Most of the credit for Daniel Jones’ best season belongs to the quarterback nobody was sure the Giants would still want when this season ended. He has cut down his turnovers, cranked up his completion percentage and led his team to its first playoff berth since 2016.
Others have also played a part in the transformation that likely will enable Jones to remain with the Giants next season and possibly for several years to come. The details — a franchise tag or a long-term contract — will be worked out in the offseason.
In the meantime, Jones will continue to work closely with the coaches who have helped the quarterback reshape the narrative about him as the Giants prepare to play a Wild Card playoff game against the Minnesota Vikings on Sunday in Minneapolis.
That list starts with head coach Brian Daboll, who, after a fiery sideline conversation with his quarterback on opening day, has figured out how to get the best out of Jones, and includes Mike Kafka, the offensive coordinator who has drawn head-coaching interest from the Carolina Panthers and Houston Texans. But there’s another name many fans haven’t heard: Shea Tierney, the Giants’ 36-year-old quarterbacks coach.
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“Our relationship has been great,” Jones said recently. “I’ve learned a ton from him. He knows this system inside and out, and early on, he was so detailed and so sharp about teaching everything about it down to the smallest details.”
Jones gave credit to Tierney for helping him reduce turnovers. A year ago, Jones had 10 giveaways (seven interceptions and three lost fumbles) in 10 games. This season, he had five interceptions and three lost fumbles in 16 games. No starting quarterback in the NFL had fewer turnovers.
“He has also allowed me to envision certain plays when we get certain looks,” Jones said. “When I see certain things, he has helped me think about where the ball should go. All that has been extremely helpful. We talk constantly throughout the week and we are always bouncing ideas off each other.”
One of the early conversations was about Tierny’s rise to an NFL quarterbacks coach from the humblest of beginnings.
“It’s a cool story,” Jones said. “He’s someone who dreamed of being a coach and he was willing to do whatever it takes to make it happen.”
The backup quarterback
History is filled with stories about backup quarterbacks who went on to become head coaches and offensive coordinators. That’s Kafka’s story and it probably will be the story for Davis Webb, the Giants’ third-string quarterback.
Tierney’s story is different. Yes, he was a backup quarterback, but not in the NFL and not at the college level. As a senior at Neshaminy High School in Bucks County, Pa., he was the backup to a sophomore and begged his coach to stay on the team.
“I think he might have played four varsity plays his entire career,” said Mark Schmidt, who was Tierney’s high school coach in 2004. “Usually, I don’t keep seniors around who aren’t going to be impact guys on the first or second team.
“I had a conversation with him about it and he said, ‘Coach, I won’t cause any problems. I just want to be part of it.’ Given his background of being a bit of a pain in the tail, I wasn’t convinced right away.”
Schmidt said he was warned by Tierney that a NJ Advance Media reporter might be calling him to talk about those high school days, which included a biography that indicated he wanted to “go to college and graduate; hopefully become a football coach on some level.”
“I told him I wasn’t going to sugarcoat anything,” Schmidt said. “Shea goes, ‘Coach, I know you spent two years trying to kick me off the football team because I was such an a-hole.’ The truth is Shea was a gym rat who didn’t care much about academics, and he thought he was a little bit better than he was at the time. But when it all shook out, he became a very important ingredient on that team.”
For that, Tierney will be forever grateful to Roger Grove, a longtime head coach at Norristown High School who joined Schmidt’s Neshaminy staff as the quarterbacks coach in 2003.
“Roger and Shea really connected,” Schmidt said. “Roger told me, ‘I’ll keep Shea out of your hair.’ I was still worried because all I kept hearing about was how Shea was in detention and Shea is acting up. But then he really shaped up and connected with Roger about football.”
In fairness to Tierney, he played at an elite football high school. Neshaminy went 13-2 and lost in the state finals his senior season. The team set a school record for points and had four Division I players.
“We started a sophomore at quarterback who was a really good athlete and Shea settled in as the assistant to the quarterbacks coach,” Schmidt said. “He turned into a different kid and because of that, everybody jumped to help him become a football coach.”
From Lackawanna to N.C. State
Schmidt and Grove helped Tierney land at Lackawanna Community College in Scranton, Pa., where the head coach was — and remains — Mark Duda.
“He did me a huge favor and let me come up there and be a student coach right away,” Tierney said. “I was living in the dorms and I did anything he asked me to do.”
There was one thing the staff at Lackawanna asked him not to do after Tierney’s first practice.
“Funny story,” Tierney said. “The first practice I went out there in cleats and the quarterbacks are all warming up and I took a drop and threw the ball. The quarterback coach comes over and grabs me and he’s like, ‘Are you a player or are you here to coach?’ I’m like, ‘Coach. I want to coach.’ I told him I just jumped in because I had the instinct, but I said, ‘Trust me, if you don’t want me to take another snap, I won’t. I will be right here helping you coach. I don’t need to embarrass myself by throwing with these other guys.’ ”
Just like players who go from a junior college to the Division I level, Tierney moved on to North Carolina State, where he worked under offensive coordinator Dana Bible and head coach Tom O’Brien. By then, he was committed to coaching. Back in Bucks County, Schmidt was thoroughly surprised and impressed.
“For a kid that really didn’t play much, but loved the game, he swallowed the whole hook,” Schmidt said. “We got his education started with Lackawanna and then there were connections to N.C. State and he did the rest. Once we gave him a chance, he took advantage of it and certainly earned my respect with all he has done. I’m so proud of him, and I know Roger is looking down proud, too.”
Grove died in 2016.
