The stakes have been known since the end of the 2024 season for New York Giants General Manager Joe Schoen and Head Coach Brian Daboll.
While the postseason press conference following a 3-14 regular season regular season for New York seemed eerie amid speculation about Schoen and Daboll’s job security, the 2025 offseason and Draft may have changed the perspective on the organization.
Now, the Giants’ front office has signaled a more achievable rebuilding plan, instead of a one-year window to return to the postseason.
How did we get here? And what can be labeled a successful 2025 season?
The answers may be found in the blueprint of two contending teams.
As most football fans know, the success of the Giants in 2022 was fools gold.
While public opinion of Daniel Jones is flawed in both judgment and support of the former first-round pick, the decision to sign Jones to a four-year, $160 million contract ultimately set the franchise back at least two years.
The contract was conveniently designed to give the Giants a way out after two seasons if Jones was not deemed the franchise quarterback.
However, the Giants were not expecting the franchise to regress as suddenly as it did in the following two seasons.
If they did, then the trade and extension of outside linebacker Brian Burn for five years and $141 million entering the 2024 season would not have been a sound decision.
When the Giants managed to win only three total games after being a playoff team two years prior, it was clear they needed to start from scratch.
The definition of “scratch” was debated after Schoen and Daboll survived “Black Monday” in the NFL.
However, it was clear there would need to be a sense of urgency to this rebuild.
While “fast rebuild” seems like an oxymoron, the NFL has seen several teams change their trajectory over the course of one season.
Teams like the Houston Texans and Washington Commanders returned to relevance by drafting a quarterback who performs immediately in his rookie season.
With the 2025 NFL Draft resulting in Cam Ward as the only quarterback with potential to start like C.J. Stroud or Jayden Daniels, this draft philosophy would not be applicable for the Giants.
What would be applicable is aspects of the Green Bay Packers and Denver Broncos.
The Packers offering advice on a top-five pick may not seem wise, considering they have not lost double-digit games since 2008. This is due mostly to their lineage of generational quarterbacks, which teaches the important lesson of never being reliant on a specific draft class.
Enough articles have highlighted the overlap of Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers and the downsides of that transition.
However, it allows the Packers to do two things: draft the best available player and capitalize on the draft’s strength instead of settling for positional requirements.
The second approach is developing a roster that allows the quarterback to enter a favorable situation after learning the offense behind a veteran.
The Broncos’ perspective comes from their ability to flip the roster in a two-year window.
When Head Coach Sean Payton joined the Broncos in 2023, Denver was coming off a 5-12 season under Russell Wilson’s first year at quarterback.
Not only did Wilson’s first year hurt the team’s trajectory, but the five total draft picks lost in the deal impacted their ability to recover from the move.
Similar to Daboll with Jones, Payton attempted one final season with Wilson before moving on from the veteran quarterback.
Given this less-than-ideal scenario, Payton and General Manager George Paton decided to solidify their strength with limited salary cap space and draft picks, leading to the third-best defense in the NFL last season.
This allowed rookie quarterback Bo Nix to experience the growing pains of a first-year starter while keeping the team competitive.
From Weeks 1-7, Nix averaged just 178 yards a game with five touchdowns to five interceptions. In the remaining 10 games last year, Nix jumped his production to 253 yards and 24 touchdowns to seven interceptions.
Above all else, the main similarity between the Packers and Broncos is that the offensive-minded head coach was the one to determine the quarterback.
While the collegiate numbers between Jordan Love, Bo Nix and Jaxson Dart do not share many similarities, they all tell the same story. They are three quarterbacks with all of the athletic traits to succeed in the NFL.
Since none of these three quarterbacks played at a Heisman-caliber (excluding Nix’s final year at Oregon, where he finished third in Heisman voting), there was little media influence or fan campaigning for them to be taken in the first round.
This was especially true for the Giants and Dart, which only became rumored as a possibility in the days leading up to the draft.
Now, the Giants were able to obtain a confident reading on the rest of the league’s interest in Dart, in which they only feared the New Orleans Saints or Cleveland Browns to beat New York to the punch.
So, after the Giants selected edge rusher Abdul Carter with the third overall pick, they were able to trade back into the first round to take Dart at 25th overall.
The trade cost three additional picks, two of which coming in this year’s draft, which shows the level of desire New York had in the Ole Miss product.
At 6 ‘2”, 223 lbs, the dual-threat quarterback will get to learn in a quarterback room of Russell Wilson and Jameis Winston.
Wilson, a former dual-threat quarterback with success early in his career, will be a veteran Dart can look to learn from by their similar play styles on the field.
Winston will be an example of an off the field leader Dart can learn from, which is likely the reason for Winston earning a two-year contract compared to Wilson’s one-year deal.
Despite the excitement from the Giants’ busy Thursday night and the potential from their remaining draft selections, New York was honest that they could not solve their issues in one draft.
Instead of overspending in free agency or drafting a quarterback to save the franchise by Week One, the Giants have made moves that appear appropriate to change the organization’s narrative.
If Dart is not the quarterback Schoen and Daboll expect by year three or four of his contract, a leadership change may be warranted. However, consistency from a former Coach of the Year recipient and the General Manager who helped design the Buffalo Bills’ core may be New York’s best chance at escaping their recent stretch of poor play.