Joe Schoen was ready for every scenario on his first draft night as Giants GM
Giants general manager Joe Schoen, speaks to media during press conference at Quest Diagnostics Training Center in East Rutherford, N.J. on Wednesday, Jan 26, 2022. Credit: Noah K. Murray
Joe Schoen spent the past week or so walking around the building with a bunch of magnets in his pocket. Each contained the name of one of the top prospects in the draft. Every chance he got he would throw four of them on the board in a random order and then decide who the Giants would select if the actual draft played out that way.
“We had been through so many scenarios, the exact scenario that played out, we've been through it probably 15 times this week,” Schoen said. “We would stay in my office and move stuff around, what do we do here, what do we could here. We had a couple rhymes in place for different scenarios.”
And so Schoen’s first night as a general manager in charge of an NFL draft, the word he used to describe it was: “Seamless.”
There were even a pair of trades the Giants had in place and were ready to execute with their seventh pick had the board fallen differently. One was nixed by another team once the top players at one particular position were taken (presumably the cornerbacks with Derek Stingly and Sauce Gardner going third and fourth) and the other killed by the Giants when they had a chance to select a defender at five and an offensive tackle at seven. At that point they were high on both Ickey Ekwonu and Evan Neal and had them so closely graded to each other that they were happy to let the Panthers have first choice at 6 and take whoever was left with the ensuing pick.
“This situation that came up, Joe and I, we've been meeting the last three or four nights going through as many different scenarios as we can,” head coach Brian Daboll said. “He carries these magnets in his pockets and pulls them out. He had them in the draft room and moving them around and all that, and we did as many different scenarios as we could. I thought we were well-prepared for tonight, and when it fell the way it fell, we already had that in the plan.”
Schoen said his preparation was akin to calling a game as a coordinator.
“You're at ease because you have all your third-and-5 calls, if it’s third-and-plus 10, here are my calls we practiced all week, and we got it,” Schoen said. “It was easy because where we were at five and seven, it was easy to plan for that and narrow your focus.”
That will be the case at the start of the third round, too, when the Giants pick fourth (36th overall) on Friday night.
“We know if there's four players that we like we are going to get one of those four if we stay where we are,” Schoen said.
They’ll also have all day to decide that. The rest of the draft offers no such benefit. There are no pockets deep enough to carry the magnets that would represent all the permutations of what will happen late on Friday and throughout Saturday.
Thursday, though, was a good first day for Schoen.
“Again, preparation,” he said. “We have been through the draft process together, Dabs and I. The staff did a phenomenal job. They were very helpful and put in a lot of time and effort.”
All to make it look, well, effortless.
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.
