Who deserves more blame for Giants' 2025 disaster -- GM Joe Schoen or coach Brian Daboll?

The New York Giants are at the very bottom of the 2025 NFC standings with a 1-4 record after losing to the previously winless New Orleans Saints by multiple scores, 26-14, on Sunday. 

That Week 5 loss represented several new lows for the Giants this season and in recent memory. Saints quarterback Spencer Rattler entered the matchup with the following thoughts on the New York Giants' defense. 

"Really good front [defensive line], probably one of the best in the league. We have to have a good plan for them, a lot of speed, a lot of power. On the back end, they don't do as much as what we've seen from these other teams, disguise-wise," Rattler said last week at his mid-week press conference. "They've got their wrinkles and everything. They run what they do well and can cause some havoc to quarterbacks and offenses."

Rattler was previously 0-10 as an NFL starting quarterback, and he appeared to be playing a defense that didn't fool him at all in the secondary, just like he said midweek. He threw for 225 yards and a touchdown, an 87-yarder to wide receiver Rashid Shaheed, on 21 of 31 passing. Even worse is that Rattler was able to put up that production after the Giants raced out to a 14-3 lead. New Orleans' win snapped the team's eight-game losing streak overall and a 20-game losing streak when trailing by more than 10 points. 

New York's offense short-circuiting also made Rattler's life much easier on Sunday: the Giants became the first team in nine years, since the 2016 New York Jets, to have a turnover on five consecutive drives. Coach Brian Daboll's offense also went scoreless on its final eight drives after touchdowns on its opening two possessions of the game.

* Giants: Turnover on five straight drives for first time since at least 2000

After that debacle, New York has opened with a 1-4 record -- or worse -- for the sixth time in the last 10 NFL seasons, the most in the league. Two of those 1-4 starts, including right now, have come since 2022 under Daboll and general manager Joe Schoen. So, who is more to blame for the putrid state of affairs the Giants are currently in? Schoen and his roster building or Daboll and his coaching? Let's take a look at the case for both and then decide whose seat should be hotter at the moment.

Joe Schoen and his roster building

Schoen was handed a golden opportunity in his first draft as the general manager of the Giants with two picks inside the top 10 of the 2022 NFL Draft. He swung and missed at both of them. He selected Oregon edge rusher Kayvon Thibodeaux at fifth overall and Alabama offensive lineman Evan Neal at seventh overall. 

Thibodeux has 23.5 sacks in three and a quarter seasons played, with 11.5 of those sacks coming in 2023. Otherwise, he has 12 career sacks in 31 games played in the 2022, 2024 and 2025 seasons combined. Sacks aren't the only metric of success for an edge rusher, but it's telling that New York needed to use another top-five pick, the third overall pick in the 2025 NFL Draft, on an edge rusher, Penn State's Abdul Carter, this year.

As for Neal, he has yet to touch the field in 2025. He's been relegated to life as a backup after allowing 77 quarterback pressures (35th-most in the NFL in his career) and 14 sacks (tied for 32nd-most in the NFL in his career) in 29 career games from 2022 to 2024.

Whiffs on two potential cornerstones is brutal, especially Neal, because the Giants haven't been able to get their offensive line put together well at all across the last four years. New York has allowed a team quarterback pressure rate of 41% since 2022, the worst in the entire NFL. Schoen's inability to put together a cohesive, productive offensive line doomed both 2025 first-round rookie quarterback Jaxson Dart on Sunday, as well as predecessor Daniel Jones.  

Speaking of Jones, Schoen's contract decision regarding the 2019 NFL Draft's sixth overall pick is what really doomed the entire franchise during his tenure. Jones wasn't Schoen's top 10 pick, but the Giants general manager rewarded him like he was. Daboll created an offense that minimized Jones' involvement in 2022; he averaged 6.4 air yards per pass attempt (the second-fewest in the NFL behind the corpse of Matt Ryan's 6.0 in his one year with the Indianapolis Colts in 2022), and New York snuck into the postseason with a 9-7-1 record bolstered by Pro Bowl running back Saquon Barkley's talents. The then-New York quarterback played the best game of his NFL career against the Minnesota Vikings in the wild card round, throwing for 301 yards and two touchdowns on 24 of 35 passing while also rushing for 78 yards on 17 carries in a 31-24 upset win. The problem is that the 2022 Vikings set an NFL record with 11 one-score wins, suggesting they might have been lucky to finish 13-4 that regular season.

Despite the Giants getting smoked 38-7 in the divisional round at the eventual NFC champion Philadelphia Eagles the following week, Schoen decided Jones was the future and re-signed him to a four-year, $160 million extension. That led to Schoen not investing well in the offensive line with the rest of his cap space, Barkley walking in free agency in 2024 to join the Eagles, and safety Xavier McKinney walking in free agency to join the Green Bay Packers. New York cut Jones in-season in 2024 while Barkley (2024 NFL Offensive Player of the Year and Super Bowl LIX champion) and McKinney (2024 first team All-Pro after co-leading the NFL with nine takeaways, eight interceptions and one fumble recovery) thrived. 

Schoen took another swing at a franchise quarterback by trading up to select Dart at 25th overall in the 2025 NFL Draft. Still, without a capable offensive line (75 quarterback pressures allowed in 2025, sixth-most in the NFL) and reliable pass catchers outside of the now-injured Malik Nabers (torn ACL, out for the season), his development appears doomed in his first season. 

Brian Daboll and his coaching

Daboll certainly isn't blameless by any stretch of the imagination. He can only cook with the groceries he has been given. However, it doesn't look great that the Indianapolis Colts' Jones-led offense is the second-best scoring offense in football (32.6 points per game). Daboll's Giants are averaging 17.4 points per game in 2025, the fifth-fewest in the league. 

Daboll is also risking Dart's development in a wilting offensive ecosystem in the hopes of self preservation because of how dire things have become in New York. Defensive coordinator Shane Bowen's scheme is pretty vanilla, as mentioned earlier in this piece by Rattler. So even though Schoen poured resources into upgrading the defense with the trade acquisition of edge rusher Brian Burns, drafting Carter third overall in 2025 and signing both cornerback Paulson Adebo and safety Jevon Holland in the last two years, the Giants' coaching staff has been unable to maximize that defensive talent, which, in theory, could have taken a lot of pressure off of Daboll, Dart and the New York offense. 

It's also worth noting Daboll has been unable to develop 2023 second-round pick center John Michael Schmitz and 2023 third-round pick wide receiver Jaylin Hyatt, the 2022 Biletnikoff award winner (best receiver in college football), into productive contributors despite their respective pedigrees. That's two more big whiffs. 

Verdict

While Daboll certainly has his faults, Schoen's decision to fully commit to Jones, despite being unable to surround him with a dependable offensive line, ruined the franchise. Everything that has happened since that decision is simply a byproduct of failing to get the quarterback and offensive line situation right following a fluky 2022 playoff appearance. No one would blame the Giants' ownership for cleaning house and starting over in the front office and on the sidelines in 2026.