Giants Are Trusting Their Process, and Leaving the NFL Guessing

GM Joe Schoen and coach Brian Daboll are reimagining a previously insular franchise, and hoping that a whole lot of patience will soon pay off in a very big way.

It might seem like a million years ago to the rest of us.

But for Joe Schoen, seeing his boss, Buffalo Bills GM Brandon Beane, return to the draft room on that Thursday night in April 2018 is burned into his memory, and feels like it was yesterday.

“Trust me, we took a quarterback in Buffalo that nobody wanted,” the now New York Giants’ GM says. “Brandon came up for the press conference and was like, ‘Gosh, dang, you would’ve thought somebody’s dog died down there.’ ”

Schoen still has the Buffalo News from the next day, in which venerable columnist Jerry Sullivan declared that Beane, Sean McDermott and Co. had picked “The Wrong Josh.”

Six years later, the 22-year-old tagged with that moniker is among the NFL’s best quarterbacks. He’s also playing on a $258 million contract and has carried the Bills to four consecutive AFC East crowns. As for “The Right Josh”? That was Josh Rosen, who went three picks later to the Arizona Cardinals, lasted a year in Arizona, bounced through seven franchises, and last was in the NFL on the Minnesota Vikings’ practice squad in 2022.

Schoen keeps that newspaper as a reminder, and not because he, Beane or McDermott, or the coach he took with him to New York, Brian Daboll, have it all figured out. For him, it’s more of a reminder to trust your eyes, your ears, your research, your experience, and your gut. It was those things that led that Bills group to a franchise-changing player who, at the time, was ridiculed by scores of would-be personnel gurus on TV, radio and social media.

“Go with your gut—you’ve been doing it for 23 years. You do all the work. You do the homework. You’ve been through this before. You’re prepared for it. You have a good staff. Do what we know is right. Don’t worry about the outside noise,” Schoen continued. “I’ve known it since I was a first-year scout. I was scouting Calvin Pace. He was a Wake Forest defensive end, and I was a combine scout. You got graded where you put the guy for the league. I wasn’t grading for the Panthers. I was grading for the league.

“I remember my boss said, ‘you think he’s a first-round pick? I don’t see him as a first-round pick.’ So I moved him to the second round. Arizona took him in the first. I was wrong on somebody else’s opinion. I was right with my own. I said, ‘it will never happen to me again.’”

All of these years later, Schoen’s now the one with his finger on the trigger, and for a franchise where the noise around the team always threatens to become a factor. 

That’s just the reality of being in New York. And in reimagining a previously insular Giants franchise that got stuck being run a little much like a family business over the decade prior to their arrival, both Schoen and Daboll have had to lean on their own resolve—like they once had in Buffalo—in a plan that they always knew would take time. The hope now is that a whole lot of patience will soon pay off in a very big way.

We’re back again, at Sports Illustrated, and I want to thank everyone for sticking with us through this transition. We have some awesome content leading up to the NFL draft in just over two-and-a-half weeks starting with what we have this week …

• A look at what’s unique about how football folks see Washington QB Michael Penix Jr., and what it says about his evaluation as a prospect.

• Why J.J. McCarthy was the quarterback who gained the most on his pro day.

• How the Bills traded receiver Stefon Diggs, and why now was the time to do it.

But we’re starting with the Giants, and it is for a particular reason.

Jones was under constant pressure during the 2023 NFL season before tearing his ACL.

Rob Schumacher/The Republic / USA TODAY

I wanted to catch up with Schoen and do a story with him from the owners meetings in Orlando for a pretty specific reason.

Last week, I dug into the Cardinals with the idea that Arizona is setting up as the draft’s first pivot point, holding the fourth pick. And the more I kept digging into it, the more it became clear to me that the Giants are not only the next one, they’re also driving some demand for the picks above them.

