Tag: Joe Schoen

Report: Giants hiring Joe Schoen cost them Jim Harbaugh as coach

In 2022, the New York Giants hired Joe Schoen as GM over Joe Hortiz, who reportedly was set to hire Jim Harbaugh as his head coach.

As the New York Giants headed into the 2023 season, they thought they had nailed the general manager and head coaching positions with the hiring of Joe Schoen and Brian Daboll to five-year contracts.

The Giants were coming off a 9-7-1 2022 regular season finish and a trip to the playoffs that included a win on the road. Schoen appeared to be fully in charge and Daboll was the darling of the football world being named the NFL’s Coach of the Year.

But a lot has gone down since then. The Giants’ juggernaut has dropped out of the sky and are in a death spiral. They are 8-23 since the start of the 2023 season and going nowhere fast.

They do not have a franchise quarterback of the future on their roster and many are questioning the competence of the entire organization from ownership on down.

Paul Schwartz of the New York Post, who has been covering the team for over 30 years, believes that if the Giants make changes this offseason, it may not be a clean sweep. They may decide to keep both Schoen and Daboll or they may keep one and let the other go.

Veteran sports author and columnist, Ian O’Connor, looked back at the move to hire Schoen and Daboll and the other options the Giants had available to them with back then.

“The Giants loved Adam Peters as a GM candidate but loved Joe Schoen just a bit more,” O’Connor posted on X. “They thought John Harbaugh’s guy in Baltimore, Joe Hortiz, was a bit nervous in his interview, but he was going to hire Jim Harbaugh as Giants head coach. What could have been?”

Peters was with San Francisco at the time as general manager John Lynch’s assistant. He was hired this past offseason by Washington to be their GM. The Commanders are 9-5 this season and headed towards the playoffs.

Hortiz was the Ravens’ Director of Player Personnel and is now the general manager of the Los Angeles Chargers and did indeed hire Jim Harbaugh as his head coach. The Chargers are 8-6 this season and currently are in the seventh playoff spot in the AFC.

While these other teams are flourishing, the Giants are floundering. Yes, what could have been…?

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Giants can’t afford a half measure: Fire everyone or keep the regime

The New York Giants can not afford another half measure — they need to fire GM Joe Schoen and coach Brian Daboll or keep the regime intact.

It was supposed to be a year of celebration for the New York Giants but has instead turned into a nightmare of historical proportions.

The team’s 100th anniversary got off to a bad start with “Hard Knocks: Offseason with the New York Giants,” which highlighted their failures to land a new quarterback while allowing running back Saquon Barkley to join the Philadelphia Eagles.

Fast forward to the present time and the Giants are 2-12, have lost a franchise-record nine straight games, and are 0-8 at home with one game remaining. Should they lose their MetLife Stadium finale in Week 17, they will become the first team in NFL history to lose nine home games in a single season.

The season from hell may also be punctuated with another embarrassment: Barkley breaking the NFL’s all-time single-season rushing record against the very team that drafted him.

Sprinkled in is the bungled release of quarterback Daniel Jones, ongoing fan protests that aim to embarrass ownership, a league-worst offense now being led by street free agent Tim Boyle, and seemingly endless mockery from the national media.

In just a few short weeks, co-owners John Mara and Steve Tisch will have to make a tough decision: Burn it all down and reset again, or risk a fan revolt by running it back with the current regime.

Those can be the only choices because a half measure will not suffice. The Giants can not afford to fire either general manager Joe Schoen or head coach Brian Daboll, forcing a potential replacement to inherit the other.

The reasons to fire Schoen are abundant, as Bobby Skinner of Talkin’ Giants recently laid out. His 2024 draft class should not be a saving grace, especially considering his failures in the previous two drafts have led the Giants to this point.

Daboll is equally at fault for the team’s failures. His inability to manage relationships with coordinators and assistants is alarming, his game-day roster management has directly contributed to two losses, and his play-calling has led to a points-per-game regression compared to Mike Kafka a season ago.

It’s almost like Daboll has gone from Bono to Bozo.

There are few, if any redeeming qualities about the 2024 iteration of the New York Giants. And each week, they somehow find a new, humiliating low. Things have gotten so bad that debate has stirred over this team compared to the 2021 version headed by Dave Gettleman and Joe Judge.

Who had that on their Bingo card?

But that’s also why ownership has to rip the Band-Aid completely off or leave it on for one more season. A half measure would merely kick the can down the road and continue the post-Tom Coughlin cycle that has gotten them here in the first place.

