Report:NY Giants set to part ways with the $120 million mega star……

General Manager Joe Schoen and Head Coach Brian Daboll…….

JOE SCHOEN: It’s been a long process to get to this point. I’d be remiss if I didn’t thank my leadership group, Brandon Brown, Tim McDonnell, Dennis Hickey, Chris Rossetti, Ryan Cowden, along with all the coaches, there’s a lot of hard work that goes into this. They are sent out to Pro Days and Zooms with the prospects, and Dabs is nice enough to give them a week off in late March.

And unfortunately sometimes there’s Pro Days during that time when these coaches have to give up vacation with their family to go visit with these draft prospects and help us in our process to make the decisions and draft these kids.

So hats off to the personnel staff, the coaching staff, everybody in this building as far as process. There’s a lot that goes into it, and you know, I like where we ended up this weekend and now that it’s all said and done, we still have free agency and we are out there working on that now. I feel like we’re in a good spot after the Draft.

Q. Your roster isn’t finalized, but how do you feel as the roster stands?

JOE SCHOEN: Yeah, I think where we are right now, coming into the off-season, between what we did in free agency, the Draft today, the trade for Brian Burns. Again, we always have room to grow and always have room to improve. I say it all the time, we don’t play until September, so there’s still time between now and September where we can acquire players, the final cutdown, whatever it may be.

I like the group that we have right now. Excited to get the rookies in here, assimilate them into our culture, get on the grass, practice and then as we observe and evaluate the players as we’re going through it, if we still have needs, there will probably be some vets that will be released over the next couple weeks, as well. There’s always going to be a time and a place where you can add some more players. We’ll see where we are now, and as we go through the competition period and training camp, if there are other areas we need to fill, we’ll try to do that.

Q. Was tight end a priority because you don’t know what’s going to happen with Darren?

JOE SCHOEN: We had to take that into account for sure. But you know, Theo was the top player on our board. I’m trying to think, if there were any of these guys that we took that weren’t the top player on the board at the time…last night we left, he was sticking out for us. You always think when you come in the next morning, he’s going to go sooner and may not be there and we’re excited to get Theo.

Q. You didn’t take a quarterback in this draft. You tried to move up, or at least had conversations about moving up for a quarterback in this draft. Where do you consider yourself at the quarterback position now for this year and for the future?

JOE SCHOEN: Yeah, for me, I said it in January after the season. Our expectation was Daniel would be our starter and we brought Drew Lock to be his backup and Tommy is a backup, so that’s where we are and that’s how we’ll move forward this season. Daniel is still under contract for three more years. As it sits today, that’s where we are.

Q. While you were doing all that work and going to places like Washington and LSU and Carolina, was the design during that time to try to make sure you were coming out of this draft with a young developmental quarterback, or did you view it as due diligence that wasn’t necessarily going to come to fruition?

JOE SCHOEN: You know, I understand your question. If you look at the Pro Days we went to, there’s quality and quantity. You look at LSU, there’s a lot of good players at other positions we did take, no different than Washington. Washington won a lot of games and went to the National Championship, so they had a lot of players.

Q. I guess I should throw in the Drake Maye and JJ, the private workouts —

JOE SCHOEN: What’s the question in regard to the private workouts?

Q. All the work you did, I should have mentioned those.

JOE SCHOEN: Yeah, I could name 15 other players we did private workouts at other positions. Again, we are going to continue to do our due diligence. You get six, seven swings, you want to make sure you know as much as you can about each prospect.

And I think being around these kids on their campus, boots on the ground, dinner, setting up Pro Days, whatever it may be, I think you can find out a lot about prospects. It’s not just quarterbacks we did private workouts with. We are always going to do our due diligence across the board.

Q. Taking the due diligence on quarterbacks, basically where you’re picking, people assumed you were looking to move on from Daniel. Did do you like recommit to him?

JOE SCHOEN: I’ve said it before, it’s not just right now. I mean, Dabs and I went through this in 2017 and we have intimate knowledge of that class, whether it was Lamar Jackson, Sam Darnold, Baker Mayfield, Mason Rudolph, you can go through it. We know those guys. We have a very good feel. Last year’s draft, we spent time with C.J. Stroud, we spent time with Will Levis. Now we know what these kids are about if they ever become free agents or they are on the trade market.

I think it’s a different position when you are evaluating. You can watch all the film you want, but there’s a reason at that position guys succeed and they fail and it’s not just because of the tape. The three years we’ve been here, we have done a lot of work on the quarterbacks. Maybe it hasn’t been as public or maybe it hasn’t been as well covered but we’ll always do that because of the importance of the position and what goes into it.

You can’t just throw the tape on and say, ‘OK, I’ll sign that guy.’ There’s a personal makeup, there is a way you carry yourself; leadership, processing information. It’s not easy. This guy calls a play in some of these meetings and says regurgitate it to me and then you have to go call out the Mike and then you’ve got to change the play and you’ve got to shift this guy and oh, by the way, you have to snap the ball and figure out where you’re throwing it to. That’s not easy.

So I think spending time with this position is very, very important, whether it’s today or down the road or in the future.

