Now we know the reason the Giants retained Joe Schoen in his reduced role: They’re giving him extra credit homework to bump himself up to a passing grade.
The Giants’ players dropped the hammer of truth on the club’s willfully ignorant ownership and on the team’s sycophants and crusaders Thursday by giving Schoen a “D+” grade in this year’s NFL Players’ Association report cards.
That makes Schoen the worst GM in the league as graded by all 32 general managers’ own players. No other GM in the NFL received a grade lower than a C, according to the full database of grades reported by ESPN.
In fact, all but four GMs in the NFL received a B or higher. The only four that didn’t were the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Omar Khan (C+), the Cincinnati Bengals’ Duke Tobin (C) and the Cleveland Browns’ Andrew Berry (C).
That’s because players generally tend to be neutral on or supportive of their GMs, if not completely aloof.
Players spend all of their waking moments in the trenches with the coaches. As long as their checks are clearing, they don’t typically have a reason to give much daily thought to their GM at all.
And if they’re winning or at least competing, they have no reason not to give the front office an adequate or good grade.
That is why this grade is the Giants players’ version of flying banners over MetLife Stadium, as fans have done the past two seasons, begging ownership to rid the franchise of a bad leader whose poor handling of negotiations, misevaluations and gameday roster calls have continued driving the team into the ground.
This is the players telling the world that Schoen’s presence and performance drag the team down and compromises their ability to win.
Consider what it would mean for the Giants’ owners to ignore this grade from their players just as they have ignored the fans’ banners in the New Jersey skies. It would mean they do not recognize what this grade means.
What it means is the Giants’ players don’t have confidence in Schoen doing right by the team.
It means that Schoen’s negative impact on the team is on the minds of players, which in itself should have been a major red flag for ownership.
Instead, the Giants prefer to fight narratives and windmills and push propaganda to protect an underperformer, rather than addressing the actual problem undercutting their operation.
They’ll prioritize a relationship over the team’s fortunes and the players’ own negative opinions of what it means to play for a team with Schoen in the GM chair.
At least Chris Mara’s hot pursuit of John Harbaugh, John Mara’s acquiescing to the head coach’s final say and direct reporting structure and Dawn Aponte’s hiring and direct report to the coach have marginalized Schoen’s influence and role.
Still, the facts are these: Schoen’s poor and personal handling of player negotiations have rubbed several players and agents the wrong way in the last several years.
He has made enemies. Word has traveled. He has a reputation.
Winning tends to cure all in the NFL, so if the Giants were successful in spite of this, fewer or maybe none would gripe about it.
But Schoen’s draft and free agent whiffs have turned the Giants roster into an incomplete collection of players, rather than a team. And they have won seven total games in the past two seasons.
After four drafts, the Giants entered Schoen’s fifth offseason here with glaring needs at corner, offensive line, interior defensive line, inside linebacker, safety, receiver, running back, tight end and kicker.
That doesn’t leave much else.
Most damningly, Schoen’s hang ups on winning negotiations, prioritizing positional value and being right — while underestimating or having no feel for the locker room and its leadership, culture and dynamic — have had lingering effects on the team’s psyche and belief.
Schoen playing hard ball with Saquon Barkley and Julian Love, then watching them both have major impacts on the NFL’s next two Super Bowl champions, is not lost on the Giants’ players. Neither is trading Leonard Williams and watching him get a ring in Seattle stings.
Or letting Xavier McKinney walk to Green Bay, only to put the team on a treadmill of major investments at safety that still have not provided meaningful returns.
Multiple players also have made several references to the Daily News in the last couple years to internal politics weighing heavily into who is receiving gameday roster decisions, over the merit of who is playing better in practice.
In other words, when this Giants GM and ownership group falls in love with a player or evaluation, they have been known to give that player more opportunities than he has earned.
Harbaugh was hired to clean up a mess. The coach has already started doing that.
But if the Giants ignore this grade, they’ll no longer just be ignoring their fans’ airplane banners or waging public relations battles against the truth in the media.
They’ll be ignoring and waving off their own team.
