Although the 2023 season has ended, the blame game is still on! The New York Giants couldn’t make it to the playoffs last season due to their 11 losses and just 6 wins. So, who is responsible for it? – The roster, the game strategies, the coaches, or the quarterback?

As surprising as it may seem, for Giants’ GM, Joe Schoen, it’s probably not the quarterback, Daniel Jones, because he thinks, “even Patrick Mahomes wouldn’t succeed with what he had to deal with last year.” Jones struggled in the last season with “a passer rating of 70.5, covering 909 yards with 2 touchdowns and 6 interceptions.” He was limited to just six games before tearing his ACL, and as a result, their offense crumbled.

Now Schoen showed his ton of support for Jones while comparing him to the Super Bowl champion, Kansas City Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes. According to analyst and Giants’ podcaster Tommy on his official X account on Tuesday, July 2: “Joe Schoen on Daniel Jones 2023 season: He didn’t have much of a chance this year. You could have f**** Patrick Mahomes behind our line and he isn’t winning.”

Schoen gave this statement in the Tuesday night premiere of HBO’s Hard Knocks: Offseason with the New York Giants, where fans got a glimpse of some of the biggest decisions of the Giants’ 2024 offseason. As per MLFootball Twitter page, “He believes that even if the team had Patrick Mahomes instead of Daniel Jones at quarterback last year, Mahomes would have FAILED because of his surroundings.”

This new statement by Schoen has created a buzz among NFL fans, as many chimed in it with their comments. One social media user wrote, ““you could put f**king patrick mahomes behind this line and he aint winning” Joe schoen has to be on giants twitter because giants twitter says this all the time & for him to say that is hilarious” with three laughing emojis. Another one simply put, “He cooked his own players.”

As the hilarious comments and divided opinions are rolling in, for Schoen, it’s the roster that was responsible for what happened in their past season.

Why did the Giants fail to control their ship in the 2023 season?

In 2022, Brian Daboll, as a first-year head coach for the Giants, was known for being open and accountable. Players and coaches, too, felt they could approach him with anything, and they believed that following his instructions would help them in close games. The Giants managed to win 9-4-1 in one-score games, including the playoffs. However, the 2023 season started poorly with a “whitewashed” score 40-0 loss to the Dallas Cowboys, and since then the team struggled to recover for the rest of the season. That game highlighted several issues including injuries, problems with the game plan on both offense and defense, and personnel challenges.

Injuries to key players like QB Daniel Jones, RB Saquon Barkley, and left tackle Andrew Thomas made it difficult for the team to perform as intended. These injuries also revealed the team’s lack of depth and questionable off-season decisions. For example, the decision to keep Matt Peart over Tyre Phillips was understandable due to Phillips’ injuries, but both players had known capabilities. Similarly, the decision to rely heavily on tight end Darren Waller’s skill set without a proper backup for Daniel Bellinger was problematic when Bellinger got injured. Furthermore, defensively, the Giants lacked depth at OL behind Kayvon Thibodeaux and Azeez Ojulari. Thibodeaux had a strong season with 11.5 sacks, but the team as a whole had 21 sacks, among the lowest in the NFL.

Additionally, when Ojulari got injured, the replacements Jihad Ward and Carlos “Boogie” Basham, couldn’t generate the needed pressure. The team also relied on young CBs – Deonte Banks, Tre Hawkins III, and Cor’Dale Flott. Then, offensively in 2022, the Giants played conservatively, focusing on short passes, quick reads, and a strong running game, which helped them avoid mistakes and capitalize on opponents’ errors. However, they often abandoned the pass in the 4th quarter.

Now that the team is entering their next season in September 2024, general manager Joe Schoen and team are trying to “get better in terms of how they handle those situations.”