Is Joe Schoen a good general manager?

How long does it take to know and what criteria should we use?

The New York Giants are about to embark on one of the most consequential offseasons in recent history. Maybe not as important as 2022, when John Mara and Steve Tisch had to find a new general manager and head coach, but a crucial offseason as far as whether the people they selected, Joe Schoen and Brian Daboll, will be viewed as the long-term answer or just another failure in the team’s mostly forgettable history for the past decade.

It all begins with Schoen. The question is: Is Schoen a good general manager? How would you define a good general manager?

How many good general managers are there in the NFL?

Before we can evaluate Schoen we need a standard for comparison. Let’s look at a variety of criteria.

Super Bowl rings

Photo by Maddie Meyer/Getty Images

How many Super Bowl rings must a GM get his team to be considered good enough? If you demand multiple rings over, say, a decade, the list is short:

Bill Belichick had three rings in the past decade in New England and six overall. He wasn’t the GM…but really, he was. Was Belichick the head coach, or Belichick the de facto GM, most responsible for those rings? Belichick did not find Tom Brady, his quarterbacks coach Dick Rehbein did. He didn’t play until starter Drew Bledsoe was injured. Belichick brought in other great players over two decades, including Richard Seymour, Wesley Walker, Julian Edelman, Rob Gronkowski, and Devin McCourty. Without Brady, though, New England has not been successful.

Kansas City GM Brett Veach has three rings in six years. He was hired after Patrick Mahomes had been drafted…but as college/pro personnel director he found Mahomes as a freshman and continually advocated for him with head coach Andy Reid and then-GM John Dorsey (whom Veach replaced after the draft). Veach has selected 41 players in six drafts, perhaps 10 of which have become “plus” contributors, most notably L’Jarius Sneed, Nick Bolton, Creed Humphrey, and Trent McDuffie. Travis Kelce, Tyreek Hill, and Chris Jones were already on the roster when he took over what was already a playoff team. Veach gave up first- and second-round picks for Frank Clark. He also sent third- and sixth-round picks to the Giants for Kadarius Toney. And Reid has the final say on decisions.

If a single ring is enough, Rams GM Les Snead has one, plus a Super Bowl loss to the Patriots. Snead, now in his 12th year, presided over five consecutive losing seasons with head coach Jeff Fisher (who was not hired by him), but has had great success since Sean McVay replaced Fisher. Snead’s biggest moves were to trade up to No. 1 to draft Jared Goff and then to trade Goff, two first-round picks, and a third-round pick for Matthew Stafford several years later. His most notable other draft picks have been Aaron Donald, Cooper Kupp, and most recently, Puka Nacua, a pretty impressive group.

Eagles’ GM Howie Roseman also has one ring and one Super Bowl loss. Roseman is the ultimate salary cap manipulator, continually signing players to big contracts with void years. He got his ring with backup quarterback Nick Foles replacing injured 2016 No. 2 pick Carson Wentz in 2017 and fell just short of a ring in 2022. His team spiraled downward late in 2023 and went out in the first round despite being NFC East champions. Roseman has hit on multiple great offensive and defensive linemen in the draft over a decade. He swung and missed multiple times on wide receivers in the first and second rounds (Nelson Agholor, Jalen Reagor, J.J. Arcega-Whitseide) before engineering trades for DeVonta Smith and A.J. Brown. Quarterback Jalen Hurts had a surprisingly good third year and earned a mega-contract, but disappointed in 2023. He would incur $104M in dead money if released this year. Speaking of dead money, Roseman swallowed $33M of it to get rid of Wentz after he was injured and declined.

Jason Licht has been GM for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for a decade. The team had a losing record five of his first six years. Then he signed Tom Brady and got a ring one year and a Divisional Round loss the next year. Since then the Buccaneers have hovered near .500 but won a very weak NFC South Division both times, not getting past the Divisonal Round.

The Denver Broncos won a Super Bowl in 2015 with an ancient Peyton Manning in his fourth and final season there after being hired by GM John Elway. The Broncos contended every year and got to the Super Bowl one other time (but were blown out by Seattle). After Manning retired Denver had one more winning season and has been under .500 ever since, with new GM George Paton now in year 4.