Schoen, of course, isn’t saying whether he’s planning to take a quarterback on April 25—which makes this a little different than 2018, when everyone knew the Bills were going to select one. But New York is doing everything a team would if it were going to select one. Drake Maye and J.J. McCarthy came to East Rutherford for pre-draft “30” visits right after the combine. All the QB pro days were well-staffed by New York. A crew of eight Giants officials, including Schoen and Daboll, met privately with Michael Penix Jr. in Seattle on March 29.

There have also been and will be private workouts with the quarterbacks, there’s still room for additional “30” visits and, with the sixth pick, all of this work has positioned the Giants as a team that other teams might have to leapfrog to take one of the top four QBs. It’s logical, too, that they could take one, with Daniel Jones’s uneven, injury-marred 2023 leading into the last year of guaranteed money on the four-year, $160 million deal he signed last year.

So maybe the Giants take one. Or maybe this is all smoke to get someone such as Minnesota or the Las Vegas Raiders or the Denver Broncos to jump them, so another player—maybe Marvin Harrison Jr. or Malik Nabers—falls into their laps at No. 6. Obviously, it’s to Schoen’s advantage that we can’t say which. As such, he has no problem playing coy on his true intentions with his first-round pick.

“We don’t wanna be up here again—we don’t want to be picking in the top 10,” he says. “We have multiple needs. We are going into Year 3. People assume we’re going quarterback, but we have other needs. If the quarterbacks go 1–4, then we’re getting the second-best position player, not quarterback, at six, which is O.K., too. That player will really help us. Even last year, our quarterback coach was at the C.J. Stroud workout. We spent a lot of time with Will Levis, Anthony Richardson.

“We still spend time with those guys … [and] it’s not just for right now, but when they become free agents. Brian Burns, we spent a lot of time with him in the draft process, so you feel comfortable making a trade for a guy. Drew Lock, too. Sam Darnold, we spent a ton of time with because that was the Josh draft.”

Schoen being coy about his strategy isn’t the only reason for the Giants to turn over every rock on prospects for the sixth pick—and the team is doing just that.

But that the team has, to borrow a coaching term, its whole playbook open on this one, and doesn’t have to press hard on a need, is a good sign for the foundation being laid, as Schoen and Daboll sort through their third offseason in New York. When the season starts, they’ll be the first GM-coach tandem to make it into a third year together since Tom Coughlin and Jerry Reese won two championships in five years. And it has, to be sure, taken some time to clean up the mess of rosters patched together through years of instability.

That’s why the aforementioned patience Schoen and Daboll had to show through the ups of Year 1 and downs of Year 2 wasn’t just a preference—it was a necessity.

The Giants traded for Burns, and then signed him to a massive contract extension.

Jim Dedmon-USA TODAY Sports

The great Giants teams of Coughlin and Reese, or of Bill Parcells and George Young, shared something most teams have that win at the highest level: strength at the line of scrimmage.

And losing the hard-edged identity that the Giants have always looked to forge was one (very big) reason for the franchise losing its way in the post-Coughlin years. The seemingly endless pipeline of great pass rushers ran dry. The offensive line became a legit weakness. Which is why it was always going to take multiple drafts to fix everything.

That, of course, didn’t mean they couldn’t bring hope for the time being—and for a year, it happened, with the Giants grinding out a 9-7-1 season in 2022 and a first-round win over a 13-win Minnesota team in the playoffs. The key, from there, was not letting the burst out of the gate that Daboll, Schoen and their staffs helped fuel intoxicate anyone into thinking the build was closer to completion than they’d figured it would be going into Year 2.

"It’s always hard because you’re coming off a successful season and some guys did a really good job, coaching staff did a good job,” Schoen says. “We coached well. We played well. The ‘compete today and build for tomorrow’ thing, I always think that’s important. … You’re never going to regret that. The fan base deserves that.”

Which is why it required discipline not to double down on the success of 2022.

