Giants players make alarming comments after Brian Daboll, Joe Schoen decisions

Shortly after, New York Giants co-owner John Mara confirmed on Monday that he was retaining both head coach Brian Daboll and general manager Joe Schoen, and multiple Giants players publicly backed those decisions.  

It appears some locker room members privately sang different tunes early into the offseason. 

“Multiple players said they were ‘surprised’ Daboll was retained,” ESPN’s Jordan Raanan revealed in a lengthy article published on Friday. “Some said they were fine with the decision, in part, because he’s a player-friendly coach — open to feedback and incorporates a favorable schedule that hardly wore them down. …The players seem to like Daboll, the person, even though they see signs his program is not destined for success.” 

Since the Daboll-Schoen partnership guided the 2022 Giants to a road playoff win, Big Blue has gone 9-26 (including the postseason) and is coming off a disastrous 3-14 campaign that included the franchise parting ways with Week 1 starting quarterback Daniel Jones in November. Multiple players previously made it known they felt current Philadelphia Eagles running back Saquon Barkley’s “presence in the locker room was underestimated by the Giants’ brass” before the club let Barkley reach free agency last March. At least one player told Raanan that “it’s like your only option is to blindly trust” that New York’s regime knows what it’s doing. 

“It’s like they make moves off Twitter,” a different league source “with knowledge of the Giants’ inner workings” told Raanan.

The Giants hold the third overall pick for a 2025 draft class that, at best, features two first-round talents at quarterback — Miami’s Cam Ward and Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders. Barring a surprising development, Schoen will have to either make a blockbuster trade to get one of those signal-callers or address the position later in the draft after he signs a veteran “bridge option” in free agency. 

“Insecurity, lack of accountability, conviction and veteran leadership in the locker room were some of the reasons pinpointed by those who took stock of what went wrong,” Raanan added about what “20 players and coaches” said about the Giants’ 2024 season. “This kind of calamity left those on the outside (and inside) wondering whether Schoen and Daboll should be the ones making the decision about the next quarterback or anything else in the organization.”

For whatever reason, Mara trusts that Schoen and Daboll can make such massive calls and begin a turnaround that includes the club competing for at least a playoff berth this coming December. Along with finding a new starting quarterback for 2025, it seems Schoen and Daboll will also have to win back some players they lost during a season just about everybody involved should want to forget.