IT’S JOE TIME!
Combine kicks off crucial time for Giant GM’s rebuild
INDIANAPOLIS — The Giants hired Joe Schoen more than a year ago to rebuild their roster and turn around their franchise. The GM laid a solid foundation in Year 1.
He tore down parts of the team he had inherited, hired a like-minded head coach to create alignment, and made calculated additions under tight salary cap restrictions to get the Giants back to the playoffs.
Step one: check.
Schoen wasn’t hired for what he could do in 2022, though. He was hired for what he is about to undertake in the next 16 days, beginning at this week’s
NFL Combine:
The difficult, franchise-defining decisions that will set the Giants’ course for a hopefully brighter future.
He must take on the Daniel Jones negotiations up to the March 7 franchise tag deadline and likely beyond; the Saquon Barkley talks, at least until the start of free agency on March 15; the use of salary cap space on the open market (now that the Giants finally have some again).
Then those decisions will impact how Schoen runs the 2023 NFL Draft in late April, where his second class will make this Giants roster much more his own.
This won’t be easy.
Schoen, while no longer a rookie GM, is sailing his maiden voyage as the final say on the fate of a franchise quarterback and, therefore, on the long-term direction of the franchise itself.
He provided a reminder of that in January, when he appeared to misstep by saying definitively that Jones would be back in 2023 before beginning negotiations with the pending unrestricted free agent quarterback.
But what matters now is what Schoen can get done in the next three weeks to keep building the Giants towards sustainability, rather than compromising on his long-term process for a quick fix.
For starters: the quarterback.
The Giants want to bring Jones back and can use the franchise tag to keep him here for another year if they need to. And there is a chance that Schoen and Jones’ new agency, Athletes First, won’t start light years apart when they get down to brass tacks.
But there are league sources who believe Jones is not interested in any hometown discount — that the quarterback is prioritizing advocacy of his own career and value, coming off a year in which the Giants’ leadership declined his fifth-year option and consistently were reluctant to praise or anoint him (until he won a playoff game).
Schoen holds the franchise tag as a trump card. However, using it would eat up $32.4 million in cap space for 2023, preventing some other roster upgrades. And that might only delay an inevitable Jones departure if the negotiations go poorly.
So Schoen and the Giants owe it to themselves to scout the quarterback class at this week’s NFL Combine and to keep the Buffalo Bills-Josh Allen-trade up model in the back of their minds.
Keep an eye on Kentucky’s Will Levis, a 6-3, 232-pound passer with a strong arm and mobility, who could fit the bill as their type of QB.
Next there’s the running back. The Giants want to retain Barkley. He just doesn’t seem to have any leverage at all to command a higher price.
If Schoen has to tag Jones, he won’t have it available to keep Barkley for another season at $10.1 million. So Barkley would either have to take the team’s deal or hit free agency.
If Schoen does tag Barkley at $10.1 million, that’s no long-term security for the running back and $2 million less than the multi-year offer he already turned down.
Would he agree to play on that tag? Would he even be wise to? Another sticky situation.
The business won’t stop at Jones and Barkley.
Safety Julian Love had a career season in his contract year. Both sides are fond of one another. But how high will Schoen be willing to go for his captain, leading tackler and defensive play-caller?
Defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence is due for a raise. Left tackle Andrew Thomas is eligible for an extension for the first time in his career after a huge season.
Several Giants are pending free agents requiring new contracts or they’ll hit the open market, including wide receivers Darius Slayton and Richie James, offensive linemen Jon Feliciano and Nick Gates, edge Jihad Ward and punter Jamie Gillan, among others.
And the Giants’ list of needs in free agency and the draft is long, from receiver to corner to inside linebacker to interior offensive linemen and defensive line depth. The Giants will be looking everywhere.
N.C. State inside linebacker Isaiah Moore, a projected mid-to-late-round pick, met with the Giants’ top brass and impressed them at the East-West Shrine game, for example. That’s a position of need for this young and growing team. choen must juggle all of this to point the Giants in the right direction. It starts with the quarterback. It starts with some complicated conversations with Jones’ new people.
But this is what Schoen was hired for: Not so much for last season’s cleanup or playoff appearance, but for the franchise-defining (and possibly franchise-altering) calls he must make in the next three weeks.
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