Notebook: Joe Schoen, Brian Daboll set out to make improvements

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. – Given a guarantee that they will have the opportunity to improve the Giants’ fortunes, Joe Schoen and Brian Daboll set out today to do exactly that. But in separate news conferences this afternoon, they offered scant detail how they plan to do it.

Daboll, the Giants’ head coach, was told this morning by team president John Mara that he will return for a fourth season. He will partner with Schoen, the general manager who hired him, to resurrect a Giants team that is 18-32-1, plus 1-1 in the postseason, in three seasons under Schoen and Daboll, and finished 3-14 this year. The Giants will select third in the first round of the NFL Draft.

“Obviously, the three wins are not good enough,” Schoen said. “But that is what we will spend the next four months doing, between the draft and free agency, upgrading the roster the best we can. We are looking at the organization top to bottom, trying to figure out what’s best moving forward throughout the entire football operation.”

Schoen was asked, “who does this fall on?”

“First and foremost, myself,” he said. “We’re not good enough. We didn’t play well enough. I’ve got to do a better job assembling a roster with more talent so we can go out and compete at a higher level. So, I look inward, first and foremost.”

Daboll’s job security was the subject of much outside speculation over the last six weeks of the season. But Mara deemed the continuity of keeping his G.M. and coach together was better than creating upheaval by re-filling one or both jobs.

“I am thankful for the opportunity,” said Daboll, who joined Schoen in a meeting with Mara Friday afternoon that lasted several hours. “We have a lot of work to do. Obviously, 3-14 is not good enough.

“I make no excuses. It was not good enough. I think the guys battled and stuck together. But obviously a lot of improvements we need to make.”

Daboll stuck to several themes that he repeated in multiple answers; three wins or the “results” were “not good enough.” He didn’t do a “good enough job” or must do a “better job.” He has “a lot of work” to do. Some variation of “we have a lot of things to improve on.”

One of them, according to Mara, is the team’s defense. Mara pointedly said this morning, “I didn’t think our defense played very well this year at all” and “I’m tired of watching teams go up and down the field on us.”