Why the Giants were bolder this offseason about taking on injury risks

One of the initiatives Joe Schoen set in motion when he was hired as the general manager of the Giants was to try to figure out how to solve the injury issues that troubled the franchise before his arrival.

Year after year, the Giants were high on the list of games lost to injury, and Schoen realized that was not conducive to winning football.

One of the ways Schoen could try to mitigate the potential for injuries was to sign and draft players with clean medical histories.

In free agency, that meant identifying players who had shown they were durable in their NFL careers.

In the NFL Draft, that meant investigating the medical histories of players they might select and detailing how dependable those players were for their college teams.

Schoen stuck to this approach in his first year, but strayed a bit this offseason in Year 2.

He did not like the top end of the free-agent market at wide receiver, unwilling to pay big money for a good-not-great weapon for Daniel Jones. Schoen went in a different direction.

He had a relationship with Raiders general manager David Ziegler, checking in with him at the Senior Bowl and then at the NFL scouting combine, asking whether there were any players the Raiders would consider moving.

Ziegler mentioned tight end Darren Waller, and that piqued Schoen’s interest.

“After doing a little bit of research and coming to an agreement on his value, we went ahead and pulled the trigger,’’ Schoen said.

The Giants acquired Waller in exchange for one of their two third-round picks in the 2023 NFL Draft.

Much of Schoen’s research focused on Waller’s injury history, which is considerable.

Waller did not miss a game in either 2019 or 2020 and put together fantastic seasons, totaling 197 receptions for 2,341 yards and 12 touchdowns. Waller’s past two seasons were waylaid by nagging hamstring issues, causing him to miss 14 games and his production to take a dive.

At age 30, coming off back-to-back injury-laden seasons, Waller definitely qualifies as a medical risk, making him the type of player Schoen had tried to steer clear of early in his Giants tenure.

Schoen explained why he believes this is an acceptable risk.

He pointed out that the Giants training staff — composed of Ronnie Barnes, Steve Kennelly, Leigh Weiss, Justin Maher, Mike Baum and Phil Buzzerio — was named the 2022 Ed Block NFL Athletic Training Staff of the Year. Barnes is one of the league’s most respected voices in medical and training circles.

Schoen cited data that he said showed the Giants were down more than 200 percent this season in their frequency of soft-tissue injuries to muscles, tendons, and ligaments.

The Giants had difficulty getting outside linebacker Azeez Ojulari (hamstring, calf) and receiver Kadarius Toney (hamstring) on the field, but otherwise were able to limit the collective games lost to soft-tissue issues.

“If you take out a couple of players that had multiple soft tissues, we were in really good shape,’’ Schoen said.

“The soft-tissue stuff, I have a lot of confidence in the training staff, the strength staff, the sports science. Dabs [head coach Brian Daboll] spends a lot of time with those groups of people, as well as myself, mapping out the practice schedule, training camp, how we’re going to do things at the start and end of the season.

“We felt comfortable with the information that we had and the staff that we have in place to get [Waller] on the field and keep him healthy.’’

Will the new surroundings and new training staff combine to keep Waller on the field?

He said he pushed himself too hard during the week in the past, and having learned a lesson, will watch himself as he acclimates to a new team and new program. Daboll will allow Waller to prepare for the season at his own pace.

“I’ve had initial discussions with our training staff about practices and OTAs,” Daboll said. “I think we take each player that we have on a case-by-case basis now. Once they get in there, phase one, they just start working out in meetings, I think that’ll evolve over the next few weeks, not just with [Waller], but with all the guys, too.’’

Waller is not the only player the Giants added who arrives with injury concerns.

They signed two wide receivers, Jamison Crowder and Parris Campbell, who must prove they are not handle-with-care athletes.

Crowder, 29, played in just four games for the Bills in 2022 before suffering a season-ending fractured ankle. Campbell got into a total of 15 games his first three NFL seasons with the Colts before finally shaking the injury bug in 2022, when he played in all 17 games.

Schoen did not risk much with these players, signing each to one-year deals.

Beyond the science and medical data and advance planning that goes into identifying ways to prevent injuries, sometimes a large dose of good fortune is equally important to keeping players off the trainer’s table and on the field.

Schoen knows this. Like it or not, luck plays a part in all this.

