Within New York Giants co-owner John Mara’s statement that head coach Brian Daboll and general manager Joe Schoen will return for the 2025 season and his stern warning that his patience with them is running out came the declaration that finding the next franchise quarterback “is the No. 1 issue for us.”
Despite going 3-14 — one of the worst seasons ever in the team’s 100-year existence — the architects of this season’s Giants team will get one more chance to figure it out. Most of those prospects lie with the team’s quarterback search, which should provide more than one path to consider this offseason.
“It’s the most important position in football,” Schoen said on Monday. “You look at the roster right now, and [Tommy DeVito] is the only quarterback on the roster… We’ve done a lot of work on the college guys. We’ll look at free agency. We can also look throughout the draft, potential trade opportunities. We’ll look at any avenue we can to upgrade the position.”
The Giants will hold the No. 3 pick at the 2025 NFL Draft, which could potentially present them with an opportunity to pick either Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders or Miami’s Cam Ward. That is if the Tennessee Titans and Cleveland Browns — both of whom could use a quarterback, too — do not swipe them from New York’s clutches.
Should that happen, the Giants have the draft capital needed to help facilitate a trade for a veteran quarterback. The free-agent market does not appear to be the most inspiring considering the biggest names predicted to be available will be Sam Darnold, Kirk Cousins, or even Aaron Rodgers.
But giving Schoen and Daboll one last chance to find the right quarterback is a considerable gamble to make considering how wrong they were about Daniel Jones.
After his flash-in-the-pan 2022 season, Giants brass inked the quarterback to a four-year, $160 million deal that ultimately devolved into 16 healthy games, a 3-13 record, and a release by Week 10 this year.
“I wouldn’t change what we did,” Schoen said. “When I reflect on how things went down with Daniel, it’s the information you have. We won 10 games [in 2022], we won a road playoff game. I just watched [Daboll for four years as offensive coordinator with the Buffalo Bills] with Josh Allen… I got a lot of confidence in the coaching staff. I have a lot of confidence in our process. We’ve done these quarterback deep dives for the last two or three years. The players we have been high on have gone on to have solid rookie years or second years, whatever it may be… if it’s draft or free agency or who we sign, we’ll be able to develop them. I wish it had worked out with Daniel, but it didn’t. That doesn’t deter me from taking one and having a lot of faith in the people in place to develop whoever it is.”
Faith is the only thing that is keeping Schoen and Daboll with the Giants for the next calendar year.
