The New York Giants Are Staying The Course. Now They Need Patience

On Monday, the New York Giants decided that after three seasons in which the team went from 9 wins to 6 wins to 3 wins, the right course of action was to maintain the status quo, with president and CEO John Mara acknowledging that the decision to retain head coach Brian Daboll and general manager Joe Schoen would not be a popular one with a broad cross section of the team’s fanbase.

“I understand, believe me, that that’s not going to be the most popular decision in Giant land,” Mara told reporters on Monday. “But we believe it’s the right decision for us going forward. So, with that, I thought I’d come out and face the music and listen to your questions.”

The decision itself isn’t an indefensible one. As Mara made clear, Daboll’s success in Year 1 didn’t disappear simply because of the team’s struggles in Year 2, when Daniel Jones got hurt, or in Year 3, when his failure to return to his pre-injury form immediately sent the Giants spiraling into a lost 3-14 season.

Nor has Joe Schoen’s tenure been devoid of player evaluation successes, from Malik Nabers and Tyrone Tracy Jr. in the 2024 draft, the team’s likely top wideout and top running back, respectively, of the future.

“I think the draft class that we had was really productive,” Mara said. “I think all six of those guys are going to help us a great deal. I thought the free agents we brought in, including (outside linebacker) Brian Burns, were really a big plus. I think the staff that he’s assembled around him and the process that we go through now and the information that we have in making personnel decisions is better than I’ve ever seen it before.”

Here’s where the way forward starts to get tricky. Mara described himself as running out of patience. Daboll and Schoen both declined to call making the playoffs in 2025 a must, which is entirely reasonable — even the descent from winning a playoff game to the third overall pick in the 2025 draft took two full seasons. Expecting one offseason to transform the Giants back into contenders is unfair to Daboll and Schoen both.

But neither was given a contract extension, either. So defining what constitutes success was elusive in all three press conferences held on Monday.

“When you have a belief in the two individuals that are leading the organization, you have to have the patience to stay with it,” Mara said. “Again, if we’re standing here, 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 that it’s the right decision going forward.”

It’s admirable. But left unsaid is what the Giants need to do to change that conversation. A jump to 6-11 would be real progress, particularly if it comes with further development from Nabers and Tracy, along with full seasons from early-season standouts like rookie tight end Theo Johnson and tackle Andrew Thomas. (It can be argued that the season’s true turning point was the season-ending injury to Thomas, destabilizing the offensive line, not the decision to move on from Jones.)

But that’s probably not a playoff team. Would that be enough to satisfy the fans? Or Mara?

Even the way Schoen laid out the team’s current asset outlook is both accurate and reveals long-term thinking.

“We’re picking third in the draft,” Schoen told reporters Monday. “As we built this thing, when Daniel had the ACL a year ago, not knowing how he was going to come back, we also had to be conscious of what may be on the horizon. So, you’re working on parallel tracks.

“So, we’re sitting here with 40-plus million dollars in cap space and over 100 the following year. So, some teams are in this situation where maybe they need a quarterback and they don’t have the financial pieces or the draft resources. So, we are in good shape from that standpoint in terms of improving the roster via free agency, trades, or through the draft. I’ve got a lot of confidence in the people in the building, the process and I’ve got a lot of faith in the plan that we have in place moving forward.”

Mara and Daboll both mentioned that whether Daboll will be calling offensive plays moving forward is once again an open question. Mara took particular exception to how the defense played this year. Kicker Graham Gano will be 38 and punter Jaime Gillan is a free agent.

So other than offense, defense and special teams, the Giants are all set.

Again, none of this is hopeless. Schoen’s approach to roster-building has not been nearly as self-defeating as his predecessor, Dave Gettleman, and it is just as astonishing in hindsight that Schoen built a nine-win team despite the salary cap nightmare he inherited as it was at the time. The team still played hard for Daboll, and none of the telltale signs of a lost locker room were present, even late in the season.

But truly: this team needs to dig out of a huge hole. And it isn’t as if Mara chose keeping Daboll and Schoen over the easy, obvious path to reaching 14-3 by next year. This will be a slog no matter who is at the helm.

Accordingly, there’s no real logic to keeping Daboll and Schoen on for just one more year, a season when the team will need to decide on a long-term quarterback strategy, or if it simply patches next season, won’t be a season to truly judge coach or GM on.

For his part, Schoen insisted that his job security would have no impact on the effort he makes to change the success arc of the New York Giants.

“I’ve got a tremendous amount of respect for the Mara family and the Tisch family. I would never do that,” he 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. We have a plan in place that we believe in and we’re going to stick with that. Again, I’ve got a tremendous amount of respect for ownership and what they believe in. We have really good communication with them. They understand where we are and where we’re trying to go. There will be no Hail Marys.”

Considering the limitations on building teams through free agency — something his predecessor displayed again and again — this is wise. But Mara didn’t sound like a man who wanted to witness too many more losing seasons. Nor did he commit to the duo long-term, though he answered the question about why this wasn’t a two-year commitment this way:

“I understand the question, but I’m not going to put any kind of time limit on it. But I certainly understand where you’re going with that.”

For the Giants to succeed, they’re going to need to embrace where they’re going as well. Because what’s ahead could be successful. But now that they’ve chosen to stick with Daboll and Schoen, a decision that probably leaves the fans less patient than ever, it will require quite a bit of it from the team’s owner.