Q. Have you spoken directly to Daniel to maybe share with him some of what Joe was saying or to ask him if he has a question? Have you done anything out of the norm because of this situation with Daniel?

BRIAN DABOLL: I talk to the entire team, but I meet with the quarterbacks daily. I spend a lot of time with them every day.

So you know, you’re just transparent with the entire team about the whole draft process. You’re trying to improve your team. You know, the last meeting we had, I showed a picture up here of all of our area scouts, Joe, his leadership group that he mentioned, and you know, part of their role is to help improve our football team by creating competition.

And then there’s a human element, too. If you’re sitting in there and you’re in the receiver room and we draft Malik Nabers, there’s a human element to that, too. So I think you have to be transparent. There’s a draft every year. There’s free agency every year. We start out the meeting by any new players that are here that weren’t here last year, stand up, and any guys that were drafted by Joe and the staff, stand up. It’s different every year. The teams are different. It’s constructed different.

But I think that opens lines of communication whether it’s D.J., whether it’s with Tommy, whether it’s with the receivers, the D-Linemen and the linebackers, running backs. I encourage all of our coaches to do that because I think that’s important to be transparent, whether it’s, again, free agency, draft. There’s constant turnover. So the communication lines are definitely very important.

Q. The first night, we were talking about Nabors, the idea was presented to you, the idea that you were giving Daniel a weapon, seemed like — a weapon for the offense. Is there a sense where you’re now trying to build what you want from your offense and what you want from your defense, and it’s not necessarily a specific player but it’s also kind of what you believe now, want to have, as far as what you’re going to do offensively?

BRIAN DABOLL: Yeah, I think — generators.

Q. Generators?

BRIAN DABOLL: Yeah, people that can do stuff with the ball in their hands. Whether that’s take a jet sweep and go 30 yards or whether that’s running a double move and catch it 50 yards down the field to help you score points. You know, just to go back to Malik, I feel that he is that.

Now, he’s got a lot of work to do. There’s a big playbook to learn. You’ve got to try to slow it down for these young players when they get in. But anyone that can touch the ball — and linemen can be generators, too, in a different way, by keeping the pocket clean, by getting movement at the line of scrimmage.

So I wouldn’t say that it’s necessarily — you’ve got to wait to see what you have and then try to move pieces around and see where — Theo, where he fits it in, where Malik fits in, there are different positions to play. There’s five eligible players on every play and you try to use those guys the best you can. But they have to come in here and prove it and earn the right to play.

Q. Where does Tyrone Tracy in that kind of mold? He’s going to be 25.

BRIAN DABOLL: Some of these guys are older, too, relative to what people have been through the past few years, I would say, COVID and all those other things. Some guys are a little bit older. He’s a former receiver. In terms of yards per carry, he’s been pretty good. He’s an athlete who has played receiver and then played running back and has some good production. We’ll throw him in the mix. Whether that’s in the kickoff return game or whether that’s at running back or the receiving part of it, we’ve got to do a good job of getting him in here and seeing where he’s at and then trying to fit him into the things that he can do well.

Q. Joe, how do you feel, this is sort of like the last major portion of the off-season. Usually there’s major additions, I assume for the most part, you probably don’t have much more to add. You put resources into the offensive line in free agency, you added Malik, you added Theo. How do you feel about the offense now?

JOE SCHOEN: Yeah, I think, what Dabs said it earlier. Once we get on the field and see how the pieces work together, we’ll have a better feel. Dabs is one of the better ones I’ve been around. It’s not his system, like we are going to run this — a square peg in a round hole. We are going to go out there and see what routes these guys can run well, what they can do. There are some new pieces. What do they do best and how can we accentuate that. How can we get them in positions where they can perform the best.

I like some of the pieces we have. I like some of the upgrades. Again, you can throw Brian Burns in the draft, as well, that pick 39, to bring on a 25-year-old, two-time Pro Bowler as a pass rusher as part of this draft class. I like some of the moves that we made in the off-season. We still have work to do and I just think it’s year three and we are just going to continue to build the roster and the team. I think where we are with some of the contract status, like I talked about last night; that you can keep a core group together over a two- to three-year window, and you have another off-season and another draft, and then you look up and there’s some really good pieces on the table.

Q. Are you guys going to add a quarterback as an undrafted free agent?

BRIAN DABOLL: We’ll have for rookie camp here in two weeks time, we’ll have a number of players come in. You need to bring in a quarterback to operate some seven on seven and things that you want to do. We’ll bring someone in, whether that’s tryout or whatever it may be and we’ll go from there.

Q. Could you do me one quickie on the kid from UCLA, what did you see from him?

JOE SCHOEN: Yeah, he’s a good football player. He was actually with Ghoby (Michael Ghobrial), our special teams coach, they crossed paths at Hawaii. 440 career tackles, hasn’t missed a game, smart, tough, dependable, instinctive. Our special teams coach, he’s coached him, has a vision for him on special teams. He was at the East-West, and I would say — Tyrone Tracy was, too. Having our coaches and Shea at the Senior Bowl with Theo. I think there’s a little bit of competitive advantage in terms of — again, going back to Dabs’ staff and their willingness to sacrifice their time to help us in this process, and I would say all three of those guys that we took today, our coaches had intimate knowledge of those