New York Giants' Brass Acknowledges Reality of State of Franchise

The New York Giants' brass has taken a realistic view of the current state of the franchise.

Author:
Patricia Traina
Publish date:
Jul 28, 2022 7:00 AM EDT

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The whole reason why NFL players put their bodies through a rigorous--and dangerous--routine of crashing into each other and why coaches and personnel staffs end up seeing more of each other than their own families is because of one thing: A chance to hoist the Lombardi trophy at the end of the season.

For the New York Giants’ new leadership brass of general manager Joe Schoen and head coach Brian Daboll, their expectations are pretty much rooted in reality, given the Swiss cheese roster they inherited and the awful salary cap situation hamstrung them.

In other words, they likely realize that this franchise is at least a year away, if not more, from being a legitimate playoff contender.

That’s a big reason why Daboll and Schoen, when they look at the work they’ve done so far and what still needs to be done, are tempering their expectations of what this roster could become this year.

“I learned a long time ago, you have to take care of today,” Daboll said. “Being in the league for 20 plus years, there are teams that people thought were going to go all the way and didn’t make the playoffs. And there are teams that people thought they weren’t going to.”

Don’t take Daboll’s words as him being flippant to the ultimate goal of adding a fifth Lombardi to the team’s legacy. Instead, look at it as Daboll’s grip on reality as to what the state of the Giants is: a team that has not had a winning record since 2016 and has been so bad that it’s recorded double-digit losses five years in a row.

But there is a glimmer of optimism inside of 1925 Giants Drive that Schoen and Daboll have a plan as to what they want this Giants team to look like and what they need to do to get there.

“We talked about this during the draft, and we talk about it now,” Daboll said when asked about the desired identity he's looking for.

“We’re looking for smart, tough, dependable people in our organization. People that make good decisions on and off the field in terms of intelligence. Doing what they’re supposed to do when they’re supposed to do it all the time. And then have some mental toughness, some resiliency about them.”

And what kind of progress have they made in reaching that identity so far?

“That’s a good question,” Schoen said. “I would say revamped roster just looking at some of the players we’ve brought in and some of the guys we’ve had to move on from for various reasons.”

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Reshaping the roster has only been the beginning of the process. Like the rest of the league, the Giants are 0-0. The Giants are also in a honeymoon stage after having one of their most drama-free springs in recent memory. They’ve been riding the wave of positivity generated by their new dynamic duo of Schoen and Daboll.

But there is much more work to be done on the roster, just as there is much more for Schoen and Daboll to learn about each other and the team--how it will respond to the adversity that seems to strike every team at some point every season, and how it will handle success.

“Every year, the team is different, and they have a different identity and a different attitude,” Schoen said. “And those are all the things that we look forward to evaluating and find out what we’re going to be about over the next month.”

They’ll do so by taking baby steps rather than trying to run before they crawl.

“What we try to focus on is getting better each day,” Daboll said. “Focusing on the things that we can do, and we control, which is going out there, having good meetings, having a good practice, trying to string good days together.”