Tom Rock: Giants GM Joe Schoen's offseason 'a lot less stressful' with Jaxson Dart as starting quarterback
Giants GM Joe Schoen, right and quarterback Jaxson Dart. Credit: AP / Michael Conroy; Jim McIsaac
PHOENIX — One of the many “Hard Knocks” memes Joe Schoen will wear for the rest of his career has him chatting with fellow general manager Ryan Poles at a scouting event shortly after the Bears had drafted Caleb Williams as their franchise quarterback. Schoen, who at that point was still scouring the planet’s Pro Days for his own, says with an air of exhaustion: “Must be nice.”
So is it?
“Oh yeah!” Schoen said excitedly on Monday at the NFL’s annual meeting.
A year after Jaxson Dart was selected and then blossomed as a rookie, the Giants are enjoying their first offseason in quite a while — and the first in Schoen’s tenure — during which the question of who will be playing the most important position on the field is undisputedly answered. Even that one brief window in which they all thought Daniel Jones was 'The Guy' and they signed him to a four-year contract included some hard work and decision making… not to mention the collateral damage it did to the team’s relationship with Saquon Barkley.
Having Dart in place changes everything.
“It’s a lot less stressful,” Schoen said. “You got a young quarterback [on his rookie contract] and it goes back to the surplus value that you're getting in that right now in terms of the price point and taking advantage of that window… The quarterback is obviously the centerpiece and we're going to continue to build around Jaxson.”
That goes for both scheme and personnel.
When head coach John Harbaugh was hired back in January, he cited Dart’s presence on the team as a big draw for him. Now that he’s had a few months to study his film and get to know him better, those raves have spread exponentially.
“One of the many great things about Jaxson Dart is he does so many things so well,” Harbaugh said on Monday. “He can live in a lot of different worlds. If you watch the offenses that we've had [in Baltimore] over the last number of years, it's built around a lot of different elements, and there's a lot of different elements that Jaxson can play in. Power run, drop-back pass, quarterback-driven stuff, RPOs, quick ball-out type of completions. He can throw the ball downfield, throw it off play action. I'm not sure what he really can't do, you know?”
He’s even allowed the Giants to give serious consideration to what may be the most ironic short-term personnel pivot by the franchise in decades, the idea of drafting a game-changing running back near the top of the first round. Yes, you read that correctly: The general manager who got rid of Barkley is now open to using the fifth pick in April to select Jeremiyah Love as his replacement.
Hey, if we’re crossing off those sticky “Hard Knocks” gaffes, why stop at just the one?
“Where we are right now is a different place than the Saquon situation,” Schoen said. “We’ve got a young quarterback, we’ve got a number of receivers, we’ve got Jermaine Eluemunor. The offensive line is stronger… You saw when Philly signed Saquon where their roster was.”
Said Harbaugh when asked if he thinks Love, who has already visited the Giants in New Jersey during this pre-draft process, is a “very good” player: “I would probably put ‘very very good player.’ Put a couple of verys in front of that. Maybe a couple more. He’s really good.”
None of this would be possible if Dart wasn’t on the Giants, a scenario Schoen admitted he has reflected on — and not enjoyed contemplating — this offseason.
There are still obvious needs on the team. Harbaugh used the term “work in progress” several times to describe various areas of the roster. They have no clear starter at right guard, a position where Greg Van Roten played every snap for the past two seasons but remains a free agent (Schoen said the Chaminade High School product is “not out of the mix” for a return for a third season). They need depth at cornerback. There are still questions regarding the health of Malik Nabers (Schoen said he feels confident the receiver will be ready for Week 1 after he tore his ACL last September). And Dart himself has to continue to grow, too. Harbaugh spoke about what he wants to see the quarterback work on.
“The biggest growth a young athlete is going to make is doing the little things well over and over again,” Harbaugh said. “It’s one thing to do the little things well in a drill or in practice, it’s another to take the little things and do them well in the biggest moments. That’s more of a challenging thing. I think anybody who has ever played any kind of sport understands that. The ability to take those fundamental things and carry them forward when it means the most, that is probably the next step for a quarterback especially. We fully expect him to make that leap.”
All signs indicate he will. The Giants have spent a good amount of time this offseason ogling the social media pictures of Dart and his influencer girlfriend as they trot from spot to spot, only it’s not the bikini shots or the other scenery that catch their eye as much as the newly ripped physique Dart is sporting.
It’s not all positive, of course. In this draft the Giants will have a very long gap between picks as they are slated to select 37th and then not again until 105th. That space is from the third-round pick that was part of the package the Giants traded to the Texans to move up and take Dart a year ago.
Said Schoen with a wide smile regarding that cost: “Sign me up for it.”
That could have been the new meme. Too bad it wasn’t on camera.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
