PHILADELPHIA — You can chase a Super Bowl and maybe win one if you find the right head coach and team him with the right quarterback.
The Giants spent a decade trying to replicate the synergy between Bill Parcells and Phil Simms, and they found it with Tom Coughlin and Eli Manning, and between the pairs it gave them four Lombardi Trophies standing tall and proud in the glass case in the lobby inside 1925 Giants Drive.
Simms was entering his fifth season when Parcells was a rookie head coach, and it took three seasons and spasms of turbulence between them before they peaked together.
Coughlin was a rookie Giants head coach when Manning was a rookie, and it took them four seasons to win Super Bowl XLII together.
Only after the right head coach finally arrived did Daniel Jones become the right quarterback for the Giants.
Daboll is the rookie head coach whose Midas touch transformed Jones, in his fourth season, into a professional dual-threat quarterback who finally proved he could protect the football, get his team in the end zone and win games. And he cemented himself as the “franchise quarterback of the future” with a big-ticket offseason deal as his reward.
In what was expected to be Year 1 of a rebuilding process, there were the Brian Daboll Giants showing up at the haunted Linc for a Saturday Night Fever-ish NFC division-round brawl against the top-seeded Eagles.
Brian Daboll: the savior.
Brian Daboll: Daniel Jones’ savior.
Brian Daboll: John Mara’s savior.
Brian Daboll: savior of the New York Football Giants.
Daboll and Jones actually hit the ground running faster than Parcells and Simms, and faster than Coughlin and Manning.
Chris Mara, the Giants’ senior player personnel executive, was standing on one side of the postgame locker room after Daboll and Jones had upset the Vikings in the wild-card round when I asked him what he liked best about this team.
“No. 1, it’s the best-coached team we’ve had in a long time,” Mara told The Post. “And offensively, no matter what the situation, they seem to be able to figure it out.”
It was Daboll who figured it out. Daboll who molded and guided and developed Daniel Jones into the best version of Daniel Jones. Daboll who unlocked the key, with his genius at identifying and designing what gave his quarterback his best chance to succeed. Daboll, who united the building and made the place fun again.
Daboll, the trusted leader who got everyone to buy in to his approach of one day at a time and one week at a time, and one play at a time on game day. Daboll, who went for 2 and the win on the road in Tennessee in the opener and began teaching the Giants how to win after all the years wandering the desert of despair.
He never promised us Josh Allen. And yet, in his previous two starts, Jones had rushed 28 times for 169 yards and two touchdowns, and completed 43 of 59 passes for 478 yards and four TDs.
The marriage between a quarterback-friendly offense and a quarterback who willingly accepted being coached hard has been a marriage made in Big Blue heaven.
Ben McAdoo was promoted from offensive coordinator to replace Coughlin as head coach with Manning’s blessings in 2016.
“We wanted to find somebody who had the intelligence, the determination, the work ethic and the leadership skills to be a successful head coach in the National Football League,” Mara said when he introduced McAdoo. “It begins a new era of Giants football.”
The new era lasted less than two years.
Enter Pat Shurmur, a respected play-caller with previous head-coaching experience who was going to squeeze whatever was left from Manning’s 37-year-old arm and develop the next franchise quarterback, one Daniel Jones, who arrived three months later.
“We we’re looking for someone with intelligence, leadership skills, a presence, a professional demeanor and the right philosophy on how to build a team,” Mara said when he introduced Shurmur. The Giants wanted an adult in the room after McAdoo had lost the room. “And he’s very well-respected by the players that he’s coached in the past,” Mara said.
Mara was back two years later introducing Joe Judge as his next head coach: “I have to tell you that this was perhaps the best coach interview that I’ve ever been a part of. … He’s a teacher, he’s a communicator, he’s somebody who demands and commands respect, and he just has a certain presence about him.”
Another two years later, Mara blew it all up and started over with new general manager Joe Schoen picking the next Giants head coach.
Mara learned the hard way that you just never know whether you have hired the right head coach.
But now he knows.
Brian Daboll: Coach of the Year.
Brian Daboll: savior of the New York Football Giants.
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