The problem with the NY Giants was on the sideline, not in the front office. Deposed head coach Brian Daboll did not have a good enough defensive staff. Shane Bowen should have been fired. GM Joe Schoen was retained by co-owner John Mara and given a vote of confidence. Mara was right keeping Schoen.
New York Giants co-owner John Mara should be commended for making two necessary moves on Monday.
He was absolutely spot on in terminating Brian Daboll, who did not succeed as the New York Giants head coach. However, the more brilliant move he made was retaining general manager Joe Schoen, when the easy choice would have been to clean house.
Schoen has been tabbed by Mara as the person in charge of finding a new head coach. Hopefully he will find one better than Daboll, whom he hired in 2022, a week after being named to his current position.
This has a cause and effect. With Schoen hiring the coach, he basically locks himself in to a job well after the 2026 season. No new general manager is going to want to inherit a head coach that he did not hire. The Giants are looking for a head coach for the next 10 years, not a one-and-done coach to be replaced by a new general manager after the 2026 season.
"We feel like Joe has assembled a good young nucleus of talent, and we look forward to its development," Mara said in a statement. "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."
Perhaps the biggest errors that plagued the Giants last season were problems associated under Schoen's watch. However, the bottom-line decisions came from co-owners Mara and Steve Tisch.
Ownership gave the green light for a four-year, $160 million contract for former quarterback Daniel Jones three years ago. That contract was like an albatross around Schoen's neck. He had no room to move.
They also allowed Saquon Barkley to walk in free agency. Barkley went on to win a Super Bowl with the rival Philadelphia Eagles and have as good a season as any other running back in history has ever had.
However, for Schoen, when his job was on the line, he had very good drafts in 2024 and 2025.
When he selected Malik Nabers with the first-round selection in 2024, he gave the Giants an immediate No. 1 lethal threat at receiver. He also drafted Dru Phillips, Theo Johnson and Tyrone Tracy, Jr., who are all starters for the Giants at their respective positions.
In 2025, no one had a better first three rounds than Schoen and the Giants. In the first round he got two of the best players in the draft with edge rusher Abdul Carter and quarterback Jaxson Dart. Carter was a day-one starter, while Dart started early in the season after the Russell Wilson experiment failed.
Dart is out of commission now due to concussions, which speak more to the coaching mistakes by Daboll than anything else.
The steal of the draft was former Arizona State running back Cam Skattebo, despite the fact he is out for the balance of the season with a severe lower extremity injury.
Schoen also knew he had to upgrade the defensive back positions in free agency. He pressed the right buttons in signing cornerback Paulson Adebo and safety Jevon Holland.
Schoen is not without his warts. He did make some draft choices that did not pan out like Evan Neal, who was definitely not worth the No. 7 overall pick in 2022. He also made some mistakes in 2023 with cornerback Deonte Banks in the first round. Taking center John Michael Schmitz in the second round was a big reach. Further, third-round selection, wide receiver Jalin Hyatt, has been a wash out. Hyatt has not materialized into the NFL receiver he was in college.
Not every general manager is going to hit on every pick. However, if you look at what Schoen has done over the last two seasons, he has proven he belongs in New York. Given the right coach, and getting players back from injury, the Giants will be fine. It will be interesting to see what Schoen does with the 2026 NFL Draft. He traded some picks to the Houston Texans for the right to draft Dart, but he was able to keep his first-round selection.