The Seattle Seahawks won a Super Bowl in 2013 and almost had a second one the following year under GM John Schneider (although Pete Carroll had personnel authority). Schneider personally scouted Russell Wilson and became convinced his 5-foot-11 height would not limit him, but that meant that Wilson was still on the board in Round 3. Schneider drafted Bobby Wagner in Round 2 of the same draft. In previous drafts he had acquired the entire “Legion of Boom” secondary. Seattle has been mostly competitive ever since, with six playoff appearances, but has not gotten past the Divisional Round.

How many of these should be considered good GMs?

Super Bowl appearance(s) but no wins

Jeff Siner/Charlotte Observer/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

A number of teams have gotten to the Super Bowl in the past decade but not won one: San Francisco twice, Carolina, Atlanta, and Cincinnati. John Lynch has come close twice for the the 49ers, but he came in after head coach Kyle Shanahan. Lynch has drafted some of the NFL’s best players but taken a strange path to the quarterback position, wasting tremendous draft assets to move up from No. 12 to No. 3, using the pick to draft an inexperienced small-school QB, Trey Lance, then trading him after multiple injuries in favor of the last pick in the draft, Brock Purdy, who almost won the most recent Super Bowl.

Atlanta (Thomas Dimitroff, Terry Fontenot, GMs) lost a Super Bowl it should have won and has been bad or mediocre since. Cincinnati (Duke Tobin, Director of Player Personnel) was one play away from a ring and is considered a contender every year now, but injuries to QB Joe Burrow and the obstacle of Kansas City have frustrated their efforts.

The Panthers had a good run mid-decade, making the playoffs in four of five consecutive seasons, including teams that went 12-4, 15-1, and 11-5, and got to the Super Bowl even though they didn’t get a ring. Some team should have hired the former GM from that team, no? (Just kidding, don’t roast me.) Maybe previous success isn’t everything – Cam Newton and Luke Kuechly were already there when the GM-who-shall-not-be-named arrived, by the way.

If not championships, then what?

Buffalo GM Brandon Beane moved up to draft Josh Allen, an inaccurate quarterback from a non-prominent school. Three years later he became one of the best in the NFL, but the Bills haven’t reached a Super Bowl and have only gotten to the AFC Championship Game once.

Baltimore under GM Ozzie Newsome, like Buffalo, moved up to draft Lamar Jackson, whom no one else would take in Round 1. He too is now one of the best in the NFL, but the Ravens also have not gotten to the Super Bowl and only made the AFC Championship Game once under GM Eric DeCosta, who replaced Newsome in 2019.

Is the GM of an annual contender who can’t get to the Super Bowl a good GM?

Miami went from terrible a few years ago to yearly contender after getting head coach Mike McDaniel but hasn’t gotten anywhere in the playoffs. Cleveland went from 0-16 in 2017 to sometimes contender but has never gotten further. The Steelers never have a losing season but haven’t been to a Super Bowl since 2010. None of these teams have elite quarterbacks (though Pittsburgh did during much of their Super Bowl drought). Their teams have had some success, but does that mean their GMs are good if they never reach the Super Bowl?

The Cowboys always look like contenders during the regular season, and especially last season when Dak Prescott played more like an elite quarterback than ever before, but they always collapse come playoff time. Their GM can’t be fired. Same thing for the Packers under Aaron Rodgers, a sure Hall of Fame QB who felt he wasn’t given sufficient help, but their GM, Brian Gutekunst, hasn’t been fired, and the Packers’ resurgence in 2023 may suggest why. The Chargers have what most people think is one of the top 3-4 QBs in the NFL but haven’t won a playoff game with Justin Herbert; blame for that lay squarely on the head coach and GM, both of whom are now gone. The Lions made a rapid ascent from the bottom of the league to contender in three years under new GM Brad Holmes and new head coach Dan Campbell, but the jury is still out since they’ve only had one successful year (as Giants fans will surely agree, given their reaction to the Giants’ 2023).

