Giants general manager Joe Schoen was retained and is leading the charge to hire a new coach in New York.
Schoen met with team chairmen Steve Tisch and John Mara on Monday to chart the course for the franchise after finishing the 2025 season 4-13. He has one year remaining on his contract and the immediate priority is finding a head coach.
“The 2025 season has been deeply disappointing, and the results on the field have not lived up to the standard this organization and our fans expect,” Tisch and Mara said in a joint statement.
“As previously stated, Joe Schoen will remain our General Manager and continue to lead our football operations and the search for our next head coach. Continuity and stability in the front office is important to our progress.
“We believe in our young core of talent, which we can build around for future success.”
Mara endorsed Schoen after Brian Daboll was fired with a record of 20-40-1. The Giants won their final two games of the regular season under interim coach Mike Kafka, who took over on Nov. 10 and lost his first five games.
New York has produced three consecutive losing seasons with 26 total victories the past five seasons. Daboll is the only coach to last more than two seasons since Tom Coughlin was let go after the 2015 season.
Schoen, 46, said Monday that he was “honored and humbled” that Tisch and Mara are allowing him to continue on the job. His first task is identifying the next head coach, who Schoen said will need combined a mix of leadership, player development and the ability to lay out a plan for quarterback Jaxson Dart’s development.
“We’re going to cast a wide net, and there’s no directive that it has to be an offensive guy or defensive guy or special teams or college or whatever it may be, having head coaching experience previously. We are going to find the best leader for the franchise,” Schoen said.
“We are gathering names, gathering information, providing that to ownership. We will all go through the interview process together, and collectively we’ll come up with who the next head coach of the New York Giants is going to be. Ultimately, it’s ownership’s decision, but I imagine that’s going to be a collaborative effort.”
Kafka, who interviewed for multiple head coaching vacancies last offseason, will receive an interview for the Giants’ opening. After losing his first five games as the interim coach, Kafka led the Giants to a pair of victories to close out the season.
“It was a great experience, a great learning experience,” Kafka said. “I certainly learned a lot about myself, certainly learned about others, leadership, the game. You’re asked to do different responsibilities, more game management, operating with the special teams, operating with the defense a little bit more.
“So, those are all great experiences and absolutely made me much more confident in my abilities to be a head coach.”
Schoen did not directly answer a question about how serious a candidate he considers Kafka for the full-time job. Kafka is one of several Giants coaches who still have a year remaining on their contracts.
“He’s going to get an interview, and he’s done a good job. He’s been on the interview for the last, you know, several weeks,” Schoen said. “Obviously, he finished with two wins at the end. He did a phenomenal job keeping the guys together, competing all the way to the finish there.”
Schoen’s second head coach hire will be the franchise’s seventh since parting with Coughlin, including short-term interim coaches Steve Spagnuolo (five games, 2017) and Kafka (2-5 this season).
“We’re going to get the right person to lead the franchise and get us back to what the standard is,” he said. “That’s competing for championships on a yearly basis.”
–Field Level Media
