What history tells us about the Giants, Joe Schoen and drafting offensive lineman
Giants new general manager Joe Schoen speaks during a news conference at the NFL football team's training facility, Wednesday, Jan. 26, 2022, in East Rutherford, N.J. Credit: AP/John Minchillo
The Giants have been trying to fix their offensive line for a decade.
Might Thursday be the day it finally gets done?
With a cluster of three very promising players at the position bunched near the top of most draft boards and with the Giants picking fifth and seventh overall, there is a very good chance they will be able to snag at least one of the trio: Ickey Ekwonu, Evan Neal or Charles Cross. If things break well for them, they may even have an opportunity to take the first offensive lineman of the draft for the second time in three years after selecting Andrew Thomas fourth overall in 2020.
“We tried through free agency with the resources we have to upgrade the offensive line the best we can,” general manager Joe Schoen said last week. “That will continue through the draft.”
Case closed, it seems. It may just be a matter of which tackle they like best in the minuscule degrees that separate them and which ones are still around when they are on the clock in the first round that determines who they select, but offensive tackle it looks to be. Don’t overthink it, right?
Well, what fun would that be?
Not everyone is so sure the Giants selecting a tackle Thursday is the slam dunk it seems to be. The team does have other needs, especially on defense, that could be answered early in the draft. They may be trading back to stockpile some resources for later in this selection process or next year’s. This also seems to be a draft pool deep in line talent where starting-caliber players can be found in the second and third rounds.
And then there is the Buffalo thing.
Schoen and coach Brian Daboll arrived from the Bills this offseason having helped build a lackluster organization into a title contender without using any first-round picks on offensive linemen, and there are plenty of folks who believe they’ll try to do the same thing with the Giants.
“If you look at Buffalo, they didn’t invest a lot of high resources in that offensive line,” NFL Network draft analyst Daniel Jeremiah said. “They got a bunch of functional players and surrounded them with real difference-makers at skill positions... If you look at their history and what they can do it doesn’t necessarily point to them being locked in on an offensive lineman.”
Let’s debunk that a little bit.
Schoen was only there for four draft cycles (he arrived in May 2017 shortly after the process wrapped up) and during that time the team had just three first-round decisions to make having traded their 2020 top pick for Stefon Diggs. One of those picks was Josh Allen in 2018 when they needed a quarterback. In 2021 the Bills didn’t pick until 30th overall. So in reality the only year the Bills would have had a chance to take a top-tier offensive lineman was 2019 when they selected defensive tackle Ed Oliver ninth overall in a draft class so deficient at tackle that no team took one until the 22nd overall pick.
On top of that, Schoen’s history in the league goes well beyond Buffalo. In his decade-long stint in the Dolphins’ front office before the Buffalo portion of his career, Miami used a first-round pick on an offensive lineman four times. In 2008 it even took a tackle first overall with Jake Long. And in 2003, when he was a scout for the Panthers (and his Bills mentor Brandon Beane was in Carolina as well), that team used both a first- and a second-round pick, respectively, on offensive linemen Jordan Gross and Bruce Nelson.
So, no, there is no Schoen Doctrine against picking an offensive lineman in the first round.
“To get our best version of Saquon [Barkley], Daniel [Jones], the entire offense, that's going to be very important to get that right,” Schoen said of finding linemen in this draft. “Whether it's running the ball or pass protection, that will definitely be a priority.”
There are others, of course. But few that have perplexed the Giants for as long as this one has, and few that can be resolved as simply as this one might be on Thursday night.
Since 2013 they have taken six offensive lineman in the first two rounds and only one of those players – Thomas – is still on the team. That doesn’t even count the numerous late-round picks who have never developed into useful pieces and in some cases never even saw the field.
That’s a lot of investment in one position group down the drain.
The best way to avoid deepening that abyss is to make smarter decisions on the clock, to be able to marry need with value. If Ekwonu or Neal are available when the Giants are making their pick, that would seem to be the case. The Giants appear to be higher on Cross than some other teams, but he would still be a solid pick for them. Even more so if they can trade back just a few slots.
“You’ve got to make sure [need and value] mirrors up or you're going to be in the same boat,” Schoen said. “If you try to force it, it's not the right value, we'll be sitting up here next year saying the same thing.”
The Giants have been saying it for 10 years. Now they may have a chance to change that conversation.
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.
