Joe Schoen did everything that was asked of him and he did much of it quite well. The Giants, though, should not ask Schoen, their new general manager, to draw any pictures for them.
It was Mother’s Day 2017 when Schoen and his new boss, Brandon Beane, started from scratch with the Bills, making lists of possible front-office hires as they sat together in Beane’s office. Schoen’s assignment was to make a map of the country to detail where the scouts were situated.
“The one that Joe drew looked like a cow, it really doesn’t look like a map and I laughed at it,’’ Beane said Friday. “I said ‘If we make this right we’ll laugh at this one day.’ ’’
Beane and Schoen made it so right in Buffalo that the Bills are still alive in the playoffs this season and Schoen has departed for bigger things. He was hired Friday as the new general manager of the Giants, separating Beane from someone he calls “my right-hand guy,’’ an associate he had come to lean on and trust.
“Personally it’s bittersweet,’’ Beane said. “He’s a great friend, his family is a great friend of my family, that is the hard part. You’re excited for him to get his chance, his opportunity to prove he can do it. That’s why I left Carolina, I wanted to prove I could sit in this seat and deal with all nuances of the job and have success. He’s been a great part of what we have here but he wants to put his stamp on it.’’
Beane, 45, and Schoen, 42, go way back. Beane was in personnel with the Panthers in 2000 when Schoen got his first taste of the NFL, as an intern with Carolina. There was nothing too small for Schoen. He made coffee for the special teams coordinator at 5:30 in the morning. He chased down field goals that sailed into the woods.
“Whatever you asked him, he didn’t mind doing it and it never changed to this moment when he’s got this job,’’ Beane said.
Schoen left for nine years to work for the Dolphins, but when Beane got the big job in Buffalo he summoned Schoen, who eventually became the assistant general manager.
“I let Joe be involved in everything and if he wasn’t in a meeting … he was in many of ’em, but if he was not I shared with him the reasoning behind it so that he could understand that,’’ Beane said. “Joe has dealt with agents, he has recruited players here. He understands all of that stuff. He’s got great relationships with other GMs, assistant GMs, personnel directors, coaches around the league. Those are all the reasons I think he’s gonna be very successful when he gets himself planted there in New York.’’
Asked to describe Schoen, Beane said: “Joe is a very intelligent person, he’s a great listener. He’s not gonna walk into those offices and act like he’s got all the answers, whether he’s talking to scouts, whether he’s talking to the PR department, the training room.’’
Schoen’s greatest quality?
“Dependable,’’ Beane said. “He’s never gonna let you down. In this job you can’t be everywhere. I can’t be with the scouts and also with the coaches or also down in the training room and he was another set of eyes and ears and he’s just, I know it’s gonna be done the right way. I didn’t have to go back behind him, and this goes back to when he was working for me in Carolina. There’s so many adjectives that I could describe Joe, dependable is one, he’ll never let you down.’’