The question deserves to be asked: if this Giants season doesn’t warrant John Mara cleaning house, what does?
How far have the Giants’ standards fallen if they are actually considering retaining GM Joe Schoen while making head coach Brian Daboll walk the plank?
How can anyone trust their judgment if Mara is genuinely looking at Schoen’s first three years of work and claiming confidence in the GM’s ability to pick players and build a competitive team?
Teams lose in the NFL. It happens week to week and year to year.
What teams don’t often do, though, is regress to the point where they struggle to put a team on the field for regular season games.
This roster and team is an embarrassment entering Sunday’s game against the Falcons (7-7) at Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium, where the Giants (2-12) are on the verge of a franchise record 10th straight loss.
The locker room is dead. Injured leaders have vanished. Many players have tapped out. Some are still on the field. Some aren’t.
There are private snickers about the offense’s lack of imagination, the team’s absence of leadership and the dearth of talent. And there are genuine player questions about where in the world this program is heading with this roster.
Left tackle Andrew Thomas’ Friday comment about the Giants’ future — “it’s gonna take some time, but I think we’ll get there” — had to send shivers down fans’ spines.
Take some time?!
Ah, the old seven-year plan. Schoen forgot to mention that when he and Daboll loaded up to win in 2023 and crashed their so-called rebuild into a deeper disaster than they had inherited.
Here is the shocking truth: the Giants’ deterioration into a skeleton of an NFL operation is not part of any plan. It is simply the fruit of Schoen’s labor.
It is the result of the decisions he has made, the players he has picked and his absence of a coherent and consistent plan.
The Giants organization handed their keys to a first-timer learning on the fly, and the result is a team that looks like it was copied and pasted together into a PowerPoint presentation.
Schoen would have been better off going by Madden ratings like the Jets’ Woody Johnson does, honestly. It might have protected him from so many catastrophic errors.
As it is, the Giants leaked through a mid-week report that Mara could be planning on sticking by Schoen but asking him to replace Daboll. But that would simply prolong the dysfunction.
Pretending Schoen isn’t involved in every facet of the Giants’ current operation is disingenuous and dishonest.
There was one line in the report that said Schoen believes in supporting the head coach because the coach is the one in the meetings who knows the players better than the GM does.
But Schoen watches film with the coaches and players every week and has been seen by players several times in the locker room talking to players. So what is this attempt at revisionist history that he is somehow removed from the ground floor?
While Saquon Barkley runs wild for the Philadelphia Eagles, Daniel Jones wears a Minnesota Vikings jersey, Thomas is out for the year, injured captains Dexter Lawrence and Bobby Okereke are nowhere in sight and the Giants leapfrogged free agent signing Drew Lock for Tommy DeVito, people are supposed to believe in Schoen?
It is funny that anyone would try to excuse the Barkley decision by arguing that he never would have succeeded in New York because the Eagles are so stacked with talent.
People act like the Eagles are automatically that good. No. GM Howie Roseman built it that way.
The Eagles’ O-line includes seventh-round pick left tackle Jordan Mailata (2018), second-round pick left guard Landon Dickerson (2021), second-round pick center Cam Jurgens (2022) and rehabilitated former Jets first-round tackle Mehki Becton at right guard alongside stud right tackle Lane Johnson (a 2013 first rounder).
Philly lost an all-time center in Jason Kelce and is still on the verge of helping Barkley challenge or break the NFL single-season rushing record.
Schoen’s Giants draft picks, on the other hand, are first-round right tackle Evan Neal (2022) and second-round center John Michael Schmitz (2023). The organization shows no confidence in Neal. Schmitz continues to struggle. Then Schoen’s 2022 third-rounder Josh Ezeudu is unplayable. And his 2022 fifth-rounder Marcus McKethan is off the team.
His best lineman is Thomas, a Dave Gettleman pick who is often injured. Schoen had to scramble in free agency deep into the summer just to operate an offense in 2024, and the Giants’ front five is still the envy of no one in the NFL.
Daboll, though, is the one who had to answer questions about his job security this week.
He was asked about the report that Mara may ask Schoen to hire a new coach and if it’s difficult to focus after hearing that.
“No, I just had a good conversation with John 10 minutes ago,” Daboll said.
A conversation about the report?
“No, not about that,” Daboll said. “Just a normal conversation. We have good conversations every week.”
How does he react to the suggestion that he could be fired? And do they discuss the future beyond this season?
“I just focus on the things I can control,” he said. “I’d say we have a number of conversations about a lot of different things that I’ll keep private.”
Asked if he and Schoen’s responsibilities are separate enough to blame one and not the other, Daboll said: “Yeah, we’re just getting ready here for the Falcons.”
Hey, at least there won’t be a plane flying overhead with a banner this week. The Falcons play in a dome.
