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Shortly after being hired as the next general manager of the New York Giants, Joe Schoen set out to work revamping multiple departments. That included a significant amount of front office reshuffling.
Among those who survived the transition was director of football operations Ed Triggs.
Triggs first joined the Giants in 2003 as their assistant video director. That’s the role he held when he met Tom Coughlin in 2004 and began working side-by-side with him. And it was during that time Triggs learned what it took to be an effective worker, reliable teammate and responsible man.
“[Video] was a great learning experience,” Triggs told The Giants Huddle podcast. “You have all the video in the world at your fingertips, and it’s your to job edit it and film it. You’re embedded in the filming of these individual drills. I was a 22-year-old Giants fan when I got the job, and I’m filming defensive line drills with Michael Strahan and Keith Hamilton. It’s one of those surreal moments where you’re like, ‘Don’t get run over and make sure you keep these humongous guys in the frame.’ So that was the start of it. Then being introduced to Coach [Tom] Coughlin was the jumping off point for me in my career.
“I had heard the stories from people in Jacksonville that he was tough, he was demanding, but he was fair. So when he got hired, he needed somebody to do his presentations and his team meetings. I kind of got volunteered as the guy to do that in 2004. I’m a 22-year-old kid [at the time], I sit in Tom Coughlin’s office, it’s 7 o’clock in the morning, he’s like, ‘I need you to put these 5,000 things in a PowerPoint,’ and I had never even used PowerPoint before. And every day for 12-15 years, whatever it was, we met every morning at 7 o’clock and we developed the themes and mottos and everything that was going to try and inspire the football team.
“He taught me countless things, such as the pride when it comes to your work, that your signature is attached to anything that you do. He taught me about teamwork. He taught me about the fact that you can’t do anything by yourself, and I think that’s something that rings true in any job across the country.”
Triggs now takes the lessons he learned as a young video assistant under Coughlin and will apply them to his role as director of football ops under Schoen — a man who grinds much like Coughlin.
“On Joe’s first day, I got in at 6 o’clock in the morning to work out,” said Triggs. “I’m thinking maybe he’ll be working out and I’m going to try to beat him in. When I walked into the staff locker room, he’d finished his workout already. I was like, ‘Wow.’ It told me all I need to know about him, and that’s what I had heard from other people around the league. He’s a grinder, he’s a hard worker, but most importantly, he’s a great guy.
“That’s what I’ve come to learn over the past five months. He’s a people person. He listens to what we as a staff have to say when it comes to a topic. He’ll ask your opinion, understanding that he might not always [take] it, but all we can do is present the facts to him or give him what we feel about a contract, about a player. But he’s fair and his energy is through the roof. You don’t get up at 5 o’clock in the morning and start your day with an hour workout if you don’t have that energy and that juice.”
The Giants hope that the juice Schoen brings to the table and the lessons Triggs learned from Coughlin help lead the team back to a championship.
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