If they were to keep Schoen and fire Daboll and the general manager whiffed in another draft, the Giants would need to bring in a new GM who would then likely fire the lame-duck head coach and inherit whatever quarterback Schoen ultimately selects in the 2025 NFL draft. We’ve seen how that story plays out.

If they went the other way and fired Schoen and kept Daboll, it would force the incoming GM to inherit a head coach he didn’t hire. That’s not a recipe for success, especially when you throw in the upcoming quarterback decision.

The best decision for the franchise would be to part ways with Schoen and Daboll, hire a veteran executive with a strong resume as general manager, allow them to pick the head coach, and then go after their own quarterback of the future. A true clean slate.

But if Mara and Tisch are determined to show patience, then they need to be all the way in. Keep the current regime intact, allow them to draft a quarterback come April, and hope that it all works out and you don’t find yourself in this exact same situation a year from now.

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2025 NFL draft: Giants currently slated to select No. 2 overall

If the season were to end today (and we know it doesn’t), the New York Giants would select second overall in the 2025 NFL draft.

Following the New York Giants’ blowout loss at the hands of the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday, they inched closer to the conclusion of one of the worst seasons in franchise history.

The loss also moved them that much closer to the No. 1 overall pick in the 2025 NFL draft.

After Sunday’s NFL schedule and before the Monday Night Football two-game slate, the Giants had the best odds of landing the first overall pick by season’s end, which many suspect would be a quarterback.

However, after the Las Vegas Raiders’ loss to the Atlanta Falcons, the Giants are currently slated to pick second overall in the 2025 NFL draft, per Tanktathon.

The Raiders are the only other NFL team with just two wins after Week 15.

While questions remain about what the Giants will do with head coach Brian Daboll and general manager Joe Schoen, fans are keeping a close eye on the draft picks for the remainder of the season.

Just over a week ago, fans celebrated as Graham Gano’s attempt at a game-tying field goal against the New Orleans Saints was blocked.

The Giants are currently riding a nine-game losing streak and are in jeopardy of being the first team in NFL history to go 0-9 at home.

Both the Raiders and Giants have winnable games left on their schedules. The Raiders will play the three-win Jacksonville Jaguars in Week 16.

The Giants have three games left with their next game being on the road against the Falcons, who just barely beat the Raiders on Monday Night Football. However, the Giants still opened up as double-digit road underdogs.

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Plane protest architect wants to ’embarrass’ Giants owners

The second plane protest architect, who wasn’t responsible for the first, says his intent is to “embarrass” New York Giants ownership.

Before kickoff against the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday afternoon, the New York Giants watched as a plane flew over MetLife Stadium with a trailing banner for the second consecutive week.

This time, the message read “Mr. Mara enough. We won’t stop until you fire everyone.”

As it turns out, the architect was not the same fan who chartered a plane ahead of a Week 14 game against the New Orleans Saints, although he initially planned on doing it that day.

Instead, the anonymous fan pushed it back a week and changed his message to be in lockstep with the first fan, who also remains anonymous.

“I was made aware of the other group doing it, and thought it wouldn’t really help to do two planes in one week,” the second fan told NJ Advance Media on Sunday. “So I pivoted. I might as well piggyback off it with a new message to show the further frustration of the fans.”

The original message was intended to be “Fire Schoen and Daboll” but High Exposure Inc. rejected it because it targeted individuals. Ultimately, the fan opted to craft a message more similar to the Week 14 banner that read “Mr. Mara enough. (Please) fix this dumpster fire.”

The purpose, the fan said, is to embarrass ownership.

“The biggest thing that the Mara family prides itself on is pride in themselves,” he said. “And so, if you’re able to make it more embarrassing, it will further force them to take action.”

The fan describes themselves as “apathetic” at this point, which should concern co-owners John Mara and Steve Tisch more than anything else. It’s a sentiment shared by most of the fanbase.

“Pissed is the wrong word. I’m apathetic,” he said. “The product is so poor to where today we were losing so poorly that the only bright spot for the offense was the Ravens’ defensive penalties and Tim Boyle.

“And the worst part is that all evidence points to Schoen and Daboll doing a poor job. And somehow we have to have this conversation of, ‘Are they coming back?'”

Daboll and his players once again dismissed the fan protests after the game, but there’s no way this is escaping the attention of Mara and Tisch. Coupled with a half-empty stadium and loud cheers for the opposing teams, it has become a public relations nightmare for the Giants.

There is one more home game remaining — a Week 17 matchup against the Indianapolis Colts — and multiple anonymous fans have told Giants Wire they, too, are considering a banner protest.

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Giants should have plenty of money to spend this offseason

The New York Giants can get back into competitiveness with nearly $60 million in salary cap space available to them in 2025.

