INDIANAPOLIS — Joe Schoen was scouting the quarterbacks in this year’s NFL Draft class when Josh Allen was his quarterback in Buffalo last fall.
So Schoen must study the QBs further now that he’s with the Giants, despite Schoen and John Mara already committing publicly to Daniel Jones for the 2022 season.
Not that Schoen, who will address the media Tuesday afternoon at the NFL Combine, is going to renege on his promise to stick by Jones, 24, in year four. That’s probably what the GM will do.
It’s just that putting blinders on to this quarterback class while holding two top-7 picks would be bad business, and based on Schoen’s words and actions in the past, it also doesn’t seem like his style.
Schoen was asked in late January if he had scouted this year’s quarterback draft class. It wouldn’t have been a surprise if he had said he hadn’t seen much of them.
As the Bills’ assistant GM, he’d helped GM Brandon Beane trade up to draft Allen No. 7 overall in 2018. They gave up a first-rounder and two twos to Tampa Bay to get him. And Allen’s rapid rise to superstardom landed Schoen and Brian Daboll their Giants jobs this January.
But Schoen was scouting this year’s quarterback class anyway.
“Yeah, I did,” Schoen said on Jan. 26. “You never know when these opportunities are gonna come. So I did see most of the quarterbacks that are in this draft. I did see them live at some point this year. From a film evaluation, I’d have to circle back. But I do have working knowledge of most of those guys.”
The Giants aren’t in an identical situation at quarterback to the 2018 Bills. Buffalo didn’t have its own first-round pick from a few years prior still on the roster and on a rookie contract.
The Giants do. They have one more year of cost control remaining on Jones, the No. 6 overall pick in 2019, who has shown enough promise to make a case he still could be the guy.
The consensus is down on this year’s quarterback class, too.
Still, when a league source told me the other day that he considers Liberty’s Malik Willis a sure top-10 pick, it reinforced for me that the Giants would be ignorant not to do their due diligence.
It’s not like the Giants hadn’t been scouting QBs themselves in the fall.
In November, then-Giants assistant GM Kevin Abrams and college scouting coordinator Chad Klunder attended the showdown between Pitt QB Kenny Pickett and North Carolina QB Sam Howell.
But of course, Klunder is gone to Duke, and Abrams has been reassigned as senior VP of football operations and strategy. And since, Mara has flat-out said he’d be “very surprised” if Jones isn’t his Week 1 starter this fall.
Again, if that’s how the Giants feel about Jones after scouting all of these quarterbacks thoroughly, that’s fine. It just shouldn’t be predetermined.
And it is clear that when Mara and the Giants were interviewing prospective GMs and coaches in January, they were looking for candidates to say that they believed in Jones.
That also meant trying to win sooner with Jones and not build patiently for the long term.
This shouldn’t have been a pre-condition for anyone getting this job, though. And if we are giving the organization the benefit of the doubt that it was not, Schoen has the authority to make a change if he wishes.
So he should go through a full vetting process on this year’s top guys before making a decision.
Don’t forget, either: while Schoen has been promised freedom to fix this Giant mess, for self-preservation’s sake, it would be safer for him to draft a QB restart the clock of expectations. The alternative could be enduring a bad 2022 season with Jones that disappoints restless and fickle owners Mara and Steve Tisch.
Ole Miss QB Matt Corral reportedly isn’t throwing at the Combine because of an ankle injury he sustained in the Sugar Bowl. But Willis, Pickett, Corral, Cincinnati’s Desmond Ridder and even Nevada’s Carson Strong are players worth studying through the first two rounds.
Members of Giants brass have seen Ridder and the talent-loaded Bearcats in person.
Willis, 22, is the most intriguing prospect of them all. The 6-foot, 220-pound redshirt senior and Auburn transfer is a dual threat passer and runner who looks the part.
He opened more eyes at the Senior Bowl. And while ideally he could sit for a year as a rookie, he is too talented to look off entirely with the Giants holding picks Nos. 5 and 7.
Sources believe the floor for Willis likely is Washington at pick No. 11, which is one reason he won’t fall there. If Carolina (No. 6), Atlanta (No. 8) or Denver (No. 9) don’t take him, maybe a team like the Steelers (No. 20) would get aggressive in a trade up.
Willis is from Atlanta, so going to his hometown Falcons and learning behind Matt Ryan before taking over would be a great story. But the Giants need the best story of this year’s top 10 to be theirs.
And while no one is comparing Willis to Justin Herbert, wasn’t it sickening to watch the Chargers quarterback launch bombs over the Giants’ safeties heads in December, knowing the Giants passed on him in the 2020 NFL Draft because they already had a first-round QB on their team?
Not to mention the line of scouts and evaluators who doubted Herbert’s greatness looks like the outside of a mall entrance on Black Friday.
The point is simple: Schoen might end up sticking with Jones for the 2022 season, but he owes it to himself, the team and the organization to be sure there isn’t a better QB on the board before he does.
