his back against the wall, and playing Dart to save his job and talking tougher in press conferences is his version of coming out swinging.

Although it is unusual that Jameis Winston wasn’t considered in this spot, Slayton said that once the Giants changed their depth chart to make Dart the No. 2 for the regular season, “we all knew Jaxson was the next man up” if Wilson got hurt or benched.

So no one was expecting anything else if and when this happened, from his vantage point.

The veterans know what benching Wilson for a rookie feels like, though: It might mean the organization believes the season is already over, so they’re turning to the future with the kid.

Maybe starting Dart will turn out to be the right call. Maybe it will save Daboll and the Giants’ season.

Or maybe it will be the last thing Daboll does as head coach of the Giants.

https://www.nydailynews.com/2025/09/28/brian-daboll-jaxson-dart-giants-chargers/