Better days are coming we’re always being told, but for New York Giants fans, it’s going to take a lot of bonafide proof for them to start believing in their team again.

That effort will begin in March when the league’s new year begins with free agency. Dan Duggan of The Athletic reports that the Giants should be in prime position to bolster their roster with some established young veterans.

If Joe Schoen gets a fourth year as Giants general manager, he’ll have plenty of money to spend on a roster in dire need of upgrades. And if Schoen gets fired, he’ll leave his replacement a much better cap situation than the one he inherited from Dave Gettleman in 2022.

The Giants are projected to have $57.3 million in cap space next year. That’s a highly fluid number at this point, but it’s the 14th-highest projection in the league, so they’re well-positioned to spend.

The Giants are actually set in many areas — linebacker, running back, safety, wide receiver, tight end, and yes, even the offensive line to some degree.

Naturally, they can augment and improve those groups through the draft and free agency — and they probably will — but they can surgically add a few big-ticket free agents to put them back on the right track.

If Schoen has another solid draft, the Giants just might turn this thing around for good. But…first things first.

Duggan points out immediately that the Giants do not have a quarterback under contract for next season. At least not at the moment. All three of their quarterbacks (Tommy DeVito, Drew Lock, and Tim Boyle) will see their current contracts expire after this season.

DeVito will not exactly be free to sign with any team, however. He will be an exclusive rights free agent (ERFA) by virtue of not having three accrued NFL seasons under this belt and the Giants will have first dibs on his services.

With the Giants looking at a possible top-3 pick in the draft, they could be in play for either Colorado’s Shadeur Sanders or Miami’s Cam Ward. That should answer the quarterback question, but if they don’t land either and are staring down at Colorado’s everyman, Travis Hunter, they might just take him and/or trade the pick outright and obtain a quarterback another way.

In free agency, Sam Darnold figures to be the top name, but he’ll be sought after by several teams. He might just steer clear of Northern New Jersey for obvious reasons.

Schoen will likely address the offensive line again. He hasn’t gotten it right yet and is determined to do so. He has the money and bandwidth to go down that road even with over $56 million committed to the group in 2025.

Cornerback is another unit Schoen will likely target. The Giants have been focusing on this the past two drafts and will probably continue to do so.

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Brandon Brown to participate in NFL’s front office & GM accelerator program

New York Giants assistant GM Brandon Brown will participate in the NFL’s front office and general manager accelerator program.

Should the New York Giants decide to clean house after this historically down season, they may not have to look far for their next general manager.

They have a very talented, young executive-in-waiting right under their roof in Long Island native Brandon Brown, their 35-year-old assistant general manager.

Brown, 35, has been general manager Joe Schoen’s assistant since 2022. He was hired away from the Philadelphia Eagles after five years in their front office under GM Howie Roseman.

Brown is considered one of the top up-and-coming names in the NFL front office carousel and the Giants have a choice to make with him soon or risk losing him.

They could lose Brown as early as next month. This week, he will be front and center at the Front Office and General Manager Accelerator Program at the league meeting in Irving, Texas.

Teams looking for 21st-century football minds will be paying close attention. Brown checks a heckuva lot of boxes. He’s learned both the right way and, unfortunately, the wrong way to run a pro football operation.

Brown had multiple rounds of interviews with the Los Angeles Chargers and Carolina Panthers last winter and was a serious candidate.

This winter, Brown will likely receive more interest among teams seeking to rebuild and modernize. If the Giants aren’t one of those teams, they will likely lose him.

If they do, they would be eligible to receive multiple compensatory third-round draft picks as compensation under NFL 2020 Resolution JC-2A which states:

The employer-club of a minority employee who has been hired by another club as its Head Coach or Primary Football Executive (General Manager) shall receive Draft choice compensation in the form of a compensatory Draft pick in the third round in each of the next two Drafts for an employee hired as either a Head Coach or Primary Football Executive, or for the next three Drafts if it has two employees hired for both positions.

Brown would naturally be hired as a GM and not as a coach, so the Giants would be in line to receive two third-round compensatory picks if he is hired away by another organization.

The next few weeks may be the determinant for Schoen, who has already made massive changes to the Giants’ personnel to no avail. With no quarterback of the future on the roster and much more work to be done, the Giants could seek to start over.

Could they push the reboot button with Brown as their head man?

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NFL insider expects Giants to retain Joe Schoen, Brian Daboll

One prominent NFL insider expects New York Giants owners John Mara and Steve Tisch to keep GM Joe Schoen and coach Brian Daboll in 2025.

The New York Giants are mired in one of their worst seasons ever and fans are beginning to show their frustrations in the form of protest.

