Trey Smith might have been a Giant if the Kansas City Chiefs hadn’t franchise-tagged their right guard.
So it’s not like Joe Schoen wasn’t aware of the need to upgrade his offensive line this spring.
“If there’s not a No. 1 receiver that hits the market or Trey Smith is franchised by Kansas City and you’re looking at a right guard, you’re at the mercy of what’s available in free agency,” the Giants GM said after the NFL Draft. “We were trying to upgrade the talent [team-wide], and I felt like we did.”
No matter what Schoen’s intentions were, however, it is concerning that the GM only made minimal tweaks this spring to an offensive line that ranked Nos. 26 and 27 in pass block and run block win rate, respectively, for the 2024 season.
The only additions so far have been Browns swing tackle James Hudson III (two years, $11 million), Seahawks backup tackle Stone Forsythe (one year, $1.1 million) and fifth-round draft pick Marcus Mbow, a tackle from Purdue.
Granted, Schoen already spent a lot of money last offseason on right tackle Jermaine Eluemunor and left guard Jon Runyan Jr. Then he brought in veteran right guard Greg Van Roten at the start of training camp to round out a unit anchored by left tackle Andrew Thomas with 2023 second-round pick John Michael Schmitz at center.
The Giants GM has been playing catch-up with his line, though, since he whiffed on his entire 2022 O-line draft class of Evan Neal (first round), Josh Ezeudu (third round) and Marcus McKethan (fifth round).
So it’s fairly alarming that Schoen has only used two draft picks in the past three years on offensive linemen when the need to solidify this unit is so dire and directly tied to the success or failure of his team in 2025.
One obvious reason is that Schoen has a higher opinion of his 2024 line than others do. He said at the NFL Combine in late February that he thought the Giants offensive line played well in Weeks 1-6 when Thomas was healthy.
“Early on in those first six games, the O-line played good enough for us to play winning football,” Schoen said in Indianapolis.
This is the second straight year, however, that Schoen has used Thomas’ injury as an excuse for his line’s struggles. He frequently lamented Thomas’ 2023 Week 1 injury against the Cowboys as if the team didn’t have 16 games to play after that.
Injuries happen in football. If one lineman’s injury compromises a team’s plan for its offensive line in a season, that reveals a poor plan.
Not to mention that Schoen’s barometer for his O-Line seems pretty low.
He’s saying the Giants’ line played winning football in 2024 during a 2-4 stretch when the offense averaged only 16 points per game and scored fewer than 20 points in four of the six games, including six points against the Vikings and seven against the Bengals.
This is the GM whose 2023 offensive line allowed 85 sacks, the second most all-time by any NFL team.
Schoen’s implication, of course, is that a better quarterback would have taken more advantage of the Giants offensive line’s play early last season.
When asked if this roster is ready to win now with a quarterback upgrade, Schoen said in February: “I think the quarterback elevates the rest of the roster. Yeah, absolutely.”
While the Giants consider Russell Wilson an upgrade Daniel Jones, though, Wilson is less mobile and less capable of using his legs to escape pressure than Jones was. And Jameis Winston doesn’t run at all.
That seemingly would have heightened the Giants’ urgency to invest more heavily than they did this offseason in the line.
Should Schoen have considered LSU tackle/guard Will Campbell with the No. 3 overall pick instead of taking Penn State edge rusher Abdul Carter and letting Campbell slip to the Patriots at No. 4?
That might be stretching it, since Schoen would have been forcing a need with Carter ahead of Campbell on his board — at a premium position, no less.
Still, it will be interesting to see how desperate of a need the Giants continue to have up front and whether, in hindsight, they will realize they didn’t do enough to guard themselves against a worst-case scenario.
Their plan at guard, at the moment, involves familiar names like Runyan Jr., Evan Neal, Van Roten and Jake Kubas.
Neal played left guard for a season at Alabama. So if he moves there, Runyan Jr. would be able to slide back to the right side, where he played for the Green Bay Packers before signing in New York.
Neal, Kubas and Van Roten also could compete for the right guard spot. This spring, there should be plenty of reps to go around.
Schoen made it sound at the NFL Owners Meeting like Runyan Jr. underwent some sort of procedure on his separated shoulder, although the GM insisted Runyan was “good to go” this spring.
Runyan’s health will be critical.
Schoen identified early at the NFL Combine that “right guard’s a spot that open,” but with Kansas City’s Smith franchise tagged and unavailable, the Giants in the end simply re-signed Van Roten — who had a durable but underwhelming 2024 season — and now are reassigning the tackle Neal inside to compete with the other incumbents.
Essentially, Schoen made some tweaks to his front five but didn’t change much.
The Giants hope that’s enough to protect Wilson. Otherwise, they’re going to need a more mobile quarterback running Brian Daboll’s offense to extend plays and escape pressure.
Could that lead to rookie first-round pick Jaxson Dart seeing the field early?
If Dart is ready when the time comes, so be it. But the last thing the Giants need is to force him into the lineup before he is ready.
As always with the Giants, it seems, it all comes down to the line.