The bottom line

The purpose of this review of recent NFL history is that we tend to judge general managers by how successful they have been, especially recently, and success = championships in the minds of most of us. By that metric, though, very few teams have good general managers (and the same for head coaches):

• New England and Kansas City have been the most successful franchises of this century, but that has been because they happened to stumble upon two of the greatest QBs in NFL history, neither one found by the team’s GM. Both teams have Hall of Fame-bound head coaches, but neither of them got to a Super Bowl without their all-time great quarterback.
• The most successful GMs either inherited a contending team or have been given time to develop one. It’s notable that Les Snead wasn’t fired after five losing seasons to start his tenure; that Howie Roseman wasn’t fired after a disastrous 4-11-1 season followed by $33M in dead money to get rid of his hand-picked quarterback; that Brian Gutekunst, hired in 2018, was not fired despite arguably wasting Rodgers’ last five seasons in Green Bay; and that Jason Licht has survived a decade as GM despite mostly bad or mediocre seasons punctuated only by a convenient rent-a-GOAT free agent signing in his seventh year.

Yet Schoen in many people’s minds is on the hot seat this year after one bad season, despite a Divisional Round appearance in his first year.

Evaluating Schoen’s moves

The list above suggests that unless you can find one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time, you’re probably getting shut out of a Super Bowl Championship in most years. Maybe if you can find a great head coach you have a chance once in a while but no more often than that. That’s today’s NFL, in which it is very difficult for even good defenses to shut down great quarterbacks the way the Giants’ defense was able to limit Brady in their two most recent Super Bowl wins, as well as Elway and Jim Kelly in their first two Super Bowl wins.

Here’s the roster that Schoen inherited as of Feb. 1, 2022:

Courtesy of Ourlads

Courtesy of Ourlads

On offense, Andrew Thomas, Darius Slayton, and Daniel Jones will be back in 2024. Saquon Barkley, Ben Bredeson, and Matt Peart may or may not be. Probably no one else on the 2/1/22 depth chart above will be.

On defense, Dexter Lawrence and Azeez Ojulari will return. Xavier McKinney and Aaron Robinson may or may not. Most likely no one else on the 2/1/22 depth chart will be unless Adoree’ Jackson and/or Darnay Holmes are signed to inexpensive veteran deals.

On special teams, Graham Gano and Casey Kreiter will be back. Whether mostly special teams players such as Gary Brightwell, Carter Coughlin, and Cam Brown will return is unknown.

That’s a pretty damning statement about what Schoen was given to work with – at best, four players who are likely starters for 2024. By comparison, about a dozen key starters for Kansas City who were there in 2022 will return in 2024, including Mahomes, Travis Kelce, and 3/5 of the offensive line. Given the bare cupboard he found, what can we say about what Schoen has done as Giants GM?

Hired Brian Daboll

Here are the head coaches hired by NFL teams in 2022: Brian Daboll, Mike McDaniel, Kevin O’Connell, Doug Pederson, Todd Bowles, Matt Eberflus, Dennis Allen, Lovie Smith, Josh McDaniels, Nathaniel Hackett.

Out of that list, whom would you have preferred over Daboll? Mike McDaniel perhaps (the pressers would be a lot more fun to be sure). O’Connell, Pederson, and maybe Bowles were good hires as well. Daboll did an outstanding job in his first year to create a Divisional Round team out of relatively little talent. The rest of the new hires, not so much. Good coaches aren’t easy to find.

The wheels came off last year because of injuries to many key players, and that exposed some of Daboll’s weaknesses in how he interacts with his staff and in some of his late-game decision-making. 2024 is a key year for Daboll to figure out how to better navigate his relationships, but there is no question that he can get the most out of limited talent. Daboll got Tommy DeVito to defeat the same Green Bay team that embarrassed Dallas and almost upset San Francisco in the playoffs. He beat the same team with Aaron Rodgers at quarterback the season before, as well as leading the only NFC team that has ever beaten Lamar Jackson. (Ask Rob Gronkowski, who told Kay Adams that if he were to ever come back to the NFL he’d want to join Daboll.).

