Pat Leonard: Giants should give Mike Kafka a head coaching audition with Brian Daboll’s run at an end

NEW YORK — The Giants gave Mike Kafka a promotion to assistant head coach last season to spray some cologne on their coaching staff’s stink coming off last season.

But now, with Brian Daboll on the verge of an obvious firing, they’re leaving Kafka marginalized on the fringe of the NFL’s worst offense as the Giants (2-12) veer towards a franchise-record 10th straight loss on Sunday in Atlanta.

The Joe Schoen-Giants public relations machine is already in high gear trying to defend the GM’s indefensible performance while making clear that Daboll is about to pay the price for the organization’s dysfunction.

The idea of retaining this GM while firing the coach is outrageous, and that attempt at dodging accountability and revising history will be exposed in due time.

However, if Daboll is obviously on the way out anyway, why not just give Kafka a shot? Not to evaluate him as their 2025 head coach or anything. Just for his career’s sake.

The Giants blocked Kafka from making a lateral escape to Seattle in the offseason after he endured a terrible dynamic under Daboll in 2023.

The team transparently gave him and quarterbacks coach Shea Tierney optics-based promotions coming off a season in which the offense averaged a paltry 15.6 points per game.

But now Daboll is somehow scoring even fewer points per game (14.9) as the full-time play-caller in 2024.

Kafka, 37, is still young. So he’ll have time to carve out a better path somewhere else.

But what a disaster it has been for this promising coaching prospect off the Andy Reid tree to become associated with one of the worst offenses in the league and to stick around after 2023.

At least for Kafka’s sake, he was cast out of the play-calling inner circle before this operation went completely in the tank on Daboll’s watch here in 2024.

Still, Kafka was on track to go from Patrick Mahomes’ quarterbacks coach to Daniel Jones’ playoff offensive coordinator to a head coaching job. He was a finalist with the Arizona Cardinals after that 2022 run.

Now, he’ll probably have to take his medicine and press the reset button somewhere like Carolina or Chicago to reboot that trajectory and prove himself all over again.

It would have been interesting, frankly, for the Giants to have given Kafka the second half of this season to show them what kind of program he could run.

There’s still a couple games left here if they want to do right by him.

Although maybe Kafka isn’t dying to inherit this mess, either. Maybe it’s better that the next three losses go on Daboll’s resume and not his.

Lock, Nabers upgraded to full participants

The same five Giants players didn’t practice on Thursday: edge rushers Brian Burns (ankle/neck) and Patrick Johnson (knee), linebacker Bobby Okereke (back), guard Aaron Stinnie (concussion) and corner Greg Stroman (shoulder/shin).

Eight players remained limited: corners Deonte Banks (rib), Art Green (shoulder) and Dru Phillips (shoulder); wide receiver Wan’Dale Robinson (shoulder); center John Michael Schmitz (ankle); quarterback Tommy DeVito (concussion); defensive lineman Rakeem Nunez-Roches (neck/shoulder); running back Tyrone Tracy Jr. (ankle) and corner Cor’Dale Flott (quad/finger), who had a new finger injury added to his designation.

Eight players were full participants: quarterback Drew Lock (heel/left elbow), wide receiver Malik Nabers (knee/foot), tight end Chris Manhertz (ankle), safety Dane Belton (knee), defensive lineman Cory Durden (shoulder), linebacker Dyontae Johnson (ankle) and lineman Austin Schlottmann (fibula).