Joshua Berman asks: When we bench Jones because it might have implications for next year’s cap and thereby sabotage the product on the field and morale in the locker room, we call that prudent. But were we to bench starters to improve our draft position and thereby sabotage the product on the field and the morale in the locker room, we would call that unsportsmanlike and unconscionable. What’s the difference between the two? The claim that tanking is playing in order to lose while benching Jones is not, is disingenuous when you know for certain that you are putting an inferior product on the field.
Ed says: Joshua, the Giants were 2-8 when they decided to bench Daniel Jones. I hardly think benching the starting quarterback when a team is 2-8, has lost seven straight games, and has no chance of going to the playoffs is sabotaging the product on the field. The product on the field already stunk.
We knew from Day 1 of the 2024 season that the Giants would face that choice and would eventually have to make that move for the long-term good of the franchise if things went south in 2024. They had to do that to protect their financial ability to improve the product for next season.
The Giants were putting an inferior product on the field — with and without Jones. The results told everybody that. Aside from Malik Nabers and Tyrone Tracy, I’m not sure what other starters you would have had the Giants bench over the final couple of weeks.
Look at the box score from the season finale against the Philadelphia Eagles. Include the fact that Jermaine Eluemunor and Greg Van Roten were not playing their primary positions, and the Giants started seven (7) backups on offense and five (5) on defense in Week 18. They were playing a lot of backups.
Christopher Trappe asks: As a long-time fan of the New York Giants, I recognize that I have the option to do more productive things on Sunday afternoons throughout the fall and, now, owing to an interminable NFL schedule, most of the winter. However, that’s clearly not the case for you. So I’m wondering- after a decade-plus of mostly unwatchable football, how do you keep yourself motivated to do your job and do it at a high level?
Ed says: Christopher, thank you for your belief that I do the job “at a high level.” That is all I have ever really tried to do.
As for your question, let me start by saying that I grew up as a Giants fan. I can remember a lot of Sunday’s in the late 1960s and 1970s when I would watch games with my father, and he would grow so frustrated by what he saw that he would be in the garage puttering around before the game was over.
That said, to do this job the way I have always felt it needed to be done — the way my journalism training and decades of work in the business prepared me — I had to willingly and unequivocally put the fan card away.
I have always tried to do that. I have written multiple stories a day about the Giants almost every day for 18 years. To do that well, it can’t be done emotionally. I am not emotionally invested in whether the Giants win or lose. I am emotionally invested in running the best web site I can possibly run.
If the Giants win, it is easier. Everybody — players, coaches, fans — are happier. If they lose, fans are miserable, commenters are mean-spirited, players and coaches are harder to talk to.
Win or lose, though, my job is to figure out what needs to be written about, what needs to be done to make this a place people want to come to talk and learn about the Giants.
I try to be analytical. I try to tell you what I see and hear, what I know, what I’ve learned over the years. I don’t write with my heart on my sleeve. I criticized Jerry Reese for years, but have no hatred for or dislike of Reese. I was never emotionally invested in Daniel Jones — whoever the quarterback is doesn’t change the job I have to do. I’m not emotionally invested in Joe Schoen or Brian Daboll. If they’re out, somebody else will be in and I will have a job to do writing about and figuring them out.
In the end, I am invested in the work. I will be 65 this summer and I’m still motivated to do the work to the best of my ability. When I’m not, I will stop doing it.
Henry Mildener asks: I cannot understand why a DC tries to fit a square peg in a round hole. If a DC is married to his scheme he may not be making the best use of his personnel. If you are a true DC you should be able to adapt your scheme to fit your personnel. Do you agree? I hate the read and react defense. You want the defensive players to play to their strengths. I was disappointed that Bowen was retained.
Ed says: Henry, no two coaches are ever going to be the same. They may run similar schemes, but everybody sees things somewhat differently. It is a vastly different level, but I’ve coached CYO basketball for more than 20 years now. I coach what I know, the way I learned the game. I can’t coach what I don’t know.
You are right that a coach’s job is to make the best use of his personnel. Shane Bowen, within the parameters of how he learned defense, is trying to do that. Does what he wants to do match the skill sets of guys like Bobby Okereke, Jason Pinnock and Deonte Banks perfectly? No, it clearly does not. This happens on every team when you change defensive coordinators.