That discipline was apparent in what they took out of the year, uncovering some real building blocks from the past regimes. Left tackle Andrew Thomas played like the kind of guy you could construct an entire offensive line around, defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence broke through as a dominant inside force, and both were rewarded accordingly. Jones and Saquon Barkley got theirs, too—and while the handling of those two looks a little less shrewd now, their pay raises did set a precedent: Do the right thing, and it’ll be reflected in your check.

“To me, it’s looking at those guys—I’m appreciative of what they’ve done for us the first two years,” Schoen says. “They’re going to be the future onboarders, and leaders for the rookie class that comes in and the foundation that we’ve already set. To me, looking at those leaders of the team that are also really good players, they’re some of our highest-paid players, and they’re very good role models for the young players. I would say as we build our culture that those guys are foundational pieces for how we want to build this thing. …

“I thought it was important to send that message—you come in, you do the right things, your culture builders, we’re going to reward you.”

Before their first year, Schoen and Daboll drafted Evan Neal to bookend Thomas at tackle, and Kayvon Thibodeaux to fill a gaping hole as an edge rusher. Then, at the beginning of this offseason, the Giants pushed a deal with the Panthers over the goal line to acquire Burns, who landed a five-year extension as part of the transaction.

“You’re facing a Micah Parsons, we played San Francisco last year on a short week and you’re facing that d-line; those are real problems,” Schoen continued. “You got to face those guys. The ability to get after the quarterback and protect the quarterback is where it all starts. To get those premium positions, you have to be picking high or pay a premium to go get them as you’re building it. We gave up some assets to go get [Burns], and obviously had to pay him.

“It’s important for Daniel, too, the injuries we had; it was almost embarrassing the way we played on the offensive line. You can’t run a play. You really can’t get a true feel for Daniel when he’s on his back every play. There’s definitely a concerted effort to upgrade both fronts."

In adding Thomas, Neal, Thibodeaux, Lawrence and Burns, and while the younger guys still have a little ways to go, you have five 26-or-younger guys  under team control for at least the next three years.

And the Giants are still a month away from spending the sixth pick on … something.

Where 2022 worked to build the culture, ’23 became a year to reveal it for Schoen and Daboll—because all the good fortune that shined on them in Year 1 came right back around.

“We had a lot of confidence in our roster going into the season,” Schoen says. “The opening drive of the season, we go right down the field on Dallas, 10, 11 plays. We get a false start, errand snap, blocked field goal for a touchdown. Three plays later, ball goes off Saquon’s hands, pick six. On that blocked field goal, Andrew Thomas has his hamstring. When Daniel, [Darren] Waller, Thomas, Saquon, four of your key players on offense going into the season play less than 60 snaps together the entire season … it’s just hard to overcome.”

In the end, the Giants didn’t, finishing 6–11, which put New York in the spot it’s in now. But there was also the three-game winning streak after starting 2–8. They took the playoff-bound Los Angeles Rams to the wire in Week 17, hung with the Philadelphia Eagles on Christmas Day, then handled Philly in the finale, with their division rivals pulling starters in the second half, and New York pulling away as a result.

Which, in a weird way, proved some of what showed the year prior to be real.

“Daboll was able to keep the team together, the core leaders did a good job, coaching staff did a good job,” Schoen says. “Again, some people are like, Man, you wish you would have lost some games for a higher pick? No. You’re still building the culture.”

And now, with that culture in place, the Giants are approaching a seminal point in that building process, hitting a crossroads ahead at the most important position on the field.

In signing Jones to the deal they did last March, the Giants positioned themselves to draft one this year, if the right opportunity arises, and try to supercharge things the way taking Allen did in Buffalo for these guys six years ago. On the flip side, they could double down around Jones, and give the 26-year-old, coming off a torn ACL, another year with Harrison or Nabers as an anchor for their skill-position group.

Which, at the very least, provides Schoen options, and allows for he and Daboll to base their decision-making on just how special they think the quarterback that’s there for them at six is.