The business suits worn on both ends of the Zoom call served as the surest cue that this wasn’t the right moment for Brian Daboll to look at his former high school football teammate and yell, “Go Red Raiders!”

Or for Tom Telesco to look back at Daboll and crack a joke about beating his coverage to catch passes over the middle during practice. Or for the two grown men to stroll 20 years down memory lane naming the most demanding friars in the hallways at St. Francis High School, in the Buffalo suburb of Hamburg.

No, this meeting was a chance for Telesco, general manager of the Los Angeles Chargers, to interview Daboll for a coveted position as an NFL head coach in January 2021. No time for much else.  

“Maybe that would’ve helped!” quipped Daboll, who wasn’t hired by the Chargers, but is now an NFL Coach of the Year candidate for reviving the Giants in his first year at the helm. “It might’ve been a minute or two catching up, but it was a normal, professional interview like the others. They’re all a little nerve-wracking.”