Giants are already abandoning Joe Schoen charade

The Giants went out of their way to pretend John Harbaugh would not be sidelining Joe Schoen when the former was hired in January.

It only took a month for them to give that up.

Harbaugh’s media tour rolled on over the weekend. The latest stop: A new interview with The Athletic’s Ian O’Connor, who has emerged as the Ahmad Rashad to Harbaugh’s Michael Jordan. The biggest takeaway: Schoen is the Giants’ general manager in name only, as anyone who was not wildly naive and/or a shill for the team could have told you weeks ago.

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Yes, Harbaugh continues to say glowing things about Schoen. He told O’Connor that Schoen has lived up to the “high expectations” he had and they have “worked really well together.” But Harbaugh also revealed that Dawn Aponte, the Giants’ new senior VP of football operations and strategy, reports to him. And these are Aponte’s responsibilities, according to the team:

In her role, Aponte is responsible for strategic planning for football operations, analytics, salary cap management, player contract negotiations, compliance, and working closely with the college and pro personnel departments.

So … what exactly does Schoen do here? He is “basically relegated to handling scouting,” according to The Daily News’ Pat Leonard. Which is a far cry from presenting Harbaugh and Schoen as a unified brain trust a few weeks ago.

The reality of the situation is not surprising, as we said above. This was always going to be how this went down. Schoen should have been fired with Brian Daboll last fall. He was not shown the door then because the Mara and Tisch families have been botching situations like his for over a decade. They just happened to get lucky this time that a coach of Harbaugh’s stature was willing to finesse the problem rather than demand the obvious.

But the fact the Giants — and let’s be clear, Harbaugh is the Giants now — are already going through the motions from an optics standpoint does make you wonder.

Remember that strangely worded report from NFL Network back in December that Schoen was likely to stay with the Giants “through the draft?” It is commonplace for new coaches and GMs to inherit scouting departments from their predecessors, get through the NFL draft and then clean house in the spring. Couple that with Schoen’s continued refusal to address his contract status and would it shock anyone if he’s shown the door in early May? Or if he’s given a courtesy one-year extension and is gone in January?

It shouldn’t. And at this point, it probably should be expected.