Nothing like a season over in late October/early November for Giants fans. Again.
While I maintain focus on Jaxson Dart as the next Giant franchise QB, we still have to process where it all went wrong. We blame injuries, but Schoen’s inability to provide credible depth is exposed. OR, is it the coaching staff that continues to fail at developing the second stringers? Both the HC and GM can point to each other. Fans will point to both.
The roster is good enough this year to have some success. We emphasize 3 critical areas: QB, protect QB, and rush the QB. The Giants have all 3. And despite all the losses, it’s not that hard to also see that this team could have and should have beaten DAL, NO, and DEN. 2-7 could really be 4-5 or even 5-4. That conversation is very different if that is the case.
It is not.
You are what your record says you are.
The truth = 2-7. Confront the Brutal Facts. This is why Daboll is far more certain to lose his job than Schoen. The GM provides the ingredients. The HC bakes the bread. Daboll has enough to be a lot better than 2-7. We know this. We watch Dart extending plays and throwing dimes. The defense is a s*** show.
A report from Nikki Gist, later confirmed and reported by WFAN without attribution (until much later, disgusting) says that Mara wanted to fire Daboll after the Denver loss on Sunday night. Good for Mara. Bad for “cooler” heads. You remember the tons of voices who all wanted the same thing. Do you think it’s not related that the injuries are mounting and the defense is collapsing with clear lack of effort in the second half of games? It’s 9 quarters of collapse.
I’ve seen this movie before as well. When Jim Fassel, in 2003, had enough talent but coached one-too-many “50 minute” games, it slipped into collapse. Like all coaching failures, it wasn’t one single game. It was the Texans game in 2002 (losing to a brand new franchise). It was the 38-14 collapse vs SF in the playoffs. It was the 2003 MNF collapse vs Parcells in his early debut as the new DAL coach. It was the Westbrook punt return. A 4-4 team gave up and finished 4-12. Fassel lost the team and needed to be removed before the end of the season.
When you see arm tackles in the second half of games, it’s a sign. Another sign will be reckless out-of-character Personal Fouls. This is what happens to players. They check out early when the coaching staff fails the team by not being accountable to the players.
The list of failures and lost confidence in Daboll/Schoen shows up in a potpourri of underachievement. That’s what gets coaches fired. Schoen will argue this is not on him. It is as well. My evidence is as simple as Hyatt and Neal. Why are they still on this roster? For what purpose? If they aren’t playing, they should get traded or cut. Why are those two players either playing or gone? They are in a weird twilight zone. It’s a metaphor for 2-7 dysfunction.
Someone on twitter made an interesting remark: remember that Schoen was ready to take Hyatt in Round 2 (if JMS was taken). That’s why they traded up in Round 3. When you have conviction on a guy and are ready to/trade up, you can’t miss. Schoen will point to trading up for Dart as why he deserves to fight another day. Sigh. It’s not as cut and dry for him as it is for Daboll.
On the first pick of Day 3 we wanted Marcus Mbow and Cam Skattebo, in that order. OL is always a higher priority than RB. Yet Schoen took Skattebo, and then also got Mbow ~50 picks later in Round 5. That was the right move. Skattebo changed the identity of the team. Barstool Sports founder David Portnoy lamented how 31 teams had their head up their collective a**es for not taking this guy sooner. Wonder, Schneier, and I all knew at that moment that this pick made the draft. This is why Schoen will be harder to fire. That was a big spot to deliver in. And I still like Mbow to develop with his excellent feet.
Let me be clear here- I believe Schoen should also be fired, but his last two drafts will save him. The 2024 draft has eroded with Nubin and Phillips looking more ordinary in 2025. I push back on that. I put that squarely on Bowen for not coaching to his players’ strengths. Phillips didn’t just all of a sudden not become a “football player,” Wonder’s highest compliment. He’s an attacker and gets into trouble when asked to be passive.
One last thought. With Daboll’s fate about 90% sealed, speculation about Bill Belichick as the next HC is surfacing. While I tend to dismiss most of this as idle chatter, I do feel that it deserves some comment:
(1) he is 73, and it’s a young(er) person’s game (2) he’d solve the defensive woes in one offseason (3) the allure of coaching a team with a young franchise QB in Dart does make it plausible (4) if I was the next HC, I’d make Daboll or Kafka my OC. Remember that Daboll was Belichick’s TE coach from 2013-2016 before Daboll got promoted to OC with the Bills. (5) Belichick knows he’d get a 4 year runway (6) Belichick wants another title