Mike Kafka will get his first official taste of being an NFL head coach Sunday when his New York Giants host the Green Bay Packers, but the longtime Giants offensive coordinator is already something of a known commodity in league coaching circles.
Kafka, who has been the Giants’ offensive coordinator since 2022 and is now their interim head coach, has interviewed for several head coaching jobs in recent years, and he left a positive impression on at least one executive.
Per ESPN’s Jordan Raanan, an anonymous “high-level” exec who took part in interviewing Kafka said he is “prepared and organized.” The executive continued by saying they saw “confidence and conviction on top of having a strong football IQ,” which resulted in the team being “impressed” with Kafka.
Raanan noted that Kafka has interviewed for eight different head coaching positions and been a finalist on a couple of occasions.
As a quarterback, Kafka spent time with several different NFL teams from 2010 to 2015, and he appeared in regular-season games for the Philadelphia Eagles in 2011.
Kafka seems to have found his niche in coaching, though, winning a Super Bowl during his stint as a Kansas City Chiefs assistant from 2017 to 2021, before taking the Giants’ OC role under Brian Daboll in 2022.
The Daboll-Kafka combo led the Giants to a surprising playoff appearance during their first year on the job, and they even won a playoff game that season. However, the past few years have been a struggle.
Poor quarterback play sunk the team in 2023 and 2024, and while the Giants seem to have found their new franchise quarterback in Jaxson Dart this season, it hasn’t led to much winning.
New York is tied for the worst record in the NFC at 2-8, and much of that has been due to poor management in late-game situations.
According to Raanan, the Giants are the second team in the Super Bowl era to lose two games in which they led by 10 or more points with less than four minutes remaining.
Giants wide receiver Darius Slayton told Raanan that Kafka has a “calmer personality” than Daboll did, and it is fair to wonder if that demeanor could be a positive for the Giants in crunch time.
Given that the Giants have their quarterback in Dart and general manager Joe Schoen is already very familiar with Kafka, it feels as though a strong finish to the season could potentially result in the removal of the interim tag and the installation of Kafka as the full-time head coach in New York.
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