The Giants blitzed 27.9% of the time in 2024. That was down from 45.4% the year before, but was still seventh-most in the league. That is a higher blitz percentage than Bowen used in any of his three seasons as defensive coordinator with the Tennessee Titans, so you can argue that he did try to incorporate more of that style than he was accustomed to.
The Giants played man-to-man coverage 30% of the time in 2024. Eighteen teams played less man coverage than the Giants, so they were in the top half. That isn’t as often as they played it in 2023, when Adoree’ Jackson was in man coverage 43.7% of the time, Xavier McKinney 40.7% of the time and Deonte Banks 39.3%, but it isn’t nothing. Banks was in man coverage 32% of the time in 2024 and safety Tyler Nubin 31.4%, per Pro Football Focus.
This meshing of styles, players adapting to a new scheme and coaches learning what suits players best, takes time. If the Giants replaced Bowen, they weren’t going to bring back Martindale. Or find a Martindale clone. The Giants would, again, be asking players to start from square one and learn a new scheme, and coaches to start from square one trying to learn the players and find the right ones.
If you want to get right down to it, the Giants weren’t better defensively under Martindale than they were under Bowen. They were 26th in the NFL in points allowed under Martindale in 2023. With lesser talent — no Leonard Williams, A’Shawn Robinson or Xavier McKinney, and with Dexter Lawrence finishing the season on IR — the Giants were 21st in points allowed in 2024.
I am not going to argue that Bowen is a great defensive coordinator. He’s not. He’s OK. What he does isn’t sexy. It isn’t imaginative, or unique. The scheme, though, wasn’t the problem. They didn’t have enough talent on the defensive line or in the secondary. That was the problem. Give him more talent on the line and a couple of guys in the secondary who can make plays on the ball and the Giants’ defense will look just fine.
Robert Biggerstaff asks: I think you said you would compare the current 2024 team with what the GM was given when he was hired. I eye balled the 2024 team as constituted at the start of the season by position group and would say there is overall improvement at five groups (Edge, ILB, OL, TE and WR) and decline in three groups (RB, safety and DL) and no change in two groups (QB and DB). What is your analysis of the GM’s and his staff’s performance over three years?
Ed says: Robert, I did all of that three-year positional analysis during the bye week. I think that a three-win 2024 season, and 9-25 over the last two seasons, is not good enough.
I think Schoen is paying a price for not getting enough out of his first two draft classes, with the miss on Evan Neal and the odd year Deonte Banks had at the forefront. I think that Schoen has a philosophy, and that is fine. I think, though, that he fails at times to really understand the impact of people like Saquon Barkley beyond the playing field, and that he sometimes has let personal feelings cloud his ability to make the best decisions.
Schoen, 45, is still one of the league’s younger general managers. I hope he looks in the mirror and learns from his mistakes. We should all try to do that. I think he has put together a good front office and scouting staff.
Right now, it’s not good enough. I still think that can change. Get the right quarterback, everything will look better. Get the wrong quarterback, Schoen and Brian Daboll will probably need new jobs in 2026.
Ronald Buchheim asks: Ed, there seems to be total agreement in the media that not re-signing Barkley was a huge, embarrassing blunder. But I disagree. In six seasons, Barkley never performed nearly as well as he did with the Eagles, simply because he never had a good offensive line. What’s the use of paying big bucks for a gifted athlete if he won’t be able to perform at a high level because of the line? Had they kept him, he almost certainly would have played no better than he had previously. Instead, the Giants used the savings to help rebuild the offensive line, which was the highest priority.
What do you think? Is this yet another example of conclusions based on superficial analysis and sensational story lines?
Ed says: Ronald, I think I have expressed my feelings about the Saquon Barkley situation many times over the past year. I will go through it and try to summarize one more time.
There was always potential for Barkley to embarrass the Giants, especially since he signed with Philadelphia. The type of incredible individual season he has had, the fact that the Eagles might win the Super Bowl, and the reality that so much of the internal Barkley decision played out on television in ‘Hard Knocks’ makes it all even harder to swallow. Had the Giants had a good season, they would be able to point to that and say what he’s doing in Philly doesn’t matter because we did what was best for us and we were right. That didn’t happen.
I have said before that the Barkley decision was, and still is, understandable and defensible. The Giants needed money for the offensive line, and used the funds to sign three starters. With a rookie fifth-round pick and a modestly paid veteran running back the Giants actually ran the ball better in 2024 than they had with Barkley in 2023. It is also fully within reason to understand why the Giants did not want to give big money to a back with the mileage and injury history Barkley has. History tells us that is not a good idea.
