Giants coaches “come and go.” But not Joe.
GM Joe Schoen is safe and returning for a fifth season in 2026, co-owners John Mara and Steve Tisch unthinkably announced on Monday, because the Giants value protecting their own over winning games.
A once-proud franchise with four Super Bowls has abandoned all standards to keep a GM who has run the organization into the ground and competed for the No. 1 overall pick in the NFL Draft two years in a row.
“The 2025 season has been deeply disappointing, and the results on the field have not lived up to the standard this organization and our fans expect,” Mara and Tisch said in a joint statement. “As previously stated, Joe Schoen will remain our general manager and continue to lead our football operations and the search for our next head coach.
“Continuity and stability in the front office is important to our progress,” the statement concluded. “We believe in our young core of talent, which we can build around for future success.”
So the GM with a 7-27 record (.205) in the last two seasons, a 13-38 record (.254) in the past three seasons and a 22-45-1 record overall (.323) is back.
It is a decision that spits in the face of the Giants’ paying fans. And the news could be worse than that on the untouchable Schoen, who crassly said at his Monday press conference that it’s important to draft scheme versatile players because “coaches come and go:”
Schoen would not reveal whether he has received a contract extension entering the fifth and final year of his original deal. But it would not make sense for the Giants to hire a new head coach and partner him with a lame duck GM.
An extension would be no surprise.
“I’m not gonna get into my personal contract situation,” Schoen said. “As you’ve seen today, unfortunately the nature of the business, I’m not sure how much it really matters how many years you have left on your contract or not. But I’m gonna get into my personal situation.”
Who says the Giants’ actions are guaranteed be logical, though? Given two options, the Giants have demonstrated consistently that they will make the wrong choice again. And again. And again.
That’s who they are. And the people in charge around here won’t change.
Schoen said he’s “fortunate” to work for great ownership that allows you to “stub your toe” as a GM and “try to course correct.” But what’s more arrogant and absurd than referring to a 5-24 record in the last 29 games as stubbing one’s toe?
The rest of the NFC has gotten rich off the Giants’ ineptitude.
Schoen handed the rival Eagles a Super Bowl last year by letting Saquon Barkley walk to Philadelphia. NFL teams literally swore off doing HBO’s Offseason Hard Knocks because of how bad Schoen made them look during the show.
The GM traded Leonard Williams and let Julian Love walk to the Seattle Seahawks, and on Saturday night those players were smoking cigars after clinching the NFC’s No. 1 overall playoff seed. And Packers defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley is a hot head coaching candidate in part because of the play of former Giants safety Xavier McKinney in Green Bay.
The Giants’ fans deserve better. Unfortunately, on Monday they got more vapid sales jobs from Schoen to rationalize his poor performance and retention, including the excuse that his 2022 hiring of Brian Daboll happened with less support as he was onboarded off a Buffalo Bills playoff run.
Mara and Tisch, meanwhile, gave Schoen no specific ultimatum of expectations for this coming season, the GM said.
“There wasn’t a directive,” Schoen said. “It was a plan. A plan in place. When you’re in my position, if you were here year two, yeah would it have been better, of course. As a general manager, you always want to have a young quarterback and build the team around the young quarterback. You get the advantage when they’re on a rookie deal.
“So talking about the pieces we have in place, the plan, where we’re going to go from here, how we’re gonna approach the offseason, it was more so that than where the expectations are or mandates to do x, y and z must happen in 2026.”
Anyone who watched Schoen’s bye week press conference in December, though, knows how embarrassing it is that Monday arrived with the GM’s retention feeling inevitable.
Schoen himself couldn’t even explain the reasons to believe in his program himself when four games remained in the regular season during the middle of a nine-game losing streak. Now he’s deputized to find the Giants’ next coach?
This was a transparent outcome ever since, as the Daily News reported a year ago, it had become clear to Daboll following the 2024 season that Schoen no longer was talking about them internally as a collaborative pair. The GM worked his channels at the ownership level to separate accountability from the coach, Daboll got fired midseason and Schoen’s plan to survive worked like a charm.
The one important question that didn’t get asked on Monday — amid softballs to Schoen about Jaxson Dart’s promise and the GM’s interminable rebuild — was what specific roles senior personnel executive Chris Mara and director of player personnel Tim McDonnell are playing in this whole process.
Regardless, here is the harsh reality: The Atlanta Falcons fired GM Terry Fontenot and coach Raheem Morris on Monday coming off back-to-back 8-9 seasons, while the Giants retained Schoen despite him failing to win eight total games the past two years — in the third and fourth years of his tenure.
This is what it looks like to be at the bottom of the NFL: not looking up at the rest of the league, but trying to figure out which way up is.