What will they do? We will know in a matter of hours
On Sunday or Monday, we will almost certainly find out whether the New York Giants will keep or can one or both of general manager Joe Schoen and head coach Brian Daboll.
What should they do?
On Dec. 1, I made the case for why the Giants should keep both decision-makers. Here is part of what I wrote at the time:
The Giants have ridden a dizzying merry-go-round of GMs and head coaches since they forcibly removed Tom Coughlin from his job after the 2015 season.
The ride has to stop somewhere.
Each GM change leads to a full restructuring of the front office and scouting staff. That is a process that takes multiple offseasons. Each coaching change leads to a tear down of whatever personnel is in place and a rebuild. The brutal truth is no coach wants to succeed — or fail — based on someone else’s choices. He wants to make his own. Again, this is a process that requires multiple years.
To me, the current Giants’ regime is in the middle, maybe even still in the early stages, of a long-term project.
Schoen and Daboll have made mistakes, no doubt. There has probably been too much leadership stripped from the locker room. Still, there are some veteran leaders — not enough, but some. There is an exciting core of young, talented players to build with.
What there is not is a quarterback.
Much has happened since I wrote those words. More games have been lost. There has been much debate and speculation. Some discussion of who might be next in the GM or head coaching jobs. I even made the case for why it would make sense for the Giants to move on from Schoen and Daboll.
You know what has not happened. I have not changed my mind. Nothing has moved me off the belief that the Giants should keep Schoen and Daboll. Not fire both. Not split them up by keeping one and firing the other.
Keep them together and let them try to finish the job they started. Let them try to continue shaping the roster. Let them try to find the right quarterback in the draft and develop him into a player the organization can win with.
I know that is an opinion many in the fan base will howl about.
I have said many times that staying the course with a GM and head coach who have put a poor product on the field for the past two seasons is the hard decision for John Mara to make. A vocal section of the fan base, including some with enough disposable income to fly planes over MetLife Stadium carrying not-so-subtle messages for Mara, will scream bloody murder. They will question Mara’s competence and call him all sorts of names, some of them vile.
Mara and Steve Tisch are responsible for doing what they think is right to put the best product on the field, not for giving angry fans their pound of flesh when they scream for it. If they get the Giants back on a winning path, no one will care how it happened.
There has been too much change since Coughlin exited the stage. There have been three GMs. There have been four full-time head coaches, plus interim head coach Steve Spagnuolo.
Mara knows that has to stop somewhere. It would be easy, and understandable, if ownership moves on from Schoen and Daboll. Or even just from Daboll.
The difficult choice, and the one I think is right, is letting these two men try to learn from their mistakes and dig the Giants out of this mess.
Are there clear better alternatives out there for the GM and head-coaching jobs? Maybe. Maybe not. There are a lot of unproven “hot” candidates out there would be complete unknowns in the GM or head coaching roles. Exactly what Schoen and Daboll were in 2022.
If you could guarantee that Mike Vrabel, a proven coach likely to be the hottest candidate on the market in this cycle, would come to the Giants that might be worth making changes for. Short of that, there is no way of knowing the Giants would be upgrading. They would just be doing something different.
They have done that several times and they are still stuck in the same miserable place.
Hold Schoen’s feet to the fire for the Saquon Barkley mess if you want, but if Mara had truly wanted that to end differently it would have.
Hold Daboll’s feet to the fire for the last couple of seasons, as you should, but if Daniel Jones had played better at critical moments the Giants might be a seven-win team right now and we probably wouldn’t be talking about firing the coach or GM.
Back in November, former NFL executive T.J. McCreight told me he would “put my stamp” on Schoen and Daboll as having the ability to find the right quarterback and get the Giants pointed in the right direction.
I don’t know what will happen. I don’t know whether that decision will ultimately end up being right or wrong. I just know the decision I would make is to let the Schoen and Daboll duo try to finish the job they were hired to do.