2022 draft

The bad: Evan Neal has been a disaster, yet Neal was universally considered a top 10 talent by draft analysts. Kayvon Thibodeaux has been inconsistent but at times an impact player. Cor’Dale Flott and Dane Belton have been useful but mediocre, while Joshua Ezeudu and Marcus McKethan have been disappointing, but also injured, as has Darrian Beavers. Daniel Bellinger looked like a steal as a rookie but did little in his second year. D.J. Davidson may stick as a backup tackle, about what you’d expect as a late-round pick.

That leaves two players. Wan’Dale Robinson elicited the reaction “Who?” from many fans as a second round pick, and his mid-season rookie year injury set him back. Now CeeDee Lamb thinks he’s a “sleeper” in a discussion of top NFL receivers:

Fifth round linebacker Micah McFadden looked absolutely lost as a rookie. Fast forward one year, and he is a key part of what now looks like one of the Giants’ most solid position groups:

2023 draft

It’s too early to really know after only one season, but Deonte Banks looks like he can be the answer for the Giants at CB1. John Michael Schmitz may turn out to be a good pick, but his rookie season was pretty rough. Jalin Hyatt showed flashes of being the deep threat the Giants have been looking for, but it remains to be seen whether he can get open against NFL defensive backs on a consistent basis. The other draft picks made little to no impact in 2023.

The signing of Tommy DeVito as an undrafted free agent has to be acknowledged too. He looked overmatched once defenses caught up to him, but he did win three games for the Giants, including a Monday night comeback over a rising Green Bay team.

What’s missing from both of these drafts is a single elite NFL player…so far. The Giants haven’t had one of those rookie sensations since Saquon Barkley in 2018, and before that, Odell Beckham Jr. in 2014. Thibodeaux has that potential but needs consistency. Banks could become an elite CB with more consistency too. The same is true of Hyatt. And Giants fans will hope that CeeDee is right about Wan’Dale, and that McFadden builds on a good 2023. It’s possible that in a few years we’ll look back and identify as many as five or six really good players that emerged from these two drafts. If so, that’s about as good as the best GMs are able to do over time. Finding all-Pro level talent is something Schoen has to show he and his staff can do. It’s not enough by itself (Gettleman drafted Dexter Lawrence and Andrew Thomas, for example) but it’s part of what his legacy will be.

The other piece of his legacy is how he deals with the quarterback situation. The odds are that the next Brady or Mahomes is not there in the 2024 draft. If Schoen can find the next Allen or Jackson and make the Giants a yearly contender but not a Super Bowl winning team, is that enough? If not, there are 30 other GMs in the NFL who are on the hot seat as well.

Free agency

Schoen never had a chance in 2022 free agency, given the Giants’ dire cap situation. He mostly made the right decisions on which in-house free agents not to keep and got the Giants’ cap situation under control. He was eviscerated for letting James Bradberry leave, but two years later Bradberry appears to be in decline. He mainly plugged holes with cheap but useful free agents such as Jon Feliciano. Mark Glowinski, Isaiah Hodgins, and Richie James. His most useful signing was Tyrod Taylor, which paid few dividends in 2022 but did in 2023, as Taylor invigorated the offense, especially the deep passing game, late in the season. A low-key useful signing was punter Jamie Gillan, who has improved over his two years and become an effective field-flipper for the Giants.

In 2023 Schoen hit a home run with the signing of Bobby Okereke. The price seemed steep at $10M per year but no one is complaining now, as Okereke had a terrific 2023 and has become a leader of the defense. A’Shawn Robinson and Rakeem Nunez-Roches were unspectacular but modest cost signings who provided defensive line depth. Parris Campbell was a swing and a miss but at a modest cost for only one year. Gunner Olszewski, a desperation mid-season pickup to return punts, was actually an eye-opener and will return in 2024.

Olszewski was an example of the one weakness of Schoen’s offseason strategy in 2023 – not having a plan for injuries at certain positions. This was most noticeable on the offensive line, and especially at tackle, where Tyre Phillips was not originally re-signed and the Giants often had guards playing left tackle after Andrew Thomas’ injury. That misstep compromised the entire season, as Giants’ quarterbacks ran for their lives almost every game.

