How should you build a contending NFL team?

With the New York Giants sitting at 2-12 and on the road to a possible 2-15, a(nother) rebuild appears to be in the team’s future, with or without Joe Schoen as general manager. It’s disheartening to be sure, and Schoen doesn’t even believe it’s necessary, saying “We’re not that far off” from being a good team a month ago.

In some sense, the Giants are not as bad as their record indicates, despite Bill Parcells’ admonition decades ago. They have been decimated by injuries, with many of their best or most promising players on the shelf: Andrew Thomas, Dexter Lawrence, Bobby Okereke, and rookies Dru Phillips, Tyler Nubin, and Theo Johnson. Of their 12 losses, 8 have been by 10 points or less; 5 have been by 5 points or less. One was directly the result of a stupid decision not to elevate a backup placekicker. Another might have been avoided if an offensive lineman playing his first NFL snaps didn’t allow himself to be pushed down and jumped over to permit a block of a tying field goal attempt. At least four others could have turned out differently with a better starting quarterback.

This piece has nothing to do with whether Joe Schoen should be back next year as GM, though. Ed has explored both sides of that question in the past few weeks, and we’ll have our answer soon enough. Here I’m interested in a different question: Whoever the GM is in 2025, how should they rebuild the Giants’ roster? It’s clear that the Giants have a talent deficit relative to their competitors – but how should that be remedied? Schoen has tried to do it for three years without obvious success. His predecessor, Dave Gettleman, couldn’t do it either, though it’s fair to say that the best players on the roster during Schoen’s tenure have been Gettleman acquisitions (Saquon Barkley, Dexter Lawrence, Andrew Thomas, Leonard Williams). The George Young/Ernie Accorsi/Jerry Reese eras are too far in the past to directly apply to today’s NFL because the game and its finances are so different now.

Because they have been downtrodden as a franchise even longer than the Giants have (last Super Bowl, 1992), few fans harbor as much resentment toward the Washington Commanders as the Giants’ other NFC East rivals. It’s hard not to be envious, though, watching the Commanders march toward a possible playoff berth – and more importantly, as they seem to have found their franchise quarterback, while the Giants find themselves in quarterback purgatory. (Let’s hope it’s not hell, because hell is said to be eternal while purgatory is a temporary state requiring only the expiation of sins.) How has their approach differed from the Giants’?

This is a football, not a religion, piece (though faith is certainly needed these days if you are a Giants fan). The title of the article poses the question. You probably think you know the answer to how you build a contender, and to some extent you do. Jayden Daniels has had a great rookie year and the Washington offense looks dramatically different with him behind center than it has for years. Daniels hasn’t been as good as some may think – he only has 17 TD passes (7 fewer than Daniel Jones had as a rookie in 2 fewer starts), middle of the pack in the NFL. He is also only mid-range in yards (3,045) and big-time throws (15, as opposed to leader Josh Allen’s 33). However, he has taken care of the ball, with only 6 interceptions and 8 turnover-worthy plays, and developed a chemistry with Terry McLaurin, the recipient of 11 of his 17 TD passes.

Commanders fans are right to feel giddy about their prospects for the future. However, as the numbers above show, Daniels hasn’t been that good by himself to explain their ascent from 4-13 in 2023 to 9-5 so far this year. Dan Quinn, an experienced head coach (but only 43-42, 3-2 in the playoffs before this year), surely deserves some of the credit, though he will always be remembered as the guy who coughed up a 28-3 third-quarter lead in the Super Bowl.

Kliff Kingsbury has done a good job as offensive coordinator bringing Daniels and the offense along after having only spotty success as head coach in Arizona (28-37, 0-1 in the playoffs). If Brian Daboll (who also has had spotty success as a head coach: 17-30-1, 1-1 in the playoffs) does not survive this season, it will be fair to ask whether some of his mistakes (the handling of his coordinators and the seemingly flip-a-coin weekly starting quarterback decisions come to mind) might disappear if he gets a second chance somewhere.

The bottom line is that none of these coaches has been an unqualified success, so let’s assume that Daboll is only part of the problem. Let’s look instead at the construction of the two rosters. That means comparing Joe Schoen’s approach to that of Adam Peters, the Commanders’ GM. The 2022 GM market was interesting. Peters was among the candidates who got a second interview from the Giants, so he must have been high on their list. Others included Ryan Poles, now the Bears’ GM and under fire himself for some of his decisions; Ran Carthon, now the Titans’ GM and not very successful to date; and Monti Ossenfort, who seems to have the Cardinals on the right track after a rough first season.

