One Giant Leap, Part I: Joe Schoen's Vision
One Giant Leap, Part I: Joe Schoen's Vision
NFL turnarounds can sneak up on you. Three years of painstaking construction has led to this: The 2024 New York Giants are ready to make their move. Our three-part series examines in full.
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — The plight of the 2024 NFL general manager is the 2024 human condition, the need to be entertained at once. We’ve become a scrolling species addicted to the next bubble notification. Football magnifies this impulse because football is our national drug of choice.
NYC, with its 8+ million residents, is not quite Elkhart, Indiana.
Rebuilding the New York Giants, from ashes, is a far cry from life inside of Marriotts as a road scout.
The mandate from constituents is clear as all insults vomiting from the 14th row: Win, and win now. Joe Schoen knows he’s rowing against a powerful current of instant gratification. And inside the Quest Diagnostics Training Center, reminders of glory past decorating the hallways could entice a weaker GM, a GM concerned about poll numbers to act irrationally. All hear the tick-tock of a clock in their head. Every time their boss — the team owner — shares an opinion that noise gets louder, and louder, and you’re tempted to step outside of yourself with one wild transaction.
But, no.
Schoen does not obsess over his favorability rating. He’ll make the unpopular decision.
Schoen feels no need to acquiesce to an owner’s wishes. He’s got authority.
For too long, the Giants operated as an incestual organization terrified of outside football minds. In 2022, Schoen became the first Giants boss with zero ties to the team since 1979. Not coincidentally, ’79 also marked the greatest tipping point in the franchise’s 100-year history. George Young rescued a drowning team that hadn’t made the playoffs in 15 years. Young resuscitated the Giants, won two rings and — now? — another tipping point has dawned.
These Giants have missed the postseason in nine of 10 seasons. Schoen inherited a similar mess.
As the 45-year-old walks into the team cafeteria, his hair shockingly hasn’t grayed when, honestly, I half-expected to see a commander in chief battered by three years on the job. Schoen exudes vigor. Takes a seat and begins by pointing out that only six players on offense and defense remain from the roster he inherited. Maybe those scrolling can’t quite see the change quite yet, but he can.
“So it’s really starting to take on our personality,” Schoen says, “and our first draft class is going into their third year and they can carry the torch and show the young players, ‘Hey, this is how we’re going to do things. This is what we want to be about.’ That doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time.”
A hard sell. Especially when the Houston Texans draft C.J. Stroud and Will Anderson Jr. one spring, then load up on star power the next. Or the Chicago Bears (Caleb Williams) and Washington Commanders (Jayden Daniels) awaken their markets with one selection. That’s the preferred track. This is more gradual, more Detroit Lions. You’ve got to take a deep breath, squint your eyes and activate a different synapse in the brain to see the signs here in East Rutherford.
A skeletal roster going 12 rounds with heavyweights last season. The coaching was inspired.
A quarterback who’s certifiably pissed off by the team’s pursuit of a collegiate quarterback. That’s a good thing. (Here’s our 1-on-1 chat with Daniel Jones.)
A defensive line beefed up to 2007 proportions.
Malik Nabers — the sixth overall pick, the new WR1 — is giving Schoen flashbacks to two other wideouts: Steve Smith and Stefon Diggs.
Elijah Chatman — a rookie tryout signee, a 278-pound man — chasing down a running back 40 yards downfield in a preseason game.
The quiet conviction of one running back, “Motor,” who replaced the one everyone’s been talking about nonstop the last two years.
Football people are making the football decisions. Whereas past teams have editorially dunked their “Hard Knocks” episodes into buckets of OxiClean, the Giants barely scrubbed the final product. We all saw the team’s owner, John Mara, admitting he’d have “a tough time sleeping” if Saquon Barkley signed with the Philadelphia Eagles. Standing up in the GM’s office, Mara declares the running back “the most popular player we have by far.” What happened next is a sign of A+ organizational health: Schoen let the Barkley walk. He valued the team, not self-preservation.
Scout Life. Schoen knows it gets lonely. He lived out of hotels more than half of his marriage before taking over as GM — 9.2 years in Marriotts alone. Thousands of miles away, you feel disconnected. “Like an independent contractor,” he says. That’s why Schoen schedules 1-on-1 Zoom calls with scouts year ‘round. They get a better understanding of his vision and these always boost morale. He knows scouts are the lifeblood of an organization and he knows what it’s like to miss birthdays and Pop Warner championships. Away from their families… on 2 ½ hours of sleep and 4 ½ cups of coffee… navigating their rental cars deeper into the boondocks… scouts still feel part of a true Cause.
This isn’t the norm and, most certainly, wasn’t life under the previous general manager. One of the Giants’ longtime scouts still fumes over how his boss, Dave Gettleman, ran the show. “I don’t know Dave’s heart,” said this scout. “I don’t know why he did what he did. I just wished I’d have punched him right in the f--king mouth. That’s what I wished I’d done.”
10-4.
The underbelly of an NFL organization can be ugly. Whether it’s Gettleman’s ego killing off Giants teams past, Mike Zimmer (referred to as “Satan”) failing to relate to the modern player in Minnesota, Brian Flores clashing with Tua Tagovailoa, Urban Meyer threatening to cut a player over nonsense or an inauthentic Matt Patricia alienating players in Detroit, we’ve explored how everything can go very wrong. But the underbelly of an organization can also explain how everything’s destined to go right.
That’s the case here. The results in Giants Country will manifest on the field soon. Extensive conversations with Schoen, assistant Shea Tierney, Daniel Jones, several other players, one team legend (Tiki Barber) and, OK, one ex-scout’s echo from the dark side explain why nobody should be shocked if this team reaches the playoffs in 2024, and competes for a championship in the near future.
In Part I and Part II, we examine the organizational overhaul.
In Part III, we get to the quarterback position.
The turnaround is staring at us directly in the face.
You just have to know where to look.
Our three-part series, “One Giant Leap” is available to Go Long subscribers.
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Twenty-two bodies crash into each other 150 times each game. Exactly zero of those 22 bodies are in mint condition with 3 minutes left in the fourth quarter, too. An ankle throbs. A lower back screams. A shoulder’s on fire. All while they’re being strategically deployed. All while they’ve got to think at a high level. The play call comes in and you’re asked to block Micah Parsons on an island or cover Tyreek Hill in space or stand in the pocket and take a hit to the rib cage when one split-second lapse can win or lose a game.