Giants Hire Bills’ Joe Schoen as Next General Manager

It’s official, the New York Giants have found their new guy in the front office. 

The Giants announced early Friday afternoon that they have hired Buffalo Bills assistant general manager Joe Schoen to become the new general manager. The decision comes after two weeks of interviewing nine different candidates over Zoom and inviting three finalists to East Rutherford to meet with ownership and members of the personnel department. Schoen becomes the Giants’ fifth general manager in the last 41 years, and he enters with arguably the biggest to-do list since George Young stepped into the building in 1979. 

Following the end of the 2021 season, which ended in a 4-13 team record and dropped his resume to 19-46 overall in four years, former general manager Dave Gettleman elected to step down from his post and entire retirement. Gettleman’s announcement was long expected given his age and the inability to make good on his promises to fix the Giants struggling offensive line. Schoen now steps into his place much to the approval of the fanbase.

“Now, the work begins,” Schoen said in a statement released by the team. “My immediate focus is to hire a head coach, with whom I will work in lockstep with to create a collaborative environment for our football operations.”

Attacking the head coaching search will certainly be Schoen’s first task once he settles into the new office this week. The Giants are looking for their fourth head coach since 2016 after Joe Judge was reluctantly dismissed by the team after a six-game landslide and numerous press conferences filled with rant-length responses to end the season. Judge became the third consecutive head coach to be fired by the Giants after two seasons or less, joining predecessors Pat Shurmur and Ben McAdoo. 

This time around, the Giants are affording carte blanche to Schoen to command the team’s search, a power that didn’t allow Gettleman to use when Judge was hired back in January 2020. Co-owners John Mara understood the assignment that the ability to hand pick a head coach was going to be a commonly asked question of most general manager candidates. Along with obliging, Mara knew the time had come for him to take a minor step back and let the football minds do the dirty work while still executing his oversight over all final decisions. 

Schoen said in his statement that he will seek out a head coach who “possesses the ability to lead an organization and the ability to motivate and develop players”. He certainly believes two of his colleagues from Buffalo fit that bill–the Giants are set to hold interviews with Bills’ offensive coordinator Brian Daboll and defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier–and it would not be surprising if one of them lands in MetLife Stadium next season. 

Other names in the mix for interviews are Dallas Cowboys defensive coordinator Dan Quinn, formerly the head coach of the Atlanta Falcons from 2015-2020, and former Dolphins head coach Brian Flores. The Giants have an interview scheduled with Quinn on Monday and have requested permission to speak with Flores about their role, who according to sources views the Giants as his first choice for a new gig. Flores is a Brooklyn native and an early favorite among the fanbase, but his affinity and desire to want to bring over Texans quarterback Deshaun Watson in a trade may be a turn off to the Giants’ ownership that hides far away from any signs of controversy. 

Schoen’s biggest challenge ahead will be in reconstructing the roster mess left behind by the Gettleman era. He will have to use the Giants draft capital to build up a broken offensive line that has made playing successive football almost impossible for the quarterback and those in the backfield. Much work needs to be done to address the Giants fragile salary cap situation that was projected to be around $9 million over heading into the offseason, per Over the Cap. 

Not to mention, Schoen must also make some serious evaluations into several big name players who are waiting for contract extensions, such as Daniel Jones and Saquon Barkley. Jones is expected to return as the starting quarterback in 2022 on the fourth year of his rookie contract valued at around $8.3 million, but he is eligible for either an extension or the fifth year option. Barkley is entering the final year of his contract at around $7.2 million and a similar situation exists for the runningback whose career has hit a wall due to numerous injuries. 

“On the personnel side, we will begin to evaluate our roster and prepare for the draft and free agency,” Shoen added. “Our goal is to build a roster that will be competitive, have depth and, most importantly, win football games.”

In a career that has spanned over 20 years, Schoen has risen through the ranks of several front offices to finally lead his own operation in New York. He started as an intern for the Carolina Panthers back in 2000 before moving on to personnel departments with the Panthers, Dolphins, and Bills. The Carolina job was where he met future boss, friend, and current Bills GM Brandon Beane, whom he joined in Orchard Park in 2018 as the assistant general manager. 

Since Schoen and Beane reunited in Buffalo with head coach Sean McDermott, the Bills have returned to the level of success they saw in the early 1990’s when they went to four straight Super Bowls. This season marks the fourth in the last five that Buffalo has made the postseason and the second consecutive winning the AFC East division crown. 

Last season, Buffalo fell short of their first Super Bowl since 1993 in the AFC Championship game, losing to the Kansas City Chiefs, the eventual runner ups in the Super Bowl. This Sunday, the two squads will meet again for a battle to decide who gets to return to the conference championship against the Cincinnati Bengals. 

Among Schoen’s notable achievements in Buffalo was his involvement in the draft process that led to the Bills’ selecting quarterback Josh Allen in 2018. Beane told reporters Friday that Schoen was instrumental in the scouting and evaluation process of all quarterbacks that offseason and his opinions of Allen helped sway the Bills’ war room to draft their current franchise quarterback. Allen has since bloomed into one of the most impactful players in the entire NFL and has the Bills’ on the cusp of another deep postseason run. 

In punching his ticket to the Big Apple, Schoen will have big shoes to fill as he tries to prove himself and return the Giants woebegone franchise back to their winning ways and to being an annual contender. The one thing Giants fans won’t have to worry about is his work ethic and ability to lead, and passion for the responsibilities in front of him.

“Joe’s a worker,” Beane said. “There’s no magic eyes that any of us have [to find talent]. It’s about doing the work. the New York Giants will never have to worry that Joe didn’t invest the right time in evaluating players, college or pro.”

“He’s a great evaluator, he’s a great communicator, he’s a great leader. He can talk to the owner, he can talk to anybody – sponsor, fans – he just knows how to relate, and he’s very personable.”

Schoen will certainly have all the support from Giants ownership to ensure his tenure takes off on the highest of notes. 

“Joe is the kind of exceptional leader we sought to oversee our football operations,” Giants co-owner Steve Tisch said. “We will do whatever it takes to support Joe’s vision and strategic plan for success. We are excited to begin this next chapter with Joe as our general manager.”

As he said in his statement, the work starts now and it’s a new era for New York Giants football.