The Giants are going Backwards to the Future.
John Mara, the lost franchise’s president and co-owner, said Monday that he is retaining GM Joe Schoen and head coach Brian Daboll for a fourth season despite acknowledging his 3-14 team has been “going backwards.”
“It’s my strong belief that we are going — that we are gonna go in the right direction,” Mara said. “It’s hard for me to say we’re going in the right direction right now because we’ve been going backwards.”
Mara also admitted he does not consider his roster better than it was when Schoen and Daboll were hired in Jan. 2022.
“I’m not sure I am all that confident that it’s that much better,” Mara said.
But he nevertheless issued an ultimatum that this turnaround “better not take too long because I’ve just about run out of patience.”
That confirms the Giants will continue to be irrelevant. Their owner is expecting a team with a barren roster to ascend and win in 2025?
The most interesting part of Monday, though, was the noticeable separation that seemed to occur in Mara’s judgment of his Giants’ flaws:
Schoen received rave reviews and minimal critiques, while Mara said he suggested to Daboll that he should give up offensive playcalling and make “some other changes in the way he operates.”
Then Schoen and Daboll, who typically conduct their press conferences together on a dais, held separate media sessions in a stark departure from the norm.
Daboll did his while standing at a podium. Then Schoen sat alone on a stage in the Giants’ auditorium about 45 minutes later.
And while Schoen admitted off the top that “I’ve got to do a better job assembling a roster with more talent so we can go out and compete at a higher level,” he also carried himself with the confidence of someone who felt no internal heat about his job security.
He even went as far to say of his Daniel Jones contract mistake: “I wouldn’t change what we did.”
For Schoen to skate away unscathed from this wreckage, however, while Daboll scratches and claws to regain his standing, is to provide a reminder that the Giants employed Dave Gettleman as their GM for four years through two head coaches.
Why would anyone expect anything different? Why would anyone have confidence that they would have changed and stopped being loyal to someone who underperforms at their job?
Maybe Schoen and Daboll both are on the hot seat in 2025. Mara, after all, wouldn’t say they weren’t.
“You guys are gonna have them No. 1 on the hot seat so no matter how I answer that question,” he said. “We’re gonna have to see. I’m gonna have to be in a better mood this time next year than I am now.”
Or maybe Daboll’s seat is warmer than Schoen’s because Mara and the Giants just don’t want to do the work to upgrade the GM chair. Because their hope in their current failed hired feels stronger than their belief that they would hire the right replacement if they moved on.
Mara’s rationale for retaining both his GM and coach, meanwhile, was mind-numbing confirmation that the Giants no longer have any real standards.
He cited Daboll’s dusty 2022 Coach of the Year award, the “information” Schoen accrues to make personnel decisions and the Giants’ 2024 draft class as the reasons for his confidence.
“I certainly can’t justify it based on the record,” Mara said.
Of course he can’t.
Schoen and Daboll just concluded an historically bad 3-14 campaign in the Giants’ 100th season as a franchise. It was the most losses ever by a single Giants team.
They lost a franchise record 10 straight games and 11 of their final 12, including Sunday’s defeat in Philadelphia. They didn’t win a single game in the NFC East (0-6), their first season ever with no division wins.
And they went 1-8 at home at MetLife Stadium, including 0-8 before a late December win over the sorry Indianapolis Colts.
They have a 19-33-1 overall record through three years, including a 9-7-1 mark, a playoff win in Minnesota and blowout postseason loss in Philly in their first 2022 year.
They then followed that up with an embarrassing 6-11 season in 2023 filled with coaching dysfunction and fingerpointing by Daboll that prompted a coaching exodus by several principles, including defensive coordinator Wink Martindale.
Then Schoen and Daboll oversaw this year’s mess, culminating in a 12-31-1 record in their last 44 regular season games and a 1-12-0 record in 13 meetings with the Eagles and Dallas Cowboys, including playoffs.
Mara said the NFL is “a bottom-line business” and “you’re judged on what your record is. And our record has been pretty lousy right now. And I get that, and I take responsibility for that.” But that rang terribly hollow, because Schoen and Daboll aren’t being held accountable in any way to that bottom line.
Mara also claimed the money remaining on both men’s contracts was not a factor in retaining them, despite an ESPN report that Mara has complained about those payouts to the NFL.
“Absolutely not,” he said. “That’s never been a factor in any coaching decision that we’ve ever made here.”
When asked how the Giants got to 3-14, Mara said: “Because we stunk this year.” But he said he likes the “plan” Schoen and Daboll laid out for him in a Friday meeting between Mara, Schoen and Daboll that lasted “several hours.”
Mara said he spoke to co-owner Steve Tisch after, so it does not appear Tisch was present in that meeting with the GM and coach.
Mara’s diagnosis of the team’s problems started with the team’s most important position.
“Obviously the quarterback is the big issue,” he said.
He then said he asked Daboll: “Do you really believe it’s in your best interest to continue calling the plays?” That echoed Schoen’s preference, which the GM has said on the record previously. “I’m not gonna demand that you do one thing or the other,” Mara said, “but are you better off letting someone else call the plays?'”
Mara then vented about how he was terribly disappointed in the defense.
“Quite frankly I didn’t think our defense played very well this year at all,” he said. “I know when you have an offense like that you put more pressure on your defense, but we need to make improvements there. I’m tired of watching teams go up and down the field on us. So I think that needs to be addressed. I think we need some more depth on the offensive line. The No. 1 thing certainly is the quarterback.”
Mara’s complaint about Shane Bowen’s defense, when Daboll’s offense ranked 31st in the NFL at 16.1 points per game, sounded a lot like Daboll’s fingerpointing at Wink Martindale and the former Giants defensive staff when the 2023 offense floundered and couldn’t score points, as well.
It sounded like Giants ownership enabling the scapegoating that Schoen and Daboll have become experts at running on others to save themselves.
Ultimately, Mara made the argument that he hasn’t liked starting over every two years since 2016, so he figured he’d try something else.
“When you start over, you really set yourselves back,” he said. “And if I’m standing here a year from now and we’re having the same conversation, I’ll take the heat for it. But we still believe it’s the right decision.”
The Giants can’t go back any further, though. This is as bad as it gets.
They’re a laughingstock.
The entire NFL is either unconcerned with them, chuckling at them or looking forward to playing them.
Schoen was asked whether he would get desperate in 2025 and mortgage assets to assemble a winner given Mara’s expectations and the gulf between what the Giants are and where they want to be.
“I’ve got a tremendous amount of respect for the Mara family and the Tisch family. I would never do that,” Schoen said. “I understand we’re going to build this thing the right way. I’m not going to do a Hail Mary for self-preservation or anything like that … They understand where we are and where we’re trying to go. There will be no Hail Mary’s.”
Of course there won’t. Why would Schoen need to throw a Hail Mary when three wins is acceptable in New York?
It’s Backwards to the Future for the Giants.
