Joe Schoen aims to keep Giants' top draft picks with the Giants

MOBILE, Ala. — As Joe Schoen spends this week at the Senior Bowl trying to figure out who he’ll be drafting with his first picks in April, the new general manager of the Giants is using a number of rubrics and gauges to measure each of the prospects. One of the questions he is likely asking himself as he watches and listens: Can this player help a team win a Super Bowl?

The Giants have selected a number of such players like that in recent years. Unfortunately, it's been with other teams.

This year’s Super Bowl will feature two recent former first-round picks of the Giants: Rams wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr., who was taken 12th overall in 2014, and Bengals cornerback Eli Apple, who was taken 10th in 2016. It will also feature a third-round pick from 2018, Bengals defensive tackle B.J. Hill, who was traded to Cincinnati at the start of this season. At least one of those players will get to hold the Lombardi Trophy a year after another former first-round pick the Giants sent packing, defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul, did the same for the Buccaneers.

Schoen’s job is to get the Giants back in a position to be a consistent playoff contender. One of the ways he said he intends to do so is by stopping the flow of talent away from the team.

"I wasn’t here before so I am not sure what happened and why those decisions were made, but I’m looking forward," Schoen said on Wednesday. "We have two high draft picks with the fifth and seventh picks and we have to make sure moving forward that we get those right. You have to hit on those high picks."

Hitting on them is one thing. Keeping them around has been, for the Giants, something completely different. This in an offseason in which they will almost certainly have to say goodbye to more past high picks in wide receiver Sterling Shepard and free agents-to-be tight end Evan Engram and guard Will Hernandez. And the Giants go into a season that will determine whether there are long-term plans for 2019’s first-round pick, quarterback Daniel Jones.

"I believe in drafting, developing, and then retaining our own," Schoen said at his introductory news conference.

The players selected in April will be the first of his own.

Schoen is overhauling the way the Giants select those players. He met with the team’s scouts for dinner in Mobile on Tuesday night and will be spending much more time with them in the coming weeks. He said in February, before the Combine, the Giants' talent evaluators and area scouts will watch video on all of the prospects together rather than separately as they have in the past.

"It’s not dead silent," he said of the dynamic of such meetings. "I like to talk about what did they see. You may think he’s fast, someone else thinks he can’t run, and then you watch together and say, ‘That clip right there, that’s why I think he can run.’ And then you can come to a consensus on it."

Schoen said it will also help him scout the scouts, some of whom he will retain and others who will be replaced as his changes are implemented further after the draft.

"Talking about it out loud and where we put individuals on the board and why will help develop the staff," he said. "When they are sitting in a hotel room in November in Alabama maybe they are thinking more big picture and it helps them become better evaluators and put better value on players."

That, after all, is what it’s all about.

"It’s going to be important for us to hit on [draft picks] as often as we can," he said Wednesday. "You’re not going to bat 1.000. You wish you could, but you just do the best job you can evaluating these guys as players, as people, and try to eliminate the margin for error as best we can."

And hope that one day the players the Giants select get a chance to win a Super Bowl — with the Giants.

Notes & quotes: Schoen said he was unable to comment on the class action lawsuit Brian Flores brought against the Giants, Dolphins, Broncos and the NFL on Tuesday accusing the teams and the league of, among other things, racial biases in the hiring process and conducting "sham" interviews with minority candidates such as himself. Schoen led the Giants’ interviews for their new head coach that ended with the hiring of Brian Daboll last week. "I can’t comment on it," Schoen said. "We had a thorough coaching search, Brian Flores was one of the finalists, and I’ll just leave it at that." . . . The Giants should have an offensive coordinator by the end of the week as Daboll continues to interview candidates for that position from New Jersey. Pep Hamilton, Mike Kafka and Chad O’Shea are the three finalists . . . The Giants did not request an interview with new Bills offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey, but they will bring two Bills assistants to Daboll’s staff: Shea Tierney, the Bills’ assistant quarterbacks coach, will be the Giants’ quarterbacks coach, and Bobby Johnson, the Bills’ offensive line coach, will have that same role with the Giants . . . The Giants plan to keep Thomas McGaughey as special teams coordinator. He will serve in that job for the Giants under a third head coach.

By Tom Rock

tom.rock@newsday.com@TomRock_Newsday

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.