Ahead of Sunday’s game against the New Orleans Saints, a fan-chartered plane circled MetLife Stadium with a banner that read, “Mr. Mara enough. (Please) fix this dumpster fire.”

Protests continued at kickoff with empty seats lining more than half of the stadium and tickets being sold for as little as $1 on the secondary market.

Then, to make sure the point was hammered home, fans cheered as the Saints blocked a Graham Gano field goal with seconds remaining, securing the Giants’ 11 loss of the season.

Out in the parking lot, a dumpster was literally set on fire.

Despite the circus the Giants have become, NFL insider Albert Breer believes co-owners John Mara and Steve Tisch will run things back, keeping both general manager Joe Schoen and head coach Brian Daboll in 2025.

The Giants got their high-end evaluators multiple live exposures to seven different college quarterbacks — Sanders, Miami’s Cam Ward, Georgia’s Carson Beck, Texas’s Quinn Ewers, Ole Miss’s Jaxson Dart, Alabama’s Jalen Milroe and LSU’s Garrett Nussmeier — headed into the week they went out to see Sanders in a practice setting. Over Thanksgiving weekend, they sent guys out again to get one last live look during the final full weekend of college games.

So what does this show? To me, it’s two things. First, the Giants were under no illusion that they should bank on Jones breaking through to another level — the way he did in 2022 — again, to justify picking up the $30.5 million on his contract for next season. Second, it makes it apparent that the plan has been, as John Mara has said, to stay the course with the current regime and give Schoen and Brian Daboll the chance to draft a quarterback.

Schoen and Daboll have had multiple drafts to land “their own” quarterback. They passed in the first two and failed to trade up for their target in 2024. They also chose to pass on other quarterback prospects such as Bo Nix (Denver Broncos).

Instead, they made the decision to hitch their wagon to Daniel Jones before misreading the Tyrod Taylor situation and settling for Drew Lock.

Their quarterback decisions have been suspect at best, but Breer still believes both will get a pass and return in 2025 and potentially beyond.

There’s also the fact that the Giants have, as I’ve mentioned a few times, pulled the plug quickly three times in the past decade, and the premise that Mara most certainly doesn’t want to do it again.

Which is to say, yeah, I still think Daboll and Schoen will be back next year, with some changes on the staff. But given where the Giants are right now, it’s probably best to wait before saying that with complete certainty.

The Giants have found new and humiliating ways to bottom out each week and it’s unlikely Daboll manages to buck that trend over the final month.

But it’s beginning to sound like Mara and Tisch are willing to endure the seemingly endless embarrassment because they no longer trust themselves following multiple regime failures dating back to the unnecessary parting of ways with Tom Coughlin following the 2015 season.

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For Giants, there’s little to look forward to over final five weeks

The New York Giants (2-10) have very little left to play for with one-third of the regular season remaining.

This season has seemed like an eternity for New York Giants fans. They’ve seen just about everything this year, both good and bad, but mostly bad.

The good part is that this season is two-thirds over. The bad part is there is one-third remaining.

At 2-10, the Giants are tied for the worst record in the NFL. Against Dallas on Thanksgiving, they scored a touchdown on their first offensive series for only the second time this season and the first time since September 15 in Washington.

It was also their first lead in a game since Week 5. It’s Week 13. Ouch.

Is there anything to look forward to? There is, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t warn you that rough roads lie ahead.

The Giants have five games remaining. All five opponents have a top running back: New Orleans (Alvin Kamara), Baltimore (Derrick Henry), Atlanta (Bijan Robinson), Indianapolis (Jonathan Taylor), and Philadelphia (guess who?).

The Giants have been ravaged on the ground the past eight weeks, allowing almost 160 yards per game. And now they will be without Pro Bowl nose tackle Dexter Lawrence (elbow), likely for the rest of the season, which will worsen things.

The Giants have just one interception on the year and have set an NFL record for consecutive games (11) without recording one. They led the league in sacks after eight weeks but have recorded just one over their last four games.

There is little to look forward to at quarterback as the team is deciding which backup-level player, Drew Lock or Tommy DeVito, is best suited to lead them the rest of the way. Neither is their quarterback of the future.

A huge silver lining to this season has been their six-man draft class, led by their top two selections — wide receiver Malik Nabers and safety Tyler Nubin.

Nabers has 75 catches, the highest total by a player in his first 10 career games in NFL history. Nubin is tied for the team lead in tackles (93) and has played on 99.7 percent of the defensive snaps this season.

Their other four picks — cornerback Andru Phillips, tight end Theo Johnson, running back Tyrone Tracy Jr., and linebacker/special teamer Darius Muasua — have also played well and flashed at times.

