Giants’ Geoff Schwartz has mixed emotions about potentially playing with brother Mitchell
New York Giants guard Geoff Schwartz watches during training camp at the Quest Diagnostics Training Center in East Rutherford, N.J, on Friday, Aug 7, 2015. Credit: Brad Penner
SAN FRANCISCO — If the Giants plan to woo right tackle and pending free agent Mitchell Schwartz this offseason, they’d be well advised to keep him away from his brother.
Despite an expectation that anyone in the NFL would enjoy having a sibling on the same team with him, Giants guard Geoff Schwartz said on Thursday that he does not think it would work out for the team if he and his younger brother were side by side on the offensive line.
“I don’t know if we would get along too well playing next to each other for a while, just because of our personalities,” Geoff Schwartz said. “Maybe after a week or so we’d kind of get tired of each other. He’s a great player, don’t get me wrong. He’s the best right tackle this year, I hope he goes somewhere and get every cent he can get . . . We just see things differently, we’re just two different personalities. I see gray areas and my brother’s more black and white. Even if you look on Twitter, the way he breaks down games, he’s very analytical, very technical, that’s the way he is. We really see the game the same way, but we just bicker too much.”
The Giants are expected to be very active in free agency, and they do have some rebuilding to do on the right side of their offensive line. Mitchell Schwartz could very well be part of that project. Geoff Schwartz could be part of that, too. He played 12 games in 2015 before breaking his leg, the second season in a row he suffered a season-ending fracture to his leg.
“I feel 100 percent, my ankle’s fine,” he said. “I can train like a normal person.”
Geoff Schwartz signed a four-year, $16.8-million deal two years ago. Mitchell Schwartz will likely get more.
“It would be a lot of money for the Schwartzes on one team,” Geoff said. “He’s going to go obviously where he gets the most, that’s how free agency works . . . I hope he goes somewhere and gets every cent he can get. I just don’t know if the Giants are in position to pay a right tackle eight-and-a-half, nine million dollars.”
Interestingly, they might be in better position to do it if they reworked Geoff Schwartz’s contract or cut him. Geoff said he is confident he will remain with the Giants.
“Look, when I’ve been healthy I’m a good football player, it’s pretty simple,” he said. “I’m healthy now and excited to be part of the future with the Giants.”
A future that he thinks can include the playoffs and sniffing a Super Bowl. That’s something that Mitchell Schwartz has not had much experience with in his four years with the lowly Browns.
Asked if Mitchell wants to stay in Cleveland, Geoff Schwartz said: “I hope not.”
“I want him to go somewhere he has a chance to win now, that’s what it’s about, really,” he said. “Obviously you want to get your money but you want to win, you don’t want to be on a losing team. He’s had four offensive coordinators in four years, he’s had three or four GMs, three head coaches. I mean you can’t win that way. He loves his guys there, Joe [Thomas] and Alex [Mack], all those guys, but personally, for me, I want him to go somewhere that has a chance to win.”
That could be the Giants.
“I mean, I’d love to play with him, don’t get me wrong, and my parents would be thrilled,” Geoff Schwartz said. “I know the way it works and I want him to be somewhere where he’s going to be happy. I’m not saying he won’t be happy in New York. Free agency’s simple: If the Giants want him, they know how to get him.”
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.