An NFL homecoming
Tierney, for all intents and purposes, majored in coaching football at N.C. State and was still there as a graduate assistant in 2012 when O’Brien and his staff were fired.
Good fortune shined on Tierney again, however — a scouting visit to Nashville by Ed Marynowitz for the Music City Bowl. Marynowitz, who is now an agent for college and NFL coaches, was the assistant director of pro scouting with the Philadelphia Eagles at the time.
“N.C. State granted me really good access to meetings and fortunately I ended up meeting Shea,” Marynowitz said. “He was from the Philadelphia area and we developed a relationship. Shea said he’d be interested in exploring an opportunity in the NFL and we stayed in touch. Shea had made such a positive impression on me from the beginning because of his professionalism and his knowledge of the players. He just had a good way about him.”
Marynowitz returned to Philadelphia and recommended that the Eagles use Tierney in getting ready for the 2013 draft, the first with Chip Kelly as the team’s head coach. Tierney became a volunteer scouting assistant, but told Marynowitz he really wanted to coach again.
Former Giants coach Pat Shurmur was the Eagles offensive coordinator at the time and it didn’t take long for him to realize Tierney had the maniacal work ethic needed to be an NFL coach.
“He was a quality control coach and he was very energetic and you could tell right away that he was very smart,” Shurmur said. “What we were doing with Chip at the time was really kind of new to the NFL and [Tierney] was able to dive in and help us find a way to implement it.”
Sweet home Alabama
By the end of 2015, Kelly was out as the Eagles coach and Tierney needed a job again. Marynowitz had moved to Alabama as the associate athletics director for football and he wanted Tierney to come with him. Tierney brought a recommendation from Jeff Stoutland, the Eagles’ offensive line coach who worked on Nick Saban’s staff in 2011 and 2012.
Iin his second season, working as an offensive assistant, Tierney made a connection with Daboll, who had left his job as the Patriots tight ends coach to become the offensive coordinator at Alabama. Tierney had an enlightening early encounter with his eventual boss at the Giants.
“We’re sitting around and he’s teaching us how he wants us to do things on offense and he does this little cadence thing where you clap when he says hut,” Tierney said. “I’ll never forget it. The second time he does it, I clapped at the wrong time and basically I had jumped offsides. He says, ‘No [numbskull], it’s this cadence. You’re offsides.’ I’m like, ‘I better be on my game with this guy or I’m going to be out of here real quick.’”
There was one thing, in particular, Daboll loved about Tierney.
“He was always there before I got there and I got there pretty early,” Daboll said. “And he never left until I left. He was an analyst at the time, and he helped me with a lot of different things. We developed a relationship quickly, mostly because of how he approached his job. He showed me things when I was in my first year at a college and in a new place. I think he’s very intelligent. He’s a great teammate. Those are two important things — intelligence and being a great teammate.”
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The Crimson Tide won their fifth national title under Saban that season. Daboll left to become the Buffalo Bills’ offensive coordinator and he took Tierney with him.
“He was definitely someone I wanted to bring along with me based on his work ethic,” Daboll said.
An expanding role
Tierney had the title of offensive assistant in his first two seasons with the Bills, but was promoted to assistant quarterbacks coach with the Bills in his third season. That meant he was working under Ken Dorsey, a former star quarterback at the University of Miami, and Josh Allen, a rising NFL star.
“I could talk all day about the football education I’ve had,” Tierney said. “I still have three notebooks from my time at Alabama that are filled with information, and I wouldn’t sell those things for a million dollars. I look at them every day.
“Then I go to Buffalo and I can’t thank Ken Dorsey enough for just the opportunity to sit the last four years in his quarterback meetings and learn from him. Combine that with what I had already learned from [Daboll] and I have been so fortunate.”
Some life lessons came from Allen, who is 10 years younger than Tierney.
“What I learned from Josh was that no matter what was going on, he could always find a way to have fun,” Tierney said. “Other than his obvious talent, that was the greatest thing I saw from him. He knew how to connect with everybody in the organization. He just had a great way about him. As much as I loved being around the player, I loved being around the person even more.”
New York, New York
After four seasons with the Bills, Daboll, at 46, finally landed his dream job when he was named the head coach of the Giants. Again, he brought Tierney with him, this time to be the quarterbacks coach.
“It’s an important job,” said Shurmur, who remained in touch with Tierney through the years. “It doesn’t surprise me that Shea has risen to that position because he’s very knowledgeable. Obviously, you have to understand the fundamentals of the position and you have to be able to also teach the scheme. You’re also typically the guy that in crucial times can go to the offensive coordinator and say, ‘Listen ,of these five plays, these are the three the quarterback absolutely loves.’”
Despite barely playing at the high school level, Tierney has taken his master’s degree in offensive football and won over his head coach and the quarterbacks he commands.
“Yeah, there was definitely a learning curve,” Tierney said. “The biggest thing about coaching quarterbacks is seeing the game through their eyes, so the best thing that happened to me was being able to sit in that [QB room] in Buffalo as long as I did and see the game through those guys’ eyes, because I didn’t have the experience of playing quarterback.
“I would say I’ve had a great group of [quarterbacks] who have trusted enough ... so that they believed in what I was saying and doing, even though I haven’t done it.”
Listen to Giants’ backup Tyrod Taylor and it’s clear the Giants’ quarterbacks believe in Tierney.
“His knowledge of our offense as well as his knowledge of defenses is one of the best I’ve been around,” Taylor said. “I love working with him.”
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Bob Brookover can be reached at rbrookover@njadvancemedia.com.