This class is one the team can build on which is why many polls show the fans want general manager Joe Schoen back.

Not as much can be said for head coach Brian Daboll, who took over the offensive play-calling duties this season only to have the team’s output decline.

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John Mara’s nightmare: Giants flounder as ex-players thrive

The New York Giants are in complete disarray while the team leaders they’ve let walk in recent years are dominating with their new clubs.

The New York Giants (2-9) are hard to watch these days. From top to bottom, they seem like a rudderless franchise with no known direction.

No one is happy right now and almost every decision the team makes seems to backfire on them in an almost comical fashion.

The Saquon Barkley situation is just one of the personnel decisions that have come back to haunt the team. After the Giants were flattened by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at home on Sunday, Barkley had a record-setting game on national television on Sunday night, leading the Philadelphia Eagles to a convincing 37-20 road win over the Los Angeles Rams.

Barkley racked up 302 yards of offense on Sunday, 57 more than the entire Giants offense could muster against Tampa’s 30th-ranked defense.

It was the latest dagger to the heart of Giants co-owner John Mara, who lobbied general manager Joe Schoen to try to find a way to keep Barkley in the fold.

Instead, the Giants let Barkley test the free-agent waters. He signed with the Eagles on the first day of free agency.

Ever since then, Barkley has played at an All-Pro level, leading the NFL in rushing, and could be on his way to not only another 2,000-total-yard season but a possible Super Bowl appearance as well.

The reality is, Barkley isn’t really missed that much by the Giants. They have proven that they can run the ball without him and have a glut of young offensive talent on their roster.  They just don’t know how to use them.

Barkley was adroitly signed by the Eagles as the last piece to their puzzle. With the Giants, Barkley would have been the first piece of the puzzle. Big difference. Schoen is trying to build from the inside out, not the other way around.

Schoen was right to pass on McKinney, who was signed to a four-year, $67 million deal by the Green Bay Packers. Many believed that was way too rich for a player who almost blew up his career with a foolish off-field injury several years ago.

The fact that McKinney leads the NFL in interceptions (7) while the Giants have just one as a team this season is irrelevant. The Giants replaced McKinney in the second round of the draft this year with Tyler Nubin.

As for Leonard Williams and Julian Love, I would say I was disappointed they let Love walk. He was a versatile and productive player that they probably should have kept.

Williams was also a productive player but the Giants paid a king’s ransom to both get — and keep — him. They had to shed themselves of his contract.

So, Schoen, in an effort to undo all of the damage his predecessor Dave Gettleman did, is getting pounded for doing what the fans hoped he would do.

It’s just not working out for him right now, that’s all. And the optics are quite poor, especially if Barkley and McKinney end up wining the Offensive and Defensive Player of the Year Awars.

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Malik Nabers bluntly said the Giants’ miserable losses aren’t because of their quarterbacks

If Malik Nabers thinks the Giants QBs aren’t their problem, then who is? Oh. Right.

Amid another lost season for the New York Giants, they can’t escape any drama.

Instead of simply releasing ex-maligned starting quarterback Daniel Jones, they benched him for Tommy DeVito and forced him to play scout team safety. The Giants are almost certainly preparing to draft a new quarterback this coming April, so they want the deck cleared.

But stud rookie receiver Malik Nabers seemingly has a stark warning about that thought process. After the Giants took a 30-7 loss on the chin from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Nabers said he doesn’t think the reason the 2-9 Giants keep losing is because of their quarterback play — even though Jones and DeVito are both awful in their own unique ways.

Oh? Then who could it be? Oh, right. Nabers didn’t elaborate upon who the Giants’ real issue was after bringing this to light, but he almost certainly knew what he was doing by making this statement in public:

If Nabers is implying what I think he’s implying, then the Giants’ main problem is the duo between general manager Joe Schoen and head coach Brian Daboll.

Schoen has very few draft and free-agent hits in three years on the job in New York. He’s also the GM who gave Jones a contract extension after a fluky playoff campaign in 2022 and who built the offensive line that let DeVito get sacked four times against an underwhelming Tampa Bay defense on Sunday.

Meanwhile, Daboll had a respected reputation as a quarterback whisperer after helping Josh Allen on the Buffalo Bills. But he’s also three years into the job, and the Giants have no identity in any phase. Oh, and Daboll probably ran off one of the NFL’s best defensive coordinators over a personality squabble.

At this rate, the Giants might need a full reset. They should consider firing both Schoen and Daboll in the offseason. That’s because their underwhelming body of work does not merit getting a fourth year together.

If Nabers won’t say it, I’ll say it for him.