Giants GM Joe Schoen "Dependable" Says Former Boss
For nearly 25 minutes, Bills general manager Brandon Beane gushed about Joe Schoen, once a ticket department intern whom Beane discovered years ago during their time with Carolina.
In Schoen, who on Friday the Giants hired to be the franchise's fifth full-time general manager since 1979, Beane said the team is getting much more than his old golfing buddy.
“Joe is a very intelligent person. He's a great listener. You know, he's not gonna walk into those offices and act like he's got all the answers, whether he is talking to scouts, whether he is talking to the PR department, the training room,” Beane said via video conference.
What the Giants are also getting in the 42-year-old Schoen is someone who isn't afraid to roll up his sleeves and make sure no stone is left unturned or that shortcuts are taken.
That's precisely the type of leader the Giants, currently stuck in nearly a decade-long stretch of lousy football, are in desperate need of helping to lead the organization out of the dark days of Giants football.
“He's never gonna let you down,” Beane said of Schoen, his former right-hand man. “You can't be in this job (general manager) and be everywhere. He was another set of eyes and ears, and I just knew it was gonna be done the right way, that I didn't have to go back behind him.”
The Giants are hoping that Schoen, who learned much of what he knows through Beane, can replicate the success the Bills have had since 2017 when they came in and made sweeping changes to the organization that resulted in the Bills reaching the playoffs four times in the last five years, the last two as the AFC East champions.
One of the first things Schoen will look to do is get the right head coach in place, a process that has already started with his interviewing Bills offensive coordinator Brian Daboll.
Beane believes that the collaborative example he and Bills head coach Sean McDermott set for every major decision involving the franchise is one that Schoen will deploy when he finds his new head coach.
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“Joe will have to ultimately make some decisions, whether it's a draft pick or that final decision on paying a player on their team or a free agent, but he's gonna value everyone's input," said Beane.
"But he appreciates when people put the work in and hearing their voices. He'll be very collaborative through the whole draft process and very inclusive, and I think they'll follow along right away once he lays out the vision.”
That also goes for the personnel department and support staff, of which Schoen is expected to have full oversight over, including the right to change things up how he sees fit.
Beane recalled how when the two of them first arrived in Buffalo, they sat in front of a board trying to figure out how to build their new personnel department.
“We started with our college scouts, and we drew a map. What Joe drew looks like a cow,” Beane said with a chuckle. “I laughed at it. I said, 'Hey if we make this right, we'll laugh this one day.'"
Although Schoen has had exposure to a little bit of everything as Beane's assistant, the Bills general manager pointed to Schoen's personality makeup as a reason to think he was ready to become his own man.
"Joe is a very intelligent person. He's a great listener," Beane said. "He's not gonna walk into those offices and act like he's got all the answers.
"I let Joe be involved in everything, and if he wasn't in a meeting--and he was in many of them--I shared with him the reasoning behind things so he could understand."
What Schoen has taken away from those experiences is that it comes down to dealing with people the right way.
"Joe has dealt with agents. He's recruited players here, and he understands all that stuff. He's got great relationships with other GMs, assistant GMs, personnel directors, coaches around the league," Beane said. "Those are all the reasons I think he's gonna be very successful when he gets himself planted there in New York."
Beane isn’t as familiar with the challenges that await Schoen with the Giants, but one area that he pointed out parallel to what he and Schoen had to address when they arrived in Buffalo was the salary cap.
“Our salary cap wasn’t in a very healthy situation when we got here. And I know it looks like that's the case for the Giants,” Beane said.
“I haven't studied the roster, where they're at. They didn't just draft a quarterback. It was kind of a different point for us from that standpoint. But Joe was involved in many of the meetings that we had about how we were going to fix this cap. So he'll do a really good job."
And if there is one other trait that Schoen can hang his hat on, Beane said it's his work ethic and commitment to doing his job the right way.
"Joe is a worker," he said. "The New York Giants will never have to worry that Joe didn't invest the right time in evaluating a player."
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