You’d have to say that Peters has been a smashing success so far. The question is how he did it. Taking Daniels with the No. 2 pick was a no-brainer. You or I would surely have made the same choice. The interesting part is how he built the rest of the roster vs. how Schoen has done it.

Here’s a clue. Most of the attention has been on Daniels and the offense, and rightly so: The Commanders scored 329 points in 2023, 25th in the NFL but well ahead of the Giants’ 266. In 2024, they have already scored 396 points with three games left to play, sixth-best in the NFL, while the Giants are dead last at 208. So there’s no question that the Giants’ anemic offense is enemy No. 1 in explaining their disastrous season and that Daniels has charged up the Commanders’ offense.

That’s not the only reason the Commanders are good this year. Look at the defense. In 2023, Washington gave up an NFL-worst 518 points (the Giants were 9th worst with 407). In 2024, the Commanders have given up only 315 points, a big improvement but only middle of the pack and only a bit less than the Giants’ 328. Shane Bowen has gotten a lot of flack for the failures of the defense, particularly the lack of turnovers, but they’ve been as good or better than in Wink Martindale’s final season (407 points against) despite the slew of injuries.

In other words, the Commanders’ offense gets the attention, but their rise also coincides with a dramatic improvement in the defense. How did Adam Peters clean up the defense so quickly (other than by hiring Quinn)? It all depends on the resources you inherit and what you decide to do with them.

Schoen came in handcuffed by the $40M deficit left to him by Gettleman. All he could do in free agency his first year was to fish at the bottom of the barrel, picking up guard Mark Glowinski and center Jon Feliciano, plus his best move, backup quarterback Tyrod Taylor.

Peters had no such constraints when he entered this year. That showed in how he approached free agency. What follows is not even a complete list of free agents Peters signed (plus one trade), only the most high-profile ones (age in parentheses):

Bobby Wagner (34): 1 year, $6.5M

Frankie Luvu (28): 3 years, $31M, $4.6M void year charge

Marshon Lattimore (28): Traded 3rd, 4th, 6th round picks; 2+ years, $37.1M remaining

Jeremy Chinn (26): 1 year, $4.6M

Dante Fowler (30): 1 year, $3.25M

Dorance Armstrong (27): 3 years, $33M, $6M void year charge

Clelin Ferrell (27): 1 year, $3.75M

Noah Igbinoghene (25): 1 year, $1.3M

Marcus Mariota (31): 1 year, $6M

Zach Ertz (34): 1 year, $1.96M

Tyler Biadasz (27): 3 years, $30M, $5.4M void year charge

Nick Allegretti (28): 3 years, $16M, $2.4M void year charge

Cornelius Lucas (33): 1 year, $2.8M

That’s quite a haul. Those first six are some of the better defensive players in the NFL. How good would the Giants’ defense be with those six players? Peters completely re-tooled the starting/rotational edge defender room, the starting linebacker room, half the starting secondary, and half the starting offensive line, all with veteran free agents. (He also drafted two promising defensive players, Jer’Zhan Newton, and Mike Sainristil, but their play so far has been spotty.)

Peters signed five players age 30 or older to play key starting or rotational roles, vs. the Giants’ three (Greg Van Roten, Jermaine Eluemunor, Rakeem Nunez-Roches). Eight of the significant players brought in by Peters were signed only for this season, and the four he signed to multi-year deals have a total of $18.4M in void year charges pushed into the year after their contracts end. That’s the Howie Roseman playbook: Sign whatever veteran player you want and pay for them later. Not surprisingly, the Eagles field a star-laden lineup on both sides of the ball, because they behave as if there are no financial constraints.

In other words, Peters’ philosophy in Washington is to win now mostly with veterans, and not to worry yet about building a sustainable contender. It may pay off in a playoff berth this season…but next year he is going to have to start over because most of those players will once again be free agents. Several years later, he will have less cap space because of those void years – but it won’t matter, because (a) the cap will probably be higher, and (b) he’ll probably issue more contracts that push costs into void years, as Roseman does.

Schoen did not take this approach. He couldn’t have even if he’d wanted to in his first year because of the financial situation he inherited. That set him up for failure in his second year because without significant free agent signings, he made the mistake of relying on too many unproven draftees or low-level veteran offensive linemen. The resulting disaster known as the 2023 Giants’ OL caused him to undertake an emergency plumbing job heading into 2024. Only in Year 3 did he take an approach with the offensive line that resembles Peters’, signing mid-level veterans Jon Runyan Jr. and Jermaine Eluemunor, along with low-end signings Greg Van Roten and Aaron Stinnie.

Otherwise, though, Schoen has mostly spent money signing key young players to multi-year contracts (Andrew Thomas, Dexter Lawrence, and the unwise Daniel Jones deal but with a third-year escape hatch), and his key outside acquisitions have been young players brought in to be the core of the team in the future (e.g., Bobby Okereke, Brian Burns), with only one exception (the ill-fated Darren Waller trade). At the start of the season, the Giants had the fourth-youngest roster in the NFL and second youngest group of starters. The Commanders’ roster was the fourth oldest. Schoen has mosty eschewed void year costs, while Peters has used them more liberally (though he’s a piker compared to Roseman).

That’s not to say that Schoen’s approach is wise. For this year at least, it’s created a roster that seemed deficient in talent in key positions even before all the injuries, while Peters’ approach has been to fill every hole now regardless of the cost. Of course, once you have your quarterback, it’s easier to justify that. And maybe that’s the key.

Would the Giants’ 2024 record have been better if they had Mariota or someone similar backing up Daniel Jones, Lattimore playing CB1, or Ertz starting at TE1 while Theo Johnson learns his craft, or Fowler or Armstrong in the edge rotation? Probably. Not as good as Washington’s, because the quarterback problem would still be there. The point is that the way Schoen handled the roster is symptomatic of a GM who is not trying to win now – and one who is doubtful about his quarterback – while Peters’ approach is clearly to win now.

The bottom line is that Peters walked into a better situation than Schoen did two years earlier. His franchise quarterback fell into his lap. Daniel Jones fell into Schoen’s lap, and there was no Jayden Daniels in the 2022 draft. If Schoen is allowed to return as GM in 2025, and if he gets to draft his QB the way Peters did, then he will be able to load up on older veteran free agents as Peters did this year…if he chooses to.

It may be, though, that Schoen just doesn’t believe in building that way, seeing the draft as his main vehicle to reach success. After the Darren Waller experience, he may have sworn off older veterans except in cases like the five-alarm fire on the offensive line. You might imagine that the Giants’ owners heard different pitches from Peters and Schoen in 2022 about how they’d fix the Giants and they chose Schoen’s approach, with the understanding that it would not produce immediate dividends (though to everyone’s surprise, it did in 2022). The downside, as we see this year, is that when you enter the season with obvious holes or at least question marks at key positions (IDL, CB2, QB2), it can get late early, as Yogi Berra used to say.

Schoen’s approach may hold the most promise of long-term success, but it requires picking the right players. The most disturbing thing about 2024 is not just the record; it’s that none of Schoen’s high draft picks have become premier NFL players except Malik Nabers, even though some are now in their third season. That’s important to every GM, but less so if like Peters you build largely through trades and free agency. The potential reward of doing it via the draft is that every pick that hits is locked up for four to five years at a bargain price. The risk is that the draft is a crapshoot. The way Peters did it in his first year, the risk is lower because you are signing players who have proven themselves in the NFL, but every year or two you’re starting over as contracts expire.

Building by adding accomplished veteran players is the easier path to take, in principle… yet Ryan Poles’ approach in Chicago, which has been more like Peters’ (Keenan Allen, D.J. Moore, Montez Sweat) than Schoen’s, is not having much success thus far. And Poles also had his franchise QB drop into his lap (thank you, Carolina), but Caleb Williams has not thus far been the catalyst for success that Daniels has.

Whoever the Giants’ GM is next year, it will be worth watching during the March free agent signing period to try to detect whether the Giants have decided, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, or whether they continue to shy away from veterans whose contracts require costs to be deferred to win now. If that GM is Schoen, you’d hope he has learned at least this lesson: Don’t get even as far as the draft, much less Week 1, without having solutions at every key position.