What Would Success Look Like for Giants in 2025?

Winning games is the ultimate goal, but some other factors could influence whether Giants GM Joe Schoen and head coach Brian Daboll return beyond

New York Giants general manager Joe Schoen, co-owner and team president John Mara, and head coach Brian Daboll. / Art Stapleton/NorthJersey.com / USA TODAY NETWORK

The 2025 New York Giants roster still needs to be rounded into shape, not only in terms of new faces but also new roles and wrinkles, which the coaching staff has been working on.

Of course, all of that will determine how successful the Giants will be in the coming year, but beyond that, what else must the Giants do if team ownership is to stick with general manager Joe Schoen and head coach Brian Daboll?

The obvious answer would be way more wins than the three the team mustered up last season–ideally a better-than-.500 record, which in a 17-game regular-season schedule would translate to nine wins at minimum.

But there are some other metrics that the Giants can aim for that would show improvement in areas where they have struggled late.

Win in the Division 

No one is mistaking the Giants as a potential Super Bowl contender right now, but a Wild Card berth is a realistic goal. 

If that’s to occur, the Giants must start taking better care of business within their division. 

During the current regime, the Giants have never had a better than .500 record in division play, going 1-4 in 2022 (the year they made it to the postseason as a Wild Card team), 3-3 in 2023 (a six-win season), and 0-6 last year.  

The hope is that the personnel moves made in the offseason will close the gaps between the Giants and each of their opponents. 

Winning division games consistently will not only help with a Wild Card berth, but ultimately, when the Giants are at a point when they can challenge for the division title, taking care of business inside the division will, of course, be the fastest way to accomplish that goal, especially if tiebreakers come into play.

Reduce Blow-out Losses

There’s nothing worse than watching a game in which the Giants have their doors blown off. Unfortunately, that happened a little too frequently in the Schoen-Daboll era.

In 51 games played, the Giants have been blown out 16 times (note: for this analysis's sake, a blow-out is defined as losing by two or more scores). 

We haven't even discussed the other losses, including those games in which the Giants scored garbage-time points to make a loss seem a lot less painful. 

Presumably, the talent level this year should be much better to keep the Giants in the games through the fourth quarter. But there’s more than just talent–coaching also has to play a part here, as in some of those past blow-out losses, a valid argument could be made that the Giants were out-coached in some of them.

Win More Convincingly

At the end of the day, a win is a win, whether it’s by one point or 100 points. But how nice would it be to see the Giants start being on the right side of blow-out games more often?

In the three years of Daboll’s era, only five wins have been by two or more scores.  Building a comfortable lead offers a team much more flexibility in how the game's flow progresses. 

In other words, how nice would it be if the Giants could build a two-score or more lead and then lean on their running game to chew up the clock and wear down the opposing defense even further, versus having to lean more heavily on the passing game, which in turn makes them more one-dimensional.

Score

The Giants made an interesting decision this offseason: They’ve brought back almost all of the starting offense from last year, except for the quarterback. That move screams loud and clear that the Giants believe their poor offensive production has rested solely on the quarterback position.

Let’s hope they’re correct. Most playoff-bound teams have averaged 25 points per game on offense for the last three seasons. 

In their rare wins, the Giants have shown that they’re capable of reaching that neighborhood, scoring an average of 24.6 points per game in their wins over the last three seasons.

However, as noted above regarding blow-out losses, the Giants have averaged just 13.6 points per game, which is a big reason why their season is usually over by the end of October. 

Quarterback issues aside, execution and play calling have all been factors. The execution, in particular, has been a problem. The Giants have hurt themselves countless times with penalties that stall scoring drives or mistakes such as dropped passes. 

Last year, the Giants had 112 penalties against them, putting them 15th in the league (an average of 4.326 penalties per every 100 plays). But of those 112 penalties, 56 were pre-snap, which ranked third in the league, and 26 of those pre-snap flags were for false starts, the most frequently called penalty against the Giants in 2024. 

The Giants haven’t been good enough to overcome self-inflicted wounds, so if this team wants to show progress, it needs better discipline.  

Better Deployment of Players

A coaching staff with its weight in gold will be able to adapt systems to fit what their talent does best.

The Giants have mostly done this, but there have been some glaring issues with specific players who were either playing out of position or did not seem to fit the coaches' plans.

On offense, for example, the team spent most of the last two years working offensive lineman Joshua Ezeudu at left tackle despite his skillset being a better fit for guard. 

Perhaps this was done out of desperation once injuries started hitting the offensive line, but after the experiment didn’t pan out in 2023, why they thought it would work in 2024 is a mystery.

On defense, the two examples that come to mind include inside linebacker Bobby Okereke and former safety Jason Pinnock. 

Each performed well in 2023 but saw a drop-off in 2024 when Shane Bowen brought over a new and completely different defensive system than what had allowed Okereke and Pinnock to succeed in the previous year.  

The good news is that the Giants don’t seem to be doubling down on mistakes. They brought in veterans with experience at tackle to fill in for Andrew Thomas if needed.

The team is also finally moving Evan Neal from tackle to guard. And it will also be interesting to see if tweaks are made to get more out of cornerback Deonte Banks and linebacker Bobby Okereke, both of whom struggled in their first season in Bowen’s defense. 

Final Thoughts

There has been some debate about whether anything short of a postseason berth will “save” general manager Joe Schoen and head coach Brian Daboll.

While it’s certain that ownership would take that in a heartbeat, the main thing that will “save” Schoen and Daboll is if the team looks better by Week 18 than it did in Week 1. 

Does that translate to more wins? Yes. Does that mean the roster needs to keep fighting through adversity? Yes. Does it mean more disciplined play? Yes. 

It also means developing the players of whom all but Dexter Lawrence II, Thomas, and Darius Slayton were brought in under this current leadership regime. There will be bumps along the way–every team has them. 

But at the end of the day, so long as those rough patches don’t cause an avalanche, there’s no reason right now to think that Schoen and Daboll won’t continue to lead this team’s return to relevancy beyond this season.

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