As the New York Giants struggled through the past couple of years, fans wondered if GM Joe Schoen and head coach Brian Daboll were a package deal. Could Giants’ ownership fire one and keep the other?
That question was clearly answered on Monday when the Giants fired Daboll and announced that Schoen, who hired Daboll in 2022, would lead the search for the next head coach.
“We feel like Joe has assembled a good young nucleus of talent, and we look forward to its development,” said co-owner John Mara
in a statement released by the team. “Unfortunately, the results over the past three years have not been what any of us want. We take full responsibility for those results and look forward to the kind of success our fans expect.”
That would lead one to believe that Schoen will not only finish out this season but will return and be in charge of roster construction under the next head coach.
But, wait. Ian O’Connor of The Athletic has now charged head-long into the discussion with a report that is sure to stoke the debate over whether or not the GM who hired the deposed coach and has overseen a 20-40-1 (.336 winning percentage) team over three-plus seasons actually deserves to stick around.
O’Connor reported, via ‘X’:
Let’s dive into O’Connor’s post, and some pros and cons regarding Schoen keeping his job.
I absolutely will agree with O’Connor that ownership will make the final call on who the next coach will be. Schoen will pare down a list of potential candidates that will almost certainly be shared with ownership before anyone is even interviewed.
Schoen will not make the decision. He will not hire the coach. That will be John Mara and Steve Tisch.
I also absolutely believe that Mara’s battle with cancer is a big reason why the Giants announced quickly that Schoen would lead the search for a successor to Daboll. Mara may simply not be physically up to the task of doing all of the initial groundwork to find out who might, and might not, be interested in the job.
Do I also believe that the Giants could end up with their own version of the Jacksonville Jaguars’ Trent Baalke situation? These are the Giants. After everything that has happened with this franchise since they silenced the New England Patriots for the second time in the 2011 Super Bowl, I will believe that just about anything is possible.
Remember that after firing then-head coach Doug Pederson at the end of last season that Jaguars owner Shad Kahn had insisted that Baalke, a somewhat controversial figure, would remain as the GM.
That was the case until Ben Johnson, who landed with the Chicago Bears, avoided Jacksonville and Liam Coen, who eventually got the Jaguars’ job, refused to take an in-person interview while Baalke was the GM.
Could something like that happen with Schoen and the Giants? Sure it could.
In my view, the Giants job will be an attractive one. The quarterback of the future is in place in Jaxson Dart. There is talent on the roster, though not nearly enough. The ownership group has warts, but it is stable and not nearly as prone to forcing decisions on its front office and coaching staff as some others. We’re also talking about the allure of the New York/New Jersey market.
I firmly believe several coaches with established, quality resumes and up-and-coming coaches looking for a landing spot where they don’t have to start from scratch will be attracted to the Giants’ opening.
O’Connor believes Mike Tomlin of the Pittsburgh Steelers would be perfect for the job. He writes:
The Giants have always preferred tough-guy coaches in the mold of Bill Parcells and Tom Coughlin, leaders who could impose their will on a dire situation and inspire men to do things their minds were telling them they could not do.
The franchise won all four of its Super Bowl titles with Parcells and Coughlin, former Giants assistants, and they could have won more championships — a lot more — if they didn’t miss what they had on their own staffs in resident hard-asses Vince Lombardi and Bill Belichick.
But as much as interim coach Mike Kafka deserves a fair-and-square shot after replacing the fired Brian Daboll on Monday, the Giants will almost certainly find their next full-time head coach, as they say, outside the building.
And since co-owner and team president John Mara summoned Daboll into his office to deliver the bad news face-to-face, giving himself, partner Steve Tisch and general manager Joe Schoen (the luckiest 20-40-1 GM in the history of sports) a two-month head start on the search, it’s a good time to play fantasy football.
In that game, the best available result would be the Giants naming Mike Tomlin as their next head coach in January.
Would someone like Tomlin, Bill Belichick, John Harbaugh, Kevin Stefanski or another high-profile coach with no prior connection to the Giants’ GM be willing to tie himself to Schoen? Would a hot young potential first-time head coach like Los Angeles Chargers defensive coordinator Jesse Minter or a college coach like Lane Kiffin want to tie himself to Schoen?
We don’t know that.
If a candidate ownership has zeroed in on says “I’d take the job, but that GM …” what would Mara and Tisch do?
Maybe we will find out.
Pros and cons
There are arguments to be made for keeping Schoen, and viable arguments to be made for showing him the door.
Let’s start with the cons, the reasons why you can make the case Schoen should go.
- Too many high draft picks (Kayvon Thibodeaux, Evan Neal, Jalin Hyatt, Deonte Banks, Tyler Nubin, Dru Phillips, John Michael Schmitz and even Wan’Dale Robinson and Abdul Carter right now if you want to say they haven’t played up to their draft slot).
- You can argue that the two best picks of the Schoen era (Dart and wide receiver Malik Nabers) were players Daboll, not Schoen, pushed for.
- Too many high-priced free agent signings (Jevon Holland, Paulson Adebo, Chauncey Golston, Jon Runyan Jr., Russell Wilson, even Darius Slayton) not giving the Giants what they paid for.
- Too many really good players (Daniel Jones, Saquon Barkley, Leonard Williams, Julian Love, Xavier McKinney) shown the door and having massive success elsewhere.
- Two of the cornerstone players on the roster, Andrew Thomas and Dexter Lawrence, are not Schoen players. They were drafted by Dave Gettleman. That’s not a defense of Gettleman. It is a simple fact.
- The idea of “arranged marriages” with general managers and head coaches on different timelines rarely works. It always opens the possibility of the coach and GM, who need to work together, having differing ideas and leading to a path of political in-fighting with each side blaming the other when things go wrong.
The list of arguments for keeping Schoen is shorter, but that doesn’t make it less viable.
- The Giants have lost four games this season when leading by at least 10 points, two of those in the final four minutes. That means the roster the GM constructed was good enough to get those leads. The coaching staff wasn’t good enough to put players in position to keep them.
- The Giants just went through massive upheaval with their front office and scouting staff, and bringing in a new general manager would mean starting over again with new people and processes. No matter who gets the credit, enough progress on a still-developing roster has been made going back to square one doesn’t make sense.
Vote in the poll below and let us know what you think Schoen’s fate should be.