Trades

Schoen has made trade-downs and trade-ups in the draft, and the wisdom of those can’t yet be fully evaluated. In 2022 the players he got after trading down were Robinson, Belton, and McFadden, which look good at the moment. The players he got from trading up in 2023 were Banks and Hyatt, which look pretty good as well.

Schoen’s biggest trade was to unload Toney to Kansas City for a third- and a sixth-round pick. Veach might say that Toney’s punt return against Philadelphia in the Super Bowl alone was worth the price (Giants fans might agree), but overall, getting those picks was worth getting rid of a headache. Schoen flipped the third to get Darren Waller. Waller was disappointing his first season as a Giant as injuries again plagued him but he was still their second-leading receiver. It is still unknown whether Tre Hawkins III, drafted with the other pick, will ever be a useful NFL cornerback.

His second biggest trade was sending Leonard Williams to Seattle for a second-round 2024 pick and a fifth-round 2025 pick. Losing Williams weakened the defensive line but the season was already lost by then. He was not coming back in 2024, so getting that return for him was excellent. It remains to be seen how Schoen uses it.

Schoen gave up a seventh-round pick to get Isaiah Simmons from Arizona. That was an excellent move since Simmons became the regular passing situation linebacker and played well in that role. It will be even better if Simmons returns to the Giants in 2024.

Contracts

Schoen correctly got the Giants’ two best players, Dexter Lawrence and Andrew Thomas, signed to long-term contracts. Thomas’ seven-year contract made him the second-highest paid tackle, but in time that will look like great value with the ever-rising salary cap. The same goes for Lawrence, whose contract is only for four years but at less than Jeffery Simmons got. He also wisely brought back the underappreciated Darius Slayton for two years at a very reasonable cost considering he’s been the Giants leading receiver every year he’s been in the NFL but one.

The biggest stain on Schoen’s tenure was the mishandling of the Saquon Barkley and Daniel Jones contract situations. Not getting Barkley under contract was the worse of the two, because it was probably avoidable, though Barkley’s side was just as much at fault. Had it happened, Schoen would have had the franchise tag to use on Jones and might have gotten a multi-year contract at a lower cost. The contract is not terrible, since the Giants can get out after 2024, but most people expected it could get done for a number in the mid-30s.

This coming free agency period will be the first in which Schoen has some room to work, with $23M in effective cap space (after accounting for the signing of draftees).

Is Schoen a good GM?

It’s too soon to tell, but overall he has done a fairly good job digging the Giants out of a terrible cap situation, made some good draft picks, and made several good free agent signings. In the longer term, he’ll be compared to GMs of bad teams hired at about the same time he was: Brad Holmes of Detroit (who’s been there a year longer), Ryan Poles of Chicago, Kwesi Adofo-Mensah of Minnesota, Ran Carthon of Tennessee (who’s been there only one year) and Monti Ossenfort of Arizona (also there only one year), as well as Joe Hortiz (just hired by the Chargers) and Adam Peters (just hired by Washington).

The Giants interviewed every one of those people for their GM position except Holmes (who was already GM in Detroit) and Adofo-Mensah. The other new GMs have taken a variety of approaches to rebuilding their teams. Poles blew up the entire roster in Chicago and traded the No. 1 pick for D.J. Moore and other draft picks; he was fortunate that the team he traded it to was so bad that he once again has the No. 1 pick – will he replace Justin Fields with Caleb Williams? Ossenfort doesn’t seem to be blowing things up in Arizona, but we’ll have to wait and see what he does with that No. 4 pick in this year’s draft – roll with Kyler Murray or draft a quarterback? Adofo-Mensah has embraced what he calls a “competitive rebuild,” which seems to mean getting rid of a number of higher-priced veterans but planning to bring back Kirk Cousins after an Achilles injury. Seemingly so has Carthon, who did draft a quarterback but has also added a number of veteran free agents.

Maybe that’s the best way to answer my question: Would you trade the Giants’ situation and Schoen’s approach to it for those of Chicago, Arizona, or Minnesota?