“When I got the job, Daniel [Jones], he missed a lot of games the year before,’’ Schoen said. “Saquon [Barkley] missed a lot of games the year before. Richie James missed the entire season the year before. Leonard Williams hadn’t missed a game his entire career. You’ve got to balance it.

“It’s football. There’s going to be injuries. You evaluate the injuries on an individual basis. Were they preventable? How did they occur? You look at the film on some of the injuries. Is it something we could’ve done better?

“So we’re always going to continue to find a competitive advantage where we can. I have a lot of confidence in our training and our medical staff and the research that we’ve done. Some of the players, the injuries are something that we can treat and the players will be available.’’

If Waller is able to keep his hamstrings healthy and develops into a reliable target, the draft pick the Giants gave up to get him will become an afterthought.

If Waller’s physical issues of the past two years surface again in 2023, there will be questions about why Schoen took the chance on him.

That’s the way it works in a sport where availability is so critical to success.

BMOC

It was a good line, even if the music reference was a bit dated.

John Mara is feeling better about the Giants than he has in years. And he is feeling highly optimistic about his head coach — with good reason.

In his first season, Daboll took a team expected to lose far more often than it won and finished 9-7-1 in the regular season, and then won a playoff game for the franchise for the first time in more than a decade. Daboll was named the Coach of the Year.

Cue the cute line from the Giants’ co-owner.

“We kid him. I mean, right now he’s Bono walking around New York City,” Mara said last week on SiriusXM NFL Radio, invoking the U2 frontman.“But I’ve told him, I’ve said, ‘In this business, it doesn’t take long to go from Bono to Bozo. So don’t get your head too big right now.’ But he has been great.”

Mara hopes Daboll is a keeper. He thought the hire of Ben McAdoo was going to reap great benefits after McAdoo produced an 11-5 record in his head coaching debut in 2016. McAdoo was fired before he completed the following season.

Mara believed the Giants had uncovered a gem after rookie head coach Joe Judge navigated the unprecedented challenges of a COVID season to go 6-10 in 2020, his team showing marked improvement with a 5-3 close to the season. There was no carryover in 2021, and Judge was fired after the Giants went 4-13.

Mara has seen how encouraging can devolve into discouraging.

Daboll now is the people’s choice. His everyman persona a big hit — he is hailed when he is shown on the jumbotron at Rangers games — and he has been credited for turning around the fortunes of a franchise stuck in a losing rut.

The trick is to maintain rock-star status because no one wants to play the part of the clown.

Asked and answered

Here are two questions that have come up recently that we will attempt to answer as accurately as possible:

Why did the Giants take their contract offer to Saquon Barkley off the table?

During the bye week in October, the Giants made a significant offer to Barkley: a multi-year deal averaging $12.5 million annually. Barkley did not accept the offer, and that was it for negotiations until after the season. The Giants slightly upped the ante, but no agreement was reached. Once Daniel Jones signed a four-year deal worth $160 million, the Giants quickly pivoted and put the franchise tag on Barkley.

The Giants moved on with their free-agency business, allocating $10.1 million on the salary cap for 2023 to Barkley. Offers do not exist in perpetuity.

This does not mean the two sides will not revisit a long-term deal. It could happen. The Giants would like to make it happen. It would benefit Barkley to secure as much guaranteed money as possible, given the physical demands of his position. But if a deal materializes, it will be a new deal and not the one the Giants offered previously.

Daboll recently seemed to give off a mixed message about whether or not he is over the 38-7 playoff loss to the Eagles. Is he over it or not?

At the NFL owners meeting in Phoenix, Daboll was reminded he set a high bar in his first year, winning a playoff game and winning the Coach of the Year award. He he quickly shot down that line of thinking with this retort: “Got smoked in the playoffs.’’

A few minutes later, asked whether he was surprised his team was not more competitive in the playoff loss to the Eagles, Daboll said: “I’ve kind of moved on from that game. I’m looking forward to this season and things we can get better at.’’

Which is it? Most likely, both are true. Daboll cannot forget how badly the Giants were thrashed in Philadelphia, yet he also realizes it was one game and he and his team need to move on. You can be sure he will use it as motivation the next time the Giants line up across from the Eagles.