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Giants’ Joe Schoen tried to ‘plant the seed’ for NFL draft trade with Patriots at combine

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Giants’ Joe Schoen tried to ‘plant the seed’ for NFL draft trade with Patriots at combine

The seeds of a potential draft day deal between the Giants and Patriots appeared to begin to blossom during the 2024 NFL combine, the second episode of “Hard Knocks: Offseason with the New York Giants” revealed Tuesday night. 

Though the Patriots ended up using the No. 3 overall pick to take Drake Maye in the April draft, the Giants did reportedly make an offer to New England in an attempt to move up to that spot.

The docuseries showed Giants general manager Joe Schoen approached the Patriots during the combine in Indianapolis in March to inquire about the pick. 

The HBO cameras captured Schoen as he spoke with assistant GM Brandon Brown in a suite inside Lucas Oil Stadium about how he was going to approach the Patriots to gauge interest in a swap. 

“You going to take a trek down there?” Brown asked Schoen. 

“Yeah, I’m just going to go down there and say, ‘Hey before you do anything at three just make sure you let us know,’” Schoen responded. “Just plant the seed if you are going to move the pick don’t do so without at least giving us a call. … We’re interested.” 

“I’ll go plant the seed,” Schoen said to Brown before walking away. 

The Giants GM followed through with the plan and walked to the Patriots’ suite to talk with New England’s executive vice president of player personnel Eliot Wolf. 


The Giants had interest in trading up in the NFL draft. MAX

After taking the conversation to a more isolated area, Schoen laid out his request. 

“Just do this for me, if you guys are going to anything at three, like move out at all — you don’t have to tell me your plan or anything,” Schoen said. “But if you have any inkling just call me.”

Wolf responded by telling Schoen that they had “a couple of teams” call and had similar conversations as the one the two football executives were having then. 

The conversation ended with Schoen asking Wolf to “just keep me in the back of your mind,” and with the New England executive agreeing. 


The Patriots ended up keeping the pick and taking QB Drake Maye.
The Patriots ended up keeping the pick and taking QB Drake Maye. MAX

The upshot of it all was the Patriots ended up taking Maye out of North Carolina despite a strong push by the Giants, who offered their second-round pick this year and their first-round pick in 2025 in an attempt to convince New England. 

The episode of the HBO show certainly intimated that the Giants were looking to move up to take a quarterback after an injury-plagued season by Daniel Jones

Earlier in the program, the behind-the-scenes show took viewers inside the meetings the Giants had with several of the top quarterback prospects in the 2024 draft, including Maye, Caleb Williams, Jayden Daniels and J.J. McCarthy.

The meetings with the QBs were led by Giants head coach Brian Daboll, who has a history of developing signal-callers and was all too eager to test the crop of quarterback prospects the Giants were sitting down with in Indianapolis. 

One of the more memorable moments from their sitdowns came with Daniels, who learned a new play from Daboll.

Then, amid an answer to a different question later in the session, the Giants coach stopped Daniels and had him recite the play back to him.

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