SI.com Reveals Its Opinion of Giants' 2023 Schedule

The Giants 2023 schedule is a tough looking one, but it will tell us a lot about how far this team has come in Year 2 of the Joe Schoen-Brian Daboll era.

We’ve known who the New York Giants would play in 2023 for months, but it wasn’t until last week that we knew the order in which those opponents would show up. Now that we do, add SI.com’s Conor Orr to the growing list of people who feel the league’s schedule makers did the Giants a disservice with how they set up the schedule.

Orr labeled the Giants’ 2023 schedule as “borderline criminal” and blasted the league for “forcing” the team to play seven of its first ten games on the road.

While the entire theme of this year’s ordering of games was “naked money grab,” forcing one of the NFL’s stalwart franchises—a team coming off a playoff berth with the reigning Coach of the Year on the sideline—to go on the road for seven of the first 10 games is ridiculous. New York is also tied for the most short-rest games out of any team in the NFL, with four according to ESPN analytics, which also noted that the Giants are tied for the most short-rest road games out of any team. I don’t count a single two-game stretch where I’d deem both games obviously winnable, and they are tied for fourth-toughest in strength of schedule.

While I can predict that coaches like Brian Daboll and DC Wink Martindale, who have been through the wringer, can use this as a collective battle cry, this is the kind of legitimate screw-job that alters the course of a promising season. Closing the year with the Eagles twice in three weeks, including once on Christmas, is a middle finger at best. What on Earth did the Giants do to deserve this?

Pat’s Perspective: Anyone who has followed me or read my work knows I am not a fan of late games and short work weeks. I am also not a big fan of working on holidays since I rarely get a day off during the season as it is. But all these things are unavoidable and out of my control, just as they are out of the Giants’ control.

And as I see it, you either pick up your ball and go home, or you go out there and show people what you're made of. Knowing what I know about Brian Daboll, his staff, and the players, they're going to embrace the punch thrown at them and look to bounce up, snarling, “Is that the best you got?”

Last year, critics snickered at the Giants for finishing with a 9-7-1 record against what was largely considered a soft schedule (in the most useless of useless stats out there, the Giants had the third easiest schedule in 2022 based on their opponents' combined winning percentage).

But what happened when push came to shove, and the Giants had to face teams better than them? Right, there were a few blowout losses, including the one that still stings the most to this day: the divisional loss to the Eagles.

While many argued that the Giants were in a "full rebuild" mode last year, that wasn’t the case. Why? Because general manager Joe Schoen recognized that he had a solid core—quarterback Daniel Jones, running back Saquon Barkley, left tackle Andrew Thomas, edge Azeez Ojulari, cornerback Aaron Robinson, safety Xavier McKinney, and defensive linemen Dexter Lawrence and Leonard Williams—to build around.

While Schoen went to town via the draft by adding edge Kayvon Thibodeaux, tackle Evan Neal, safety Dane Belton, tight end Daniel Bellinger, and cornerback Cor’Dale Flott, to name a few, he was forced, due to a bad salary cap situation, to put mostly temporary fixes in at other key positions—defensive line depth, center, cornerback, and linebacker all come to mind—until his financial resources improved to where he could afford longer-term solutions.

That strategy, combined with the exceptional coaching job done by Daboll and his staff, are big reasons why the Giants overcame the adversity of a lousy salary cap situation and managed to shock the world with a 9-7-1 playoff-bound season.

And now? Many will argue that this Giants team is in Year 2 of a “rebuild,” as if that’s an excuse to forgive the Giants if they regress. So yes, the schedule stinks from top to bottom. But there’s only one way to address the situation, and complaining ain’t it. 

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