Joe Schoen takes over Giants with a Bill Parcells seal of approval

If you are a true football guy, chances are that Bill Parcells will like you.

New Giants GM Joe Schoen is a football guy.

“I like Joe,” Parcells told the Post. “Having worked with him, I think he’s a a very good evaluator of talent in the NFL, and he’s a serious personnel man.”

When Parcells was the the big fish in Miami, Schoen served as the Dolphins assistant director of college scouting before being promoted to director of player personnel (2014-17) under former Jets GM Mike Tannenbaum.

“He’s very, very conscientious,” Parcells said.

Schoen was in Carolina with Bills GM Brandon Beane and head coach Sean McDermott and longtime Parcells confidante Dan Henning. Schoen has been Beane’s righthand man since 2017 and has been an instrumental part of the Bills’ ascension.

“Those two guys are like peas in a pod,” Parcells said. “They grew up together. They started in Carolina together.”

Schoen immediately wins in the court of public opinion, and he will win the press conference because he follows Dave Gettleman, which means he is not Ray Handley following Bill Parcells, and he is not Ben McAdoo replacing Tom Coughlin.

Now go get the right head coach.

The right head coach will set him up for success or failure and define his immediate stewardship and leadership skills.

Joe Schoen has the Bill Parcells stamp of approval.

Craig Melvin/Buffalo Bills

The right head coach, an intense, no-nonsense head coach with experience, is Brooklyn’s own Brian Flores.

Go for Flo.

As long, of course, as Schoen is comfortable that the friction this season between Flores and Dolphins GM Chris Grier is not a problem. Any potential dalliance with Deshaun Watson, who is said to love Flores, would be a decision that would fall at the feet of Giants ownership, given Watson’s problematic legal issues.

If he isn’t comfortable with what unfolded in Miami, then Bills offensive coordinator Brian Daboll would predictably be Next Man Up to bring the Giants offense out of the Dark Ages.

Schoen represents a departure from the Same Old Giants Way, which has given us the Same Old Giants over the past decade, to say the 22-59 least.

And now it is his job to help restore the pride, and restore the stability and continuity that had been a hallmark of the Steelers and once was a hallmark of the New York Football Giants.

It is his mandate to prove that John Mara and Steve Tisch have finally gotten it right. Giants fans will keep their fingers crossed and pray they have learned from the errors of their ways. Plucking Beane’s righthand man from the Bills is good business.

It is illogical and unfair to expect Schoen to do for Mara and Tisch what the late George Young did for Wellington Mara — he won’t get the chance to draft a Lawrence Taylor, of course. It is illogical and unfair to expect The Next Ozzie Newsome. No one should be expecting miracles here. 

But let his honeymoon begin.

He gets his dream job to build from rock bottom a reeling organization that will have a chance to replace dysfunction with sustained success.

Joe Schoen worked under Bill Parcells when the two were with the Dolphins.

Joseph E. Amaturo

After all the turnoil and all the failings, I trust that Mara will trust Schoen enough to let the GM GM.

This isn’t a giant task, it is a gargantuan task, under a microscope the likes of which he has never experienced, in a market that will expose imposters in a Big Apple minute.

Of course, there are never any guarantees. Parcells was a Jersey Guy who knew the landscape and wouldn’t blink. Schoen is a Hoosier who graduated from DePauw in 2001. “You never know what’s gonna happen,” Parcells said. “Heavy is the head that wears the crown, you understand? You never know what’s gonna happen. But I can tell you he’s a good evaluator and he’s very serious about his job.”

John Mara will have to let his new GM be a general manager.

Robert Sabo

Schoen has to agree with his head coach on the right franchise quarterback. Which means he and his head coach will have to make a judgment on Daniel Jones, and decide whether they will want to go forward with their own quarterback, because Jones was Gettleman’s Guy, and he has not definitively answered the franchise quarterback question.

There is a Saquon Barkley decision to make as he enters his fifth year.

And it goes without saying that he has to fix the offensive line. Schoen will inherit the fifth and seventh picks in the NFL Draft.

When you clean house, you put a tandem in place where both are aligned with the same vision, as opposed to a win-now head coach and a GM with a long-term view.

Young and Parcells sometimes would sometimes clash on players. But they were philosophically aligned more often than not.

“The ideal general manager should have skills far beyond those of coaching, player evaluation or cap management,” former Packers Vice President of Player Finance/General Counsel Andrew Brandt wrote for Sports Illustrated. “The true role of an NFL general manager is that of a leader, a consensus builder and a master communicator, both internally and externally. . . Whatever the background, I would look for someone with the ultimate leadership skill: getting people to do things they don’t necessarily want to do, and do them with pride. I would look for someone who understands it is not what you say to people; rather, it is how you make them feel.”

Joe Schoen made Mara and Tisch feel all warm and fuzzy.

Now all he has to do is repair a broken franchise and make Giants fans feel that way again too.