First day of camp is start of next step in Giants' plan
Giants GM Joe Schoen, left, and head coach Brian Daboll speak with the media before the first day of training camp at the Quest Diagnostics Training Center in East Rutherford, N.J. on Wednesday. Credit: James Escher
The Giants still insist on talking like a Bonnie Franklin franchise: One Day at a Time.
They have, at least in their public comments, the foresight of fruit flies.
Ask Brian Daboll about anything upcoming or big picture and he will inevitably tell you the date. “It’s only April,” he’d say as the team reported to the offseason program; “It’s only June,” when you ask during minicamp.
On Wednesday, it was, he noted a few times, in case anyone was unaware, the first day of training camp.
“That’s where my focus is, going out there and having a good practice at 10 o’clock,” he said about a half hour before they took the field.
General manager Joe Schoen took mostly the same Gregorian approach to any questions about improvements to the team or what lies ahead for this assembled group of players during the coming months.
“We haven’t practiced yet,” he said. “We haven’t been in pads.”
None of that, of course, is how they actually feel. Both Daboll and Schoen have a vision for how the Giants will one day hoist a Lombardi Trophy under their watch.
If and when they do, these last few months that constituted the 2023 offseason will be looked back on as an important step toward that accomplishment.
That kind of stay-in-the-moment talk was fine last year when the Giants reported to training camp and there were so many questions about who would be sticking around and who would be jettisoned in the big renovation that the two of those men were undertaking. In January 2022, they came to the team and inherited an organization that was in disarray with misappropriated funds under the cap, no clear plan for the future, and chaos in the coaching ranks.
Eighteen months later they are now leading a playoff team that, during this just completed offseason, has secured for the foreseeable future what it believes to be its franchise quarterback in Daniel Jones, a dominant defensive tackle as the centerpiece to their defense in Dexter Lawrence, and, just prior to their first steps on the field, one of the best offensive tackles in the game in Andrew Thomas.
All of them are under the age of 26. All of them are now under contract with the Giants through at least the 2026 season.
All it took was a combined third of a billion dollars or so in contracts to get it done.
In one-and-a-half short years, Schoen has managed to turn the Giants from a team in complete disarray to one that now has young core players at some of the most important positions in the game locked up on long-term second contracts for the foreseeable future. It doesn’t guarantee anything, but it gives the Giants what every team wants: A championship window.
“We had a plan in the offseason,” Schoen said, diverting, momentarily, from the moment-to-moment mantra.
Now they have a plan that goes well beyond it.
Meanwhile, Schoen and Co. also managed to coax their best returning player and one of the most exciting running backs around into not only playing on the franchise tag for a woefully under-valued $10.091 million in 2023, but also into showing up on time for training camp! Say what you will about how the Giants handled the personal aspect of the negotiations with Saquon Barkley and what the league-wide market has done to his position, the end result is such a win for the team that the entire nine-and-a-half month saga that led up to his being in the facility on Wednesday should be taught as a Masters class at GMU (that’s General Manager University).
It's only fair to note that all four of those now core players were drafted by the previous -- and often vilified -- regime. Would they have been able to develop into what they are now had the status quo remained in place after the 2022 season? That feels unlikely. But credit to them for the picks. It wasn’t all dysfunction. Just mostly.
The main point of this offseason is that the Giants are no longer a day-to-day outfit, even if they haven’t ditched that dialect. They have a beginnings of a pathway.
Jones was one of the big question marks a year ago. Now he’s a tentpole.
“We've got a number of players who have now been here for a few years and understand what it means to be a New York Giant, and then what it means to play for Coach Daboll and his system and what he wants kind of the culture and the feel in the locker room to be,” Jones said. “We’ve got a great group of leaders, great group of young guys who know what that is, and who embody that and really take to that every day.”
He said he isn’t shocked by how quickly things have turned around for the Giants, at least in terms of their decidedly more optimistic prospects for the future.
“I don't know if I'm surprised,” he said, “but we're looking forward to getting to work and kind of staying right here in training camp right now.”
Oh right, training camp.
Did anyone mention this was the first day for that?
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.
