The 2025 Penn State football season quickly became a dumpster fire, despite the high expectations the team had coming into the year. They fired James Franklin after three straight losses, which started with a loss to Oregon and ended with a loss to Northwestern. The Nittany Lions have only gotten worse, and now the most significant issue is who will be their new head coach?
The New York Giants recently fired Brian Daboll as their head coach after being in New York since 2022. Now that he is on the market, speculation has popped up about whether he will coach at Penn State. On Wednesday's episode of “The Pat McAfee Show,” Pat McAfee further stoked those rumors by talking about the picture that came out of Daboll in a Penn State sweatshirt and the fact that one of his kids goes to Penn State.
“He’s seen walking out of his house wearing a Penn State hoodie,” McAfee said. “Penn State needs a head coach. Brian Daboll also has kids that are currently at Penn State. He would be a massive, splashy hire. He has a lot of history doing very good things in football, outside of what he did with the New York Giants. But how many could say they did good with the New York Giants is what a lot of people would say, if you’re in Brian Daboll’s camp.”
The collapse against the Chicago Bears was the last straw, and the Giants fired Daboll after years of not much progress. Daboll finished his time with the New York Giants with a 20-40-1 record. However, the situation never improved, and the timelines became disorganized as well, and the defense remained ineffective. However, he is still widely regarded as a great football coach, especially on offense. If Penn State took a swing at him for their head coaching position, it would be seen as a home run.
Daboll has spent most of his time in the NFL, but he has ties to the Big Ten and college football as a whole. He worked as a Graduate Assistant at Michigan State from 1998 to 1999 and was the Alabama Offensive Coordinator in 2017. He worked under Nick Saban in both instances.
It is also worth noting that Daboll has numerous ties to the Northeast and was born in upstate New York. Having also coached the New York Giants, he would have a pipeline with local Northeast high school players who watched him with the Giants and as OC for the Bills, too.
