Brian Daboll won’t bench Deonte Banks. The second-year corner quit on a play for the second time in four games against the Philadelphia Eagles, but the Giants’ head coach said he is still starting Banks against the Pittsburgh Steelers on Monday night. “We’ve talked to Tae, we talked to all our players. I’ll keep that in-house,” Daboll said Friday. “You address it with the player, and you move on … I think we have a good communication process here. We have a certain expectation. And I expect to see that.” Daboll thinks talking to Banks is enough to hold him accountable, but the third-year coach is wrong. This is an absence of leadership that will render co-owner John Mara’s vote of confidence in Daboll meaningless by the end of this season if the coach doesn’t change course. A head coach cannot let it slide when a player quits on the field. A team will not respond to that. This is the beginning of the end. Daboll appears to be trying to not lose the locker room, since that is what preserved his job internally after the 2023 season collapsed and tons of assistant coaches left. The players need structure and discipline to improve, though — not kid gloves. Daboll said postgame about Banks quitting against Philly that “the guys are putting effort into it each and every week.” That was incorrect. Most of the players have put effort into each and every week, but Banks’ effort has been selective. And effort is non-negotiable in any healthy culture. As far as the Daily News understands, that wasn’t just the second time Banks didn’t give 100%, either, dating back to the preseason. Still, Daboll refuses to take Banks to task publicly or take away his playing time. Instead, the head coach has let defensive backs coach Jerome Henderson, tackle Dexter Lawrence and coordinator Shane Bowen be the bad guys and make public statements criticizing Banks’ unacceptable effort. “It’s disappointing anytime there’s a lack of effort that shows up across the board,” Bowen said. Banks said Friday that he knows “I have to have better effort” and that he told his teammates as much after the 28-3 loss to the Eagles. “It won’t ever happen again,” he said. Why not, though? There have been no consequences or repercussions. Banks said he wasn’t even fined. So how would he learn his lesson from being patted on the back? Look at Malik Nabers. The rookie wide receiver clearly believes his attitude after the Eagles loss was OK. That’s probably because Daboll backed Nabers’ comments and enabled the behavior rather than nipping it in the bud. Nabers had repeated “I was open” in response to questions about whether Philly’s defense deployed something unexpected and if the Giants’ lack of balance hurt the passing game. “No, I mean, nothing really different,” Nabers said. “I mean, watch the target tape. That was it. I was open. That was it.” On the lack of balance, Nabers said: “Yeah, but again, that’s not my job. My job is to run routes, get open and catch the ball.” Daboll on Monday defended Nabers’ comments: “If he said he was open, he was open quite a bit.” So when Nabers was given an opportunity to clarify his comments on Friday, he said: “That’s something I said last week, last game. This is a new week. I don’t want to talk about it.” Then he was asked if the Eagles had done anything differently against the Giants to take Nabers away — a similar question to the postgame inquiry he had received. “That was the same question I got asked before the game, and I said what I said about it,” Nabers said. The reporter said he hadn’t been aware. “If you don’t know about it, you’ve got to go look it up. I said what I said about it,” Nabers said. “That was last week’s game. We’re working on a new week.” Nabers’ postgame comments weren’t the only issue, though. His body language on the field during the loss to Philadelphia was bad, too. He reacted frequently out of frustration to off-target incompletions or plays when he was open but didn’t see a target. Daboll pointed to an open Nabers on a play from the sideline, as well, even though the pass never could have happened due to the pass rush reaching Daniel Jones. These are not one-off problems, however, when Daboll does not put a stop to it immediately. As Banks demonstrated, it will happen again if discipline isn’t applied the first time. Daboll added a comment about Nabers on Monday that didn’t seem to fit when asked about the wide receiver seemingly implying that the offense’s problems weren’t his fault. “I respect Malik,” Daboll said. “I respect all our guys.” No one was accusing Daboll of not respecting his players. What he’s being accused of is not doing what’s best for the team — not setting and enforcing high expectations. Daboll stressed on Friday that “we’re down on corners” due to injuries, seemingly implying that if he had more healthy players at that position, he might proceed with Banks differently. That’s an excuse, though. It’s time to do what’s right, or else Mara’s vote of confidence won’t mean anything as this season that already has gone very wrong gets much, much worse.