09-04-2025
What Brian Daboll's evaluation process reveals about NY Giants quarterback quest
PALM BEACH, Fla. - Brian Daboll isn't going to Colorado Pro Day on Friday.
Don't take that as a lack of interest from the New York Giants in Shedeur Sanders possibly being their next franchise quarterback. It's just part of a calculated evaluation at the position for Daboll that has evolved over the past 14 years from when he was the offensive coordinator and general manager Joe Schoen was a national scout for the Miami Dolphins.
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"We like the process we have in place for quarterbacks in the NFL Draft," Schoen told and The Record after the season. "Daboll put it together a while ago, we believe in it and how we go about it."
Team brass has promised to take swings for a quarterback this offseason, and that certainly applied with the trade interest in Matthew Stafford before he went back to the Rams and their pursuit of Aaron Rodgers before landing both Russell Wilson and Jameis Winston.
Whether Daboll and Schoen will do the same in three weeks beginning with the No. 3 selection of the 2025 NFL Draft remains to be seen. But they have done everything they would have if there was a mandate to take a quarterback for the future - just as they did last year. The reality is the same every year, unless you have the No. 1 pick - circumstances
"You do the work, you build the board," Schoen said. "Then you see what happens, and you trust all you did to get to that point."
New York Giants coach Brian Daboll talks to reporters during the NFC Coaches Breakfast at the NFL Annual Meeting on Tuesday morning in Palm Beach, Fla.
The late Tony Sparano, as head coach of those 2011 Dolphins, tasked Daboll with coming up with a plan to evaluate QBs. They had Pat Devlin, J.P. Losman and Matt Moore on the roster, so the need was there. Opportunity did not present itself in that class, however, with Cam Newton going No. 1 overall to the Carolina Panthers, Andy Dalton and Colin Kaepernick going in the second round, Tyrod Taylor in the sixth round and the rest turning out to be a who's who of journeymen and busts featuring the likes of Jake Locker, Blaine Gabbert, Christian Ponder, Ryan Mallett, Ricky Stanzi and T.J. Yates.
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"A lot of guys evaluate – it's not the right or wrong way," Daboll said. "We do a variety of different things with these players. Put them in a lot of different situations, no different than I'm sure a lot of teams do. You just got to try to check of the boxes with the things you ask them to do and touch points and people that you talk to."
The Giants believe Daboll gives them an edge. Even though they have yet to draft a quarterback in three previous years, the behind-the-scenes intel of what they thought and how their board was set has boosted the confidence.
Now it's a matter of actually turning the card in. Here's how the Giants get to that point with strong emphasis on private workouts for quarterbacks.
As far as Pro Days, Daboll has only been to a handful through the years. Last season, he was at LSU Pro Day - which featured Jayden Daniels and Malik Nabers, of course - and at Washington Pro Day featuring Michael Penix and Rome Odunze.
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For Daniels, the current Commanders quarterback chose not to do a private workout for teams outside the top three picks. That was a big reason Daboll was there in Baton Rouge. And for Penix, he had dinner with the Giants the night after his Pro Day.
The homework starts prior to the team's contingent arriving on campus.
Daboll develops tests for each quarterback featuring formations, motions, defensive fronts, run concepts and pass concepts. Those exams are sent to the quarterbacks and returned before the workouts so Daboll and the Giants can get a baseline for the prospects' football knowledge.
"I would say, you're doing work all the way up until the draft and you're trying to cross every T and dot every I," Daboll said. "There is so much information you've got to weed through. Some of the stuff that you listen to or hear and you've got to trust your meetings with the players, and you got to trust the time that you were on the board with them and how they were at the Combine, the East-West game, or the time you got to meet them, what the athletic trainers had to say or what did the graduate assistant have to say."
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He paused before adding: "You know, the face of a franchise is the quarterback. It's not an easy position to evaluate and it's not an easy position to coach or to play, so you do the best job you can to try to find the right one for your team."
Schoen and members of his scouting and personnel staff schedule the workouts, which are typically held on the player's college campus. The Giants connect the quarterbacks with Daboll, but intentionally leave certain details of the visits open-ended, suggesting the prospects make the dinner reservations or plan the car service for pick up at the airport. That's to test both their maturity and willingness to follow through on things that might normally be taken care of outside their purview.
If the Giants select Heisman Trophy winner Travis Hunter or pass rusher Abdul Carter at No. 3, expect the focus to shift to any number of potential QB targets who can, at the very least, join the roster as developmental prospects with upside. The Giants were at Pro Days for Tyler Shough at Louisville and Quinn Ewers of Texas, and they have scouted Alabama's Jalen Milroe, Jaxson Dart of Ole Miss, Kyle McCord of Syracuse and Will Howard of Ohio State.
The Giants are expected to hold workouts with a good number of those prospects, including Sanders, and Daboll said they already have had several since the Combine in early March. The hope is that, as Schoen and Daboll helped the Bills secure reigning NFL MVP Josh Allen, the Giants will eventually reap the reward of that process, too.
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In Year 4, the clock is ticking, and no one can be sure these Giants will get their chance at the plate if more wins don't start to come.
"We're going to go through the evaluation of all the guys that have been on my list to look at and talk to," Daboll said. "Again, everything has to fall in the line too, relative to draft picks, where you're picking, if somebody gets picked ahead of time. ... You don't know when they're going to get taken. If there is an affinity you have for a player, if you feel like that player is the right player and they're sitting there at whatever pick you have, is it a reach, not a reach, I'm not going to get into that - it's how you feel about the player and does that player match where you want to take them."
That's a swing Daboll and the Giants have yet to take. We'll find out if this is the year where the evaluation process Schoen continues to laud helps Big Blue finally land a franchise quarterback of their own.
This article originally appeared on What Brian Daboll NY Giants QB evaluation process reveals about quest
