Brian Daboll, the Person

It's not often that I delve into a personality on this blog. I did with Todd Haley, because I believed that his characteristics were a positive influence on the success of the Chiefs. And it's hard not to delve into Scott Pioli's personality, especially after the recent anxiety story that the Kansas City Star broke. I think it's also hard not to look at the personality of recently hired offensive coordinator Brian Daboll.

I just want to clear up now that I do not nor have I ever had a personal or working relationship with any of the aforementioned people. I am relying on other sources - players and reporters - to try to gather a clear picture of the kind of coach Daboll has been and might be with the Chiefs. And although the personality of a head coach or general manager might be more important than that of an OC, I am still a firm believer that the OC position is one of the most important jobs in the NFL.

So, statistics aside, what kind of man is Brian Daboll?

The Good


Daboll seems to be good at implementing a certain type of offense, at least from a quarterback perspective. When meeting with Chad Henne, quarterback for the Miami Dolphins, during the offseason last year after being hired as OC, he seemed to instill some excitement in the QB. "It’s a New England offense — New England with a little Jets in it. It’s a good offense for a quarterback," said Henne.

A New England kind of offense is where Matt Cassel had a lot of success filling in for an injured Tom Brady in 2008, and might be a key reason why the Chiefs made this decision. That, and he seems to be a very hard worker. Here is a brief bio of how Daboll got to where he is now according to ESPN:

"His first coaching job was a volunteer assistant at William & Mary. Then he flooded Division I schools with his résumé. Saban, the head coach at Michigan State, took in Daboll as a graduate office assistant.


Saban's connection with Belichick led to a grunt assignment as a Patriots defensive aide in 2000. Daboll worked with Mangini, who was New England's defensive backs coach. Daboll's thankless duties included breaking down game film to record formations and personnel groupings.

Belichick was impressed enough with Daboll to make him wide receivers coach in 2002. He held the post until he went to the Jets as quarterbacks coach in 2007, working with Dolphins backup Chad Pennington and Kellen Clemens the first season and Favre the next."


Pennington was obviously impressed with his time spent with Daboll because he called him a tremendous teacher. “A lot of the coverage knowledge that I have and understanding defenses comes from Brian,” said Pennington when talking to the Palm Beach Post last year. "The year I spent with him, I just learned so much about how defenses attack offenses and all of the nuances of coverage that I didn't understand before.”

When the Jets fired Mangini following that disappointing Favre year, Daboll migrated with him to Cleveland, and was rewarded the offensive coordinator position. But after two seasons, both Mangini and Daboll were out. Daboll, however, impressed the Dolphins organization enough to immediately get a new job in Miami as OC.

“His history with quarterbacks, his history being a defensive coach and offensive coach. Coach Sparano and myself were really impressed with the way he put a plan together for our offensive players on the football team,” Dolphins GM Jeff Ireland said after hiring Daboll. “I wasn’t necessarily looking at what his production was with Cleveland. I know there were some things there that were different, but we’ve got different personnel and the way he presented his play with us with our personnel was very impressive.”

Maybe Pioli will say the same thing about Daboll's time in Miami being different.

The Bad

Chad Pennington might have been impressed with Daboll during their time on the same team, but there is at least one player that was not so impressed by the kind of coach Daboll is.

Heath Evans, a currently retired full back, was asked by ESPN 760 last year about the Dolphins hiring of Brian Daboll. Evans had spent two years in New England while Daboll was on the Patriots offensive coaching staff. This is what Evans had to say:

“The Dolphins probably just got worse,” Evans answered. “You know I’m always going to shoot you straight. . . . When he was in New England, he was never a guy that I would have considered the brains of the operation . . .  As soon as I saw it I second-guessed the decision. A franchise that is really just struggling for success, why do you take an unproven commodity? I second guess it. I don’t know.”

Granted, I think it would be hard for anyone to seem like the brains of the operation when you're working for Bill Belichick, but these words are very critical and exceptionally harsh, considering Evans called Daboll a "good dude" in that same interview. For a full back to come out two years after last being on a team with Daboll and speak so negatively about him as a coach leads me to believe the lack of respect for Daboll as a coach is not an uncommon thing. 

We all expect former players to speak highly of past coaches, but it speaks volumes when former players come out and say things like what Evans did. And if the players feel that way, I'll let you guess what one of the media outlets in Cleveland had to say.

Cleveland.com (2010): "Browns offensive coordinator Brian Daboll continues to baffle everyone with his play-calling and his predictable style in the second half of games. The lack of production by the offense in the second half can directly be pointed at the play-calling of Daboll."

The Ugly

Although Daboll and the Dolphins struggled at the beginning of the year with Chad Henne at QB, the offense seemed to collectively gather itself under Matt Moore. And Moore credits Daboll, saying that he's "never been more prepared" in his five NFL seasons. 

But not all his former quarterbacks have felt that same way.

On November 25th of last year, Michael Silver of Yahoo Sports published a detailed description of what Colt McCoy's rookie year was like with Daboll as OC. And none of it was good. In fact, it was downright ugly.

"In what became a running joke in the Browns’ locker room, Daboll disparaged McCoy loudly and relentlessly – sometimes to his face, sometimes through the earpiece in the quarterback’s helmet.

“There were times I had to pull my helmet off to call a play in the huddle,” McCoy recalled in an interview earlier this month. “Guys could hear him yelling, and they’d say, ‘Just take it off.’ People said to me, ‘Man, I ain’t never seen anything like that. Just hang in there.’

"I remember [Daboll] yelling into Colt’s headset when he was the scout team quarterback, in the two-minute drill, when they were servicing us,” recalls veteran linebacker Scott Fujita. “Daboll was talking into the microphone, very animated. I looked at Colt and he said, ‘He does that all the time. He’s constantly [expletive] me in the headset.’

"Says a Cleveland offensive player: “It happened all the time. Running scout team, you basically look at a play-card in the huddle and run that play – it’s not like there’s a lot of gray area. And still, Daboll would lose it. One time Daboll was yelling at him as he was running the scout team, into his helmet, and it was the part of the drill that finished practice. As Colt’s walking to the team breakdown area, where Mangini is giving his speech, Daboll is still in his ear, screaming. People couldn’t believe it.

"Another time, says the offensive player, “It was during a walkthrough, and they chose Colt to stand in at fullback, for whatever reason. I guess he kind of ran the wrong route; how the hell should he know what the fullback was supposed to run? Daboll flipped out. Colt was livid. He’d never had a coach talk to him like that.

"Several Browns recalled a meeting early in the 2010 season in which Daboll told McCoy, “I just watched [tape of] your last college game, and you were terrible. What the hell were you throwing out there? That was one of the worst games I’ve ever seen. Why the [expletive] did we draft you?” (Daboll, through a Dolphins spokesman, said he did not recall ever having said those things to McCoy.)"

And you guys thought Todd Haley was intense? Sounds like we ain't seen nothin' yet.