Joe Schoen hit the ground running as the Giants’ GM. He had to.
This ownership is impatient and fickle. This franchise has been rudderless in the GM seat for four years. Schoen inherits a roster, salary cap and staff that require lots of change to get on track again.
So he deboarded his plane from the middle seat of the last row on a commercial flight to interview here. And now he’s in charge of the whole operation.
Here’s a look at what he’s been doing, and what he will be doing, to try to fix it all. The first 100 days in office, so to speak.
Schoen’s first order of business was to hire head coach Brian Daboll. His second staffing changes were on the personnel side: he demoted Kevin Abrams, hired new assistant GM Brandon Brown from the Eagles, and let co-director of player personnel Mark Koncz go.
That left familiar names atop the personnel department: Chris Mara as senior VP of player personnel, Tim McDonnell as director of player personnel title, and Chris Pettit as director of scouting entering April’s NFL Draft. Schoen also helped Daboll build a coaching staff.
The GM said he didn’t want to change much else in scouting right away with a draft coming.
“I could make changes if I wanted to,” Schoen said the day he arrived. “But really right now… you’re not gonna be able to get multiple people from other organizations. We have people on the staff here with experience that I’m gonna lean on, they’ve got reports in, they got a board up.”
But Schoen did spend the last two weeks watching film of draft prospects as a group with his scouting staff coming off the Senior Bowl. The idea was to encourage accountability, professionally develop his scouts, and evaluate the employees he didn’t know yet.
So more changes are possible in scouting after the draft.
“We’re gonna sit in there for two weeks and watch film as a group, and I’ll continue to evaluate the staff from there,” the GM said.
The public’s focus will shift next week to the NFL Combine in Indianapolis, but internally, Schoen’s next major job is to make painful decisions about the roster he inherited.
“We’re gonna have to make some very difficult decisions, or I should say they’re gonna have to make some very difficult decisions on getting us under the cap and putting us in a position where we’re gonna be in a healthy cap situation,” co-owner John Mara said in January.
Schoen told NBC’s Peter King that he has to clear $40 million of cap space from the Giants’ mismanaged roster. That’s on top of player cuts or trades he might make for other reasons. So the Daily News will be profiling some of the difficult player decisions Schoen has to consider in the coming days.
Punter Riley Dixon ($2.8 million in savings) seems like the most obvious cut. Keep an eye on safety Logan Ryan, too. I don’t believe the Giants should cut or trade Ryan, a leader and their best tackler in 2021. But they could save $3.75 million in salary.
Tight ends Kyle Rudolph ($5 million) and Kaden Smith ($2.5 million, injured, still rehabbing) presumably will be under consideration. Wideouts Sterling Shepard ($4.5 million) and Darius Slayton ($2.5 million) should be under scrutiny, too.
But Schoen also could dabble in the trade market with talents like Saquon Barkley ($7.2 million) and Kadarius Toney as bait. The latter wouldn’t be a cost-saving move; it would be a locker room-shaping one. Players’ work ethics need to matter here.
“We’re going to evaluate them not only on the field but off the field,” Schoen said of the Giants’ current players. “There’s going to be difficult decisions that we may have to make. … What are the [coaches] looking at scheme-wise? What do we want the players to do? And then [we will] make those decisions accordingly.”
The Giants would save the most money by cutting corner James Bradberry ($12 million) and linebacker Blake Martinez ($8.5 million), but they are two of their best players — although there are some skilled corners in this draft class.
The contracts of Kenny Golladay and Adoree Jackson appear to make their releases prohibitive. Bradberry is a more valuable player than Jackson. Schoen will be reviewing everything, though. Wherever he can make this team better, he says he will.
Schoen has spoken a lot about marrying talent with value in free agency and the draft. That means spending smartly on the open market where the Giants “don’t have a lot of resources,” in Schoen’s words. It also means not overdrafting and possibly trading back with one of their two first round picks at Nos. 5 and 7, respectively. They have nine total selections.
“The goal is to make progress,” Schoen said in January. “We need to draft well. We need to sign well. We need to assign appropriate value to free agency if we are gonna enter that market, because if some of your highest paid players aren’t performing to their ability or your highest draft picks aren’t performing to their ability, you’re gonna have some issues.”
The Giants have obvious needs at offensive line, edge rusher and corner. Keep an eye on all three positions come draft time: Mississippi State’s Charles Cross, Oregon’s Kayvon Thibodeaux and Cincinnati’s Ahmad Gardner are a name at each position to watch.
Fixing the O-line to protect Daniel Jones is critical, though. Schoen knows that.
“Yeah, I mean, you’ve got to get better players. That’s the best way to fix it,” Schoen said of the line. “We gotta look wherever we can. Whether it’s free agency … whether it’s [Veteran Salary Benefit] deals, finding guys in the draft… developing players. We’re gonna have to find a way. That’s what we’re here for. We’re gonna have to find solutions.”
The Giants have been one of the NFL’s most injured teams annually for a long time. They were the NFL’s most injured team for three straight seasons, ranked 32nd from 2013-15 in Football Outsiders’ Adjusted Games Lost metric. They have alternated between healthy (eighth best in 2016 and 2018), average (16th in 2019, 23rd in 2020), and injured (25th in 2017, near bottom in 2021) since. Schoen has to push past the finger-pointing and identify the real issues behind why player health has been an issue here for a long time, regardless of who the coach was.