The Giants knew he had good football left — director of pro scouting Chris Rossetti was clear about that. They just weren’t sure for how long. It is, though, all of the other things that I think GM Joe Schoen did not attach enough importance to. What he meant to the locker room as a leader and the face of the franchise. What he meant to the entire organization. What he meant to the fan base.
Losing so much leadership — Barkley, Leonard Williams, Julian Love, Xavier McKinney and probably others — was problematic.
Jeff Bergman asks: Going back to the 2024 draft, did the Giants have to be thinking how their choices connected to the 2025 draft? They chose Nabers with 3 QBs still available. While they hoped Jones would work out, given he only has 1 or 2 average-type seasons out of 5, they had to know it was unlikely and they had to know what QBs were in the college pipeline. Am I giving too much credit to management or did they just fail to have a multi-year plan?
Ed says: Jeff, it was clear throughout the 2024 draft process that the Giants were thinking about a long-term solution at quarterback. They spent an extraordinary amount of time with all of the top quarterbacks in the class, especially J.J. McCarthy.
They tried to trade up for Drake Maye. They would have tried to trade up for Jayden Daniels, but the Washington Commanders were not making the No. 2 pick available. They chose Nabers knowing that they would almost certainly end up moving on from Daniel Jones and need to continue their hunt for a quarterback.
Did they know who that long-term quarterback would be? No. They probably still don’t as you read this today. They believed getting Nabers and fixing the quarterback situation in 2025 or 2026 was the right path.
Nabers certainly looked in 2024 like the star they expected him to be. Getting the right quarterback, and continue to build the team around him, remains the task at hand.
JayB asks: With how spectacular Barkley has been for the Eagles are we seeing a resurgence of the running backs value? Hope so. Also, is it a black eye to Joe and people who think running backs are a dime a dozen? I stand in the middle of the running back debate. I believe that there should always be exceptions for exceptional players at any position that go beyond traditional value and I believe Barkley was not respected enough to recognize that he is just a running back. He was the Giants leader, a home grown talent and favorite, never complained or created issues in the media, but most importantly he was our best player and one of the best players in the league. I think Joe failed to recognize that. They made it too impersonal which made it personal for Barkley and they on top of that they chose to pay a player that was clearly Not a franchise QB so insult to injury.
Ed says: Jay, I think we are seeing confirmation of something that I have stood my ground on for years. That is that top-tier running backs are finishing pieces for really good teams with aspirations of going deep into the playoffs. Saquon Barkley, Derrick Henry, Josh Jacobs and Joe Mixon all fit that category for the teams they landed on in 2024. When he is healthy, Christian McCaffrey is in that category for the San Francisco 49ers.
You can’t start a build with a running back. The shelf life is too short. You can, though, put yourself over the top or finish a build with one.
I love this quote from Barkley. He fully recognizes that he is doing this in Philadelphia that he couldn’t do in New York because of the quality of the team he has around him:
Also, I do think the pendulum may swing toward bigger contracts for running backs.
Doug Mollin asks: How confident are you that Schoen can address the key offseason issues facing the Giants?
A. Get the QB room right.
B. Strengthen both the DL and the OL.
C. Plug in the other key holes in the roster as best they can at CB1, WR2, Edge3.
It’s the rare GM that comes into their first job fully formed. I’m hoping the DJ experience, the Saquon experience, the Hard Knocks experience, etc. have all helped Schoen grow as a GM.
Ed says: Doug, after the last two seasons I understand why there would be questions about Schoen’s ability to do the things you mentioned. There have been plenty of things both big and small that I haven’t understood about the way the Giants have done business.
What I do have confidence in is that I believe Joe Schoen sees all of those issues. Can he fix them all? I don’t know. I always say you can never fix every weakness in one offseason.
I think they know what a good quarterback looks like. The fact that they identified Jayden Daniels and Drake Maye, and that they have worked with Josh Allen, tells me they know it when they see it. Can they find it this year? And, if they find it, will they be able to get it? I think they will take a big swing to try.
I believe Schoen knows he has to solidify the lines. He has continued to swing at fixing the offensive line. Maybe Chris Snee, hired as a scout, helps there.
Cornerback I am curious about. Unless they plan to draft Travis Hunter I think they have to take a swing in free agency.
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