My card was the six of diamonds.
I remember, because Brian Daboll made sure I knew. He kept asking if I was sure. Each time, as he’d have me rapidly pick out a card or he'd hold up another himself, he’d ask if that was the card I’d pulled previously. I kept telling him no. He kept looking more flummoxed.
“What was your card?” Daboll said finally, as if done trying.
I told him. He pointed to a remaining card still face down on the table: “Flip it over.”
You already know:
Six of diamonds. He smiled.
Daboll has performed card tricks like these for decades. Learned them, he said, while growing up near Buffalo and playing cards with kids around the neighborhood. I’d asked to see a card trick, in fact, as an ice-breaker to our introductory interview in his
Tennessee Titans’ office. While Daboll briefly eyed the request suspiciously – “Who told you about that?” – I didn’t have to twist an arm. He had a deck in his desk.
His trick wasn't just sleight of hand, either. The acting by Daboll, the misdirection, is what makes that trick land so well. What else would you expect from one of football’s most known and respected offensive coordinators?
For the 51-year-old Daboll, the real trick awaits on a sweltering practice field outside his office.
That one, he’s still figuring out.
The redemption Tennessee Titans of 2026
The NFL hasn’t forgotten about Daboll. It’s just less enamored than it was a few years ago.
That’s something important to understand about Daboll. He been thriving in the background of this business for a very long time, but only recently did he experience what it’s like to be truly famous. New York famous.
In 2022, he held the Big Apple in his card-twirling hands. He reached the playoffs in his first season as head coach of the New York Giants (and his first season as a head coach, period), going a surprising 9-7-1 and earning NFL Coach of the Year honors from the Associated Press.
Such a start seemed too good to be true.
It was.
Daboll lost 33 of his next 44 games, up until the point the Giants decided he shouldn’t coach them anymore. Fired this past November, Daboll would’ve been the first NFL coach axed mid-season in 2025 if his new team, the Titans, hadn’t already jettisoned Brian Callahan and his miserably failed offense.
So, now, Titans quarterback Cam Ward is operating Daboll’s offense.
Which means that Daboll has the most important role on Robert Saleh’s new Titans coaching staff.
Daboll has been entrusted with Ward, and if Daboll fits neatly into this picture, it’s because the Titans are a franchise where seemingly everyone enters the 2026 season with a little anger and a lot to prove. That goes for Saleh, Ward, most of the players, nearly all the executives and … definitely, without a doubt, the post-NYC Daboll.
“You can take as many notes and you can learn from whether it was Nick (Saban) or Bill (Belichick) or whoever it may be," Daboll said, "but it's a different chair (as a head coach). There's so many different things that go on. …
“At different points in your career,” he added, “you learn how to deal with tough. Because that's what this business is all about. It’s tough. It’s tough for these players every day. It’s tough for the coaches.
“But we love it, you know?”
Partnering with Cam Ward (after all)
For anyone brave enough to hold out hope in the Titans’ turning a corner back to relevance in 2026, Daboll is a plausible catalyst. He was a good, experienced hire for a bad, inexperienced team.
It’s easy to view this season as only a temporary stopover for him on a redemption arc back to being a head coach again. Maybe. But you never know. Nothing comes guaranteed with a Titans offense that hasn’t ranked better than 26th in any of the past four seasons since A.J. Brown was traded.
From Daboll's perspective, there were easier reclamation projects out there as options. You can't help but wonder, deep down, why he's here. Though it tells you something about Daboll’s self-confidence that he picked Tennessee. He’s taking a serious risk with his career here, and that risk hinges on the upcoming season, and the upcoming season is going to hinge on Ward.
Daboll likes Ward, clearly, and believes in him. That’s a big reason Daboll is here. Daboll liked Ward as a draft prospect back when the Giants tried to convince the Titans to let them have him. “He’s smart,” the coach said. In meetings leading up to that draft, Daboll saw that. He saw how quickly Ward processed information, both on a whiteboard and while going through game footage.
"You can tell. Some guys can get it, and some guys it takes a little while,” Daboll said. “That was one of the intriguing things about him. And he's a competitor. He's fiery. He's got some emotion to him. I like that. I like working with guys that are like that.”
"I trusted him as soon as we hired him," Ward said of Daboll. "I had a great relationship with him throughout the pre-draft process, but I could trust him from Day 1 because he immediately took my knowledge of the game of what I like run, what I was comfortable with running and he immediately implemented it in the offense. That showed me right there that he's willing to at least listen to me."
I asked Daboll about Ward’s difficulties as an underwhelming rookie.
About the struggles and the losing and the coaching changes and all the things the Titans did wrong that could’ve spoiled some No. 1 overall picks, but hopefully, didn't spoil this one.
“Those things harden you,” Daboll replied. “They should harden you. Everybody has them. I've had my share. I've been in this league a long time. There's a bunch of years we were winning Super Bowls. And then there’s years we've won five or six games or less than that. And that’s hard.”
A background with the best
For the record, Daboll is guarded. Speaks in generalities. Knows how to say a lot while revealing very little, reflecting a learned skill of the truly famous – and of the 25-year NFL coaching veteran.
The Titans are his eighth different NFL franchise and his fifth as an offensive coordinator.
That’s a lot of media answers.
A lot of new offices, too, and unfamiliar buildings and co-workers. A lot of card tricks.
Daboll’s background, by now, has been documented. How he was born, technically, in Canada. How he never knew his father. How he was raised, primarily, by his grandparents after he and his young mother moved into her parents’ home near Buffalo. How his grandmother, especially, was a perfectionist.
He majored in economics at the University of Rochester, where he played football and ended up helping coach after getting sidelined by injury. He got his start in 1997 as a volunteer assistant by showing up randomly at William & Mary and asking – successfully – for a job.
The next year, Daboll was on Saban’s staff at Michigan State. He’d rejoin Saban at Alabama in 2017, winning a national title in his lone season as a collegiate offensive coordinator. Daboll said that experience in Tuscaloosa “helped with my empathy of young players.” He called Saban “a major influence not just in my coaching career, but my life as well.”
The oddity of Daboll’s coaching journey is he’s an offensive specialist who was trained by two of the greatest defensive minds in football history in Saban and Belichick.
Daboll's season at Alabama was after he had spent much of his career with the New England Patriots. Belichick was the head coach responsible for shifting Daboll – who’d been a safety in college – from coaching defense to learning offense from esteemed teachers like Charlie Weis and Dante Scarnecchia.
“I sit down at this table and think ‘Man, I thought Scar and Charlie and Bill and them were old,’” Daboll said. “Now, I’m that guy that they've had all that experience.”
Getting to know 'Dabs'
Daboll has stories. He’ll tell you some, too, but only if it’s just you. He prefers an off-the-record conversation.
That’s OK. Because that’s the good part. That’s when you get to meet “Dabs,” the jovial, likeable, personable version of that former Giants coach yelling at people on the sideline.
Dabs is a father of six. He makes sure he doesn't forget to call his daughter and check in before her long car trip. He has a younger son who plays hockey, a sport that Daboll himself used to play himself while growing up. He’s a newly converted fan of the Nashville Predators, he said, having already visited Bridgestone Arena for games last season.
Even in a relaxed setting, there’s a coach’s energy to Dabs. He still talked about football. About a play on his computer screen. About the inscrutable complexities on a massive whiteboard behind him, with scripts seemingly written in a different language. About a graph he scribbles on that board to illustrate a point about success in football and what that looks like with a team.
Because Daboll does know what that looks like.
"I welcome him challenging the defense," Saleh said. "He's been a head coach. He knows what he's looking for. He's been a coordinator a long time. So the dialog and the communication has been pretty cool."
Daboll is good for this place. I’m just not sure yet how good the Titans are going to be for him.
He’ll need tricks up his sleeve.
Good thing he has some.
Reach Tennessean sports columnist Gentry Estes at gestes@tennessean.com and hang out with him on Bluesky @gentryestes.bsky.social.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: For his next trick, Brian Daboll aims at Cam Ward and improving